Sometimes it’s hard not to tear your hair out. Things that should be positive — fun even — can still derail the delicate machinery of routine and tip us straight into emotional overload. This weekend we had a boatload of it.
It started Saturday at the gym’s autumn celebration, where they’d decided face painting was a good idea. My daughter became a unicorn, her best friend a fairy, and together they flitted off happily into soft play, smearing greasepaint over all and sundry. There was also live… well, calling it music might be generous, but there were people in costumes enthusiastically producing noises with guitars and a drum kit. She loved it because the bass was so loud the floor vibrated.
Unicorn-face went to the library and the shops and didn’t have to wash it off until evening. That afternoon she had a play date (with the fairy) a few hours of running laps through the garden gates, making loom band bracelets, and generally raising hell. She was joyfully exhausted… right up until I told her it was time to go home. Cue screaming, tears, and the sort of meltdown that makes you question why you ever leave the house.
Sunday was worse. The spoons from Saturday hadn’t regenerated, her usual gym class was cancelled (a fact we’d reminded her of all week), and her grandparents were gallivanting around California instead of being available for her personal entertainment. Outrageous.
We took her to the park — her happy place — where she climbed every single tree, yelled at all the broken equipment, and marched us to the café for cake. But first, handwashing. Apparently that was a personal attack. Some of the trees were sticky (pine), stabby (sequoia), or poisonous (yew), and I explained why washing was important. Naturally, this meant she was now dying. She screamed in the car about the negligence of public tree policy all the way home.
We baked chocolate chip cookies that afternoon. That, too, was wrong. (“Why chocolate chip?!” “Because they’re your favourite!” “No they’re not!”) Offering a bath later was treated as an act of cruelty, despite her loving swimming three times a week. The logic is her own private kingdom, and we are but confused travellers.
None of it was bad — not a bit. It was all good things. Just too many of them, too close together, too far off-script. By Sunday night we were thanking every deity we don’t believe in that Monday was coming and school would restore some order before half-term.
She doesn’t know it yet, but I’m planning to distract her during half-term with a puppy. That’ll help… right?
(Please tell me that’ll help.)
Raising the Modern Fae 