Tuesday with Frieda

A routine Tuesday with Frieda. These days are bookended by the 20 minute car trip to pick her up at 8, and to drop her off again at 4.30.  The soundtrack to these journeys is a slightly manic mix of our shared observations about what we can see, the passing of books from me to her and back again, and various other random rambles. (I do only exchange books with her when stopped in traffic and not while on the move, I hasten to add). The aim, particularly at the end of the day, is to avoid both boredom and an unplanned nap (which would sabotage bedtime).  Frieda's getting pretty good at leafing through a picture book and providing a commentary on the story for me, while I drive.

Frieda still has the tail end of a cold, and so she was happy with a laid back day. She helped me with a few small jobs in the garden, and apart from that, Richard and I took turns with indoor stuff - mostly variations on imaginative play with Duplo and with our battered assortment of toy dinosaurs. Fortunately she also enjoys helping with the washing-up :-)

There's also a nice thing to note about her language development.  Somewhat absentmindedly, I started using a few Greek words while we were playing with some toy food items. Frieda looked thoughtful, probably because she's rarely heard me speak any Greek.  'I speak English', she said eventually.  'Yes', I said, 'and you sometimes speak Greek too. Mummy speaks Greek.  I usually speak English but I sometimes speak a little Greek as well.'  She relaxed, and we had a brief verbal game, alternating the Greek and English words. Slowly - very slowly - my efforts with the online Greek course and with Duolingo are proving helpful.