We are grown-ups!

Lady of leisure.

There's nothing more sobering than a child parroting your idioms back at you.

"Can I have a grape?" I asked.
"Maybe later, okay?" Arya replied

When she asked for more grapes a few minutes later, neither Hanna nor I could bring us to suggest perhaps she could have some later.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Hanna and Arya arrived on Friday evening, quite early as it goes, which meant that I got to spend a little time with Arya before she went to bed rather than carrying her in from the car asleep. She wanted a story before bed, so I put the fairy lights on - we have a set of fairy lights set up permanently on her old changing table for use as a night light - and read her a book, then we settled and she slept pretty easily all things considered (once we'd got up and gone out to see Mummy because Arya felt she hadn't said goodnight properly.)

On Saturday we were up for Tumble Tots, and once more we let time run away with us and had to chivvy Arya to hurry up when it was really not her fault we were running late. I felt bad about that, but she never seems to hold it against us. This is not, incidentally, a standard state of affairs, because she can decide that she has been wronged and that Mummy or Daddy has 'been naughty with me' (a turn of phrase we might need to try to adjust before a misguided social worker comes calling.) This in turn creates a complication, because it's a new twist on teaching her to apologise (which she's getting better at, for example when she wanted to say a proper goodnight having kind of blown Mummy off the first time;) teaching her to accept an apology.

This weekend, for example, Hanna told Arya off for standing on her laptop, which she was actually picking her way around (I think.) Hanna apologised, but Arya stormed off in a huff and I went after her (as she was also going to the toilet) and I tried to explain that Mummy had said sorry, and so like we always tell her it's okay after she apologises, she should let Mummy know it's okay now and maybe give her a hug because she feels bad for shouting. She mostly got it, but then went and apologised to Hanna for stepping on her laptop, so who knows what went on either in reality or in her mind.

A few moments after this picture, Arya called for Mummy to come and join
her. We think she may have been jealous.

Tumble Tots was once more excellent, and proved good prep for Sunday's trip to Treetops soft play, where we met up with an old gaming pal, his other half and their two kids. This was astonishingly grown up of us, and Arya had fun as usual clambering over the apparatus, especially the new section that Daddy has to wriggle like a mad eel on a ladder to squeeze into. It was a lot of fun, although once more the place was very busy. While negotiating that climb I kept running into kids going up or down and in need of assistance. At one point I got worried that having helped them up they'd get stuck and there would be this row of kids trapped in the frame. Someone would ask how they got up there and they'd point at me like a Midwich Cuckoo hit squad...

They'll say a cuter major general had never
sat a'gee.

Arya was also fascinated by the pony racing machine they've installed. She likes just sitting on it plenty, but at one point this attracted a mob of other youngsters who seemed to feel she was hogging the saddle and seemed set on hassling her off it. I had to go over and loom at them, which I don't feel good about, but not really bad about either. I don't care it you're five, kid; you don't hassle a two year old. I was pretty cool about it, I think. I said I'd ask her to get off if one of them actually wanted to put money in and play, but they didn't, so I just stood by to lend Arya moral support. When Hanna got back from the loo, we gave Arya a quid for one race, which she loved (although not conspicuously more than just sitting on the thing,) partly to spite the little beggars.

We went home via the supermarket, where we had some fuss because she was tired and some because she knocked her lip on the trolley. In the afternoon we made cupcakes, and this time managed to get them pink all the way through. We have now officially used up a kilo of Stork since the start of Christmas.

One interesting quirk in Arya's language is the occasional lapse into almost Bizarro speak:

"I can't do that; it's too easy."
"I'll put my slippers on because my feet are warm."

Strange girl. I love her to bits.