I arrived home from working on client site last night at about 5:30pm, and rather than let myself into the house, just knocked on it. After a few moments our middle girl opened the door and looked at meslightly bewildered.”Daddy!”I walked in, carrying my bags, and she skipped past to close the door behind me. That was all the invitation our youngest needed to run the length of the hall and wrap her arms around my legs.
The next ten minutes was filled with the younger children competing for my attentionboth talking at high speed to tell me what they had been up to over the last few days. Apparently our eldest was at “Youth Moves”a dance class held by a wonderful friend in town.
I found W in the kitchen, madly washing up and trying to make dinner ahead of Brownies. Our house never stops. After picking each of the children up and having a hug, I conspiratorially whispered to them “I’m going to go give mum a big hug”, and tiptoed into the kitchenW walked straight past me, carrying food to the table.”I can’t stopwe have ten minutes to eat dinner, then it’s Brownies.”Our youngest arrived in the lounge doorway.”I go to Brownies?”“No, you’re staying here with Dad.”“Have movie night?”I looked at W and smiled.”I expect so”. and so it was that we put Harry Potter on the TV after dinner, and I sat with Little Miss 6. While checking my email on the iPad, she looked across at my lap, and asked “what doing Dad?” (she’s played with the iPad before).
I opened the drawing app, and handed it to her.She sat quietly playing with the iPad for an hourchoosing different pencils and pens, making new pages, slapping her hand over her face when doing something wrong, but generally having a wonderful time.
She’s turning a huge corner.
This week she took herself off to the study at home, and wrote a story on the computer about a lion eating pasta for his dinner. This is the same little girl that cannot control a pencil well enough to write a sentence.
The clouds seem to be slowly lifting around herthis little girl with so many problems is becoming a smart little cookie, who can not only run fast, and make everybody laugh, but it would also seem can read and write.
Exciting times.