Chasing the shadows

I had a beautiful afternoon with Eleanor today. It took me back to Tuesdays with Rosemary when she was at nursery school; when life wasn’t such a rush and a juggle.

Eleanor started nursery school a couple of weeks ago, and we had been trying out my mum picking her up and taking her home for lunch and a nap, because the idea has been for a while that we work during school hours and keep the rest of the time for family and us*. Eleanor hadn’t been falling asleep until so late, though, that she was getting home at 5.30 instead of 4.30 or 3.30 like normal, which felt too late to us. So we’ve changed it so she has lunch at nursery school and then we bring her home – theoretically to sleep, but perhaps that’s not going to happen!

I picked her up at 1pm today, and she gave me a big cuddle and handed me her things and chatted away (she’d fallen asleep at circle time apparently and had half an hour’s sleep before lunchtime, when they woke her up). We left and walked home through a sunny autumn day. We chatted about the wind in our hair, popped into the RSPCA shop to put some money in the dogs, walked past the waterfall, talked about what she’d done at nursery school (painting, playing shops, playing in the sand and the water), what she’d liked most about her packed lunch (she listed everything!) and then we chased our shadows all the way home, dipping in and out of splashes of sun.

She then spent the afternoon with boundless energy, baking pretend cakes and making pretend soup (pie soup and carrot soup), reading stories, drawing, building towers, splashing in puddles (we found two tiny puddles in the back yard) and, finally, sitting down for some ‘dot dot’ and then an apple and some Octonauts on the iPlayer.

She stayed up until bedtime and continued to be happy and enthusiastic and energetic pretty much all the way (apart from a little bit of a disagreement about it being time to go to bed). And, though it was quite tiring (especially after being up with both girls since before 5am and baking and crafting with them instead of just leaving them to their own devices – or to TV on the netbook), it was one of the nicest afternoons I’ve had in a long time and I think Tuesday afternoons might very well turn into Mummy-Daughter Tuesdays again – if she doesn’t fall asleep the second we get home next week, of course.

* Yeah, right. Never works out like that, of course.