04 May 2011

Oh, the Freckles!


Nine years old and all grown up, well, not quite I suppose. While I was taking this picture, Freya, who is also getting big (but has less teeth than usual lately, a lot less), was reading an American Girl mystery novel before school. She can't put it down! Of course her teacher is still sending home books with about eight words per page, but that's a battle I stopped fighting months ago. Freya refused to let me take a picture of her, but here's one of her tea party with her BFF Maggie a few weeks ago. Not sure if you can see them properly, but those are tiny cheese and olive sandwiches on the little plates.


This weekend Matilda has her final violin recital. And then, she says, she will never play again. This is why I am so proud of her: in spite of being completely done with the violin and never wanting to play it ever again, she still practices half an hour on school nights and an hour each on Saturday and Sunday. I like to think that the lesson being taught here is something more than you-have-to-do-things-you-don't-want-to-even-when-you-think-they-suck, but who knows? I have a feeling this might be one of those things for which the returns are subtle and known only through something else, years from now, if ever. She's thinking about taking up the piano when we move back to the Berkshires, and even if she has learned nothing else, she can now read music.

The weather turned sunny and breezy and warm here today - summer is coming. The girls only have about four weeks left of school and they're counting down the days. At TMR things are winding down for the semester; I wrote two posts for the TMR blog in the last week and you can find them here and here, if you're interested. The second one is about some artwork that Fionn did for the magazine launch party and the first is about how some pieces of writing just need to take longer than others.

I'll leave you with the new image drawn to accompany the online anthology by Sean, who has also agreed to help me with a redesign for this blog - coming soon...

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