A rather emotional day.

This morning started off really rather nicely, M had been busy 'making' out of one leg of a pair of thick woolly tights we'd had in a bag of hand-me-downs quite recently.

It's called 'Ellie Funt Elephant'

Then I had a shower during which I had a really strong and vivid memory of when K was tiny.  Without going into too much detail, she had a pyloric stenosis, which took several weeks to diagnose, ending in admittance to hospital for an operation when she was about 5 weeks old.  Clearly all went well, as she's now 10 years old and taller than the average 12 year old, and it's not something that comes to mind frequently at all usually.  Today though, I remembered so clearly some of the feelings I had at the time and got rather teary to put it mildly.  Some lovely snuggly, if rather teary, hugs with my girls helped on a few occasions during the day and of course I explained what was upsetting me, even though it was difficult to explain why, as I didn't really know myself.  During one of the cuddles we finally got round to having a go with a Shakespeare quiz game we'd borrowed from friends.

This afternoon M asked me to test her on the European countries' flags and capitals, using the cards from this game.  She got 46/46, identifying correctly the county and capital for each flag shown.  She has now moved on to the countries of South America.  She and I also went out for a brisk walk in our local park, since I mentioned to her that I'm not getting enough exercise and while she was working on conquering the monkey bars yesterday, instead of standing around chatting to her, I walked quickly around the playground.  Since then she has decided that I should go for a brisk walk regularly and has taken it upon herself to ensure that I do!  It was certainly good for me to get some fresh air anyway.  Meanwhile, K has been busy doing 'secret things', which I think involve making something, although I have no idea what, as I'm not allowed to see!

It was swimming this afternoon and by the time we got home, A was already back from work, and M greeted him with a very cheery 'Hello Daddy!  Mummy's been crying a lot today!'.  I don't think he really understood, but I got another big hug from him too.