Lady in red

She jumps right off the screen, doesn't she? That little face peeping round at me.

We had a wonderful start to the morning; breakfast in the beautiful morning light of Js kitchen, clarinet, a play with Cosmo, photographs, cuddles and a walk through Kensington Gardens.

We arrived in perfect time for her Proms Family Workshop, a collaboration between Imperial College, the RCM and the BBC Proms team. It was absolutely brilliant. Every orchestra section had two professionals to support, and they were all fabulous. Katie was taken under the wing of a sax player.

The mornings work was based around the afternoon prom's pieces, so Mozart's Jupiter, Strauss' oboe concerto and a contemporary classical piece. I was in the chorus; I offered her the choice of me sitting with her in the wind section but she was happy to go off. Even when we split into sectionals, she didn't need me. How much band has helped her confidence! It was a really good session and she subtly learnt a lot about how her Eb clarinet's notes transpose from such as the violin as several phrases the orchestra had to work out what they had to play in order to match a phrase of the violins. She's previously only been given pre-written parts so hasn't massively explored that.

After the workshop, we walked to Harrods to start our dream jar hunt. On the way we had to stop to let the Ride London pelaton cross knightsbridge! We now have three dream jars, so that's a start! We'd have had four but one of the Harrods ones isn't there and the staff don't know why or where it is! She did however get a free book & bookmark & a glittery tattoo on her hand. We got a picnic to eat in Hyde Park, she played in the play area and we took a leisurely stroll back to the Royal Albert Hall.

This afternoon Katie went to her first prom! She was quite bemused by the actual prommers, that they were just standing/lying/sitting where last time she'd seen ballerinas! The first piece didn't especially capture either of our imaginations but she loved the oboe concerto. Though it was so beautiful she ended up napping a while!

We'd always planned to only see the first half- i booked train tickets before I booked the prom, but I wanted her to have the chance to see the performance of the works she'd been looking at. And I managed to get cheapy seats on Friday night. At the absolute top! She loved being so high up!

Due to the disruptions on the underground today, we missed our train by seconds but the nice staff have clearly seen this a few times today and without hesitation validated our advance purchase tickets for another train. She cried a bit as we watched our train pull away- she'd been wobbly about leaving London anyway. Even though we are back on Wednesday! But to turn it into a positive, we went to paperchase and bought pretty stickers for her scrap book then went to play in the Birdcage outside Kings Cross!

I'm pretty stunned but she stayed awake the entire journey home, even in the car from the station. She's been a total delight to take away. I adore her company for these adventures. She's now wrapped in her beautiful new silk crochet blanket, in my bed. Snoring.