Blatant....

...blip pinching from GowanGirl... but Katie chose this as her photo of the day! 

We are on a permanent "fly by the seat of our pants" in the mornings at the moment - she's sleeping a bit later than is usual for Katiemoos... 6.30am is becoming almost regular. Throw in her ever-increasing morning conditioning routine and we have a significant amount less time to play with than we really can do with. We managed stretches and bassoon this morning but the planned clarinet had to be put back to the afternoon. She's playing a solo on both instruments in the school exhibition (as well as a selection of other solos on bassoon in the coming weeks) and it's really encouraged her to get back in to her clarinet. It has shown though just how much we do need to find her a teacher, she's enjoying it but needs that permanent guidance with it. 

School is challenging for her at the moment - there aren't very many children willing to accept her for the fairly individual child that she is. She's quite aware she's different to them and they're not being at all kind. Bobbins, her special buddy who she knows she can always rely on when no-one else understands and vice versa, is away most of the time at the moment in the pre-panto rehearsal run. 

She did say she enjoyed choir today; Christmas songs are in full swing as she demonstrated to me complete with her own funky actions. They had buche du noel in French which is always a cause for comment.... though she did say she just likes the yummy chocolate butter cream not the cake this year! Stop-go animations of their Life in a Box projects has made the actual content of the day a bit more fun, but she still just comes out deflated every day. 

After school was the usual rep practise for bassoon, a couple of episodes of Friends, clarinet and our church friend popped in to drop off our church Travelling Nativity for our night with it at home. She's settled the church set in under the tree next to our own. I'm typing this as she gets ready for bed. I'm enjoying the fact that festive excitement has made us both remember how much we love snuggly story time. Paddington calls for tonight!