Que?

This is Tess this afternoon having her first (of one? or many?) Spanish lessons with my mum.

Mum is a language teacher of many years and believes all children should have some experience of languages at a young age. (Though I'm quite sure she and Michael Gove would disagree about just how that should be implemented)

Tess is a wriggly fish and did her very best to sit still and concentrate but - as you can see - it wasn't easy! She wants to know a lot of stuff but she can not concentrate and she'd rather someone else learnt it for her and then transmitted it to her electronically or magically. She wouldn't wait for me to explain why there is a city called Bath the other day.

I told her yesterday that I wish I had a more smile-y face so we've been practising smiling today. Weirdly, though, Tess seems to think that smiley people talk in gormless, squeaky voices and aren't very good at adding up. (???)

On a sadder note, yesterday would have been the 40th birthday of my baby sister Beatrice, who died at 13 months old . For some weird reason I thought it was next week and was all set to quietly and privately mark the day, but Mum told me it was yesterday. So I missed it :(

Tess has just arrived downstairs with her bath towel tied around her neck like a cape and said, 'Hello, I'm Mr. Costume Man' When asked where her pyjamas were she said they were in her mind...

Life, huh? Quite bouncy isn't it? Up. Down. Up. Down. Up again