Birthday girl

Well, 6-yo turned 7. She had a sleepover. I'm not a big fan of sleepovers, as I believe I'm mentioned before. However, it was what she wanted more than anything anything anything. She's in a little friendship group of four girls, and the other three, their birthdays in September, December and February, all had sleepovers. So it would have been difficult for the fourth member of the group to flake out.

It went really well, thanks for asking. I had a few activities up my sleeve, but mostly just let them play. I did get them to do a scavenger hunt, which they enjoyed, and it was very sweet watching them scuttling round the garden collecting blades of grass and small stones, and then sitting studiously drawing an animal and something that begins with B. The item they found hardest to collect, interestingly, was a list of 10 different girls' names, each one written in a different colour marker. When I put that on the hunt list, I thought it would be easy for them, but I hadn't reckoned with the way the mind of a 7 year old works. "I could write Bayley, but I'm not really friends with her, so I don't think I want her name on my list."

We watched a dvd together (they watched, I snoozed), and I had them in bed by 10.15 and asleep not long after that. Beforehand, 7-yo had been very adamant that they HAD to stay up till after midnight, because you HAVE to do that at a sleepover, and they did at EVERYONE ELSE'S sleepover. So I had prepared the ground by setting my alarm clock an hour ahead. (I was sleeping with them in the basement, where there are no other clocks.) Sneaky, huh? And if you're reading this in years to come, 7-yo, then don't be too hard on me. You'll understand when you have a daughter of your own. Perhaps you already do. I have no idea at what stage in life you'll decide you want to look up that old-fashioned thing that your mum used to write, back in the olden days when they used to do that thing called, what was it? "blogging" or something. But in any case, I didn't need to use the clock, because by that time the girls had already had a lot of fun, and the competitive urge to stay up later at this sleepover than at any of the others had disappeared.

They all slept till 7.00am. At about 5.00am, one of them got up to use the bathroom, and I lay in bed willing her to go back to bed and to sleep, and not to assume it was morning (I'd turned the alarm clock back to the correct time by then). I don't know if it was the force of my willpower, or what, but she did. So we all got eight hours of sleep, which is good going for a sleepover. Next year, I'm thinking that 8 year olds are probably more challenging than 7 year olds on the bedtime front, so I am definitely crushing up a few Benadryl to bake into the birthday cake.

7-yo is very much into writing lists at the moment. My favourite is this one:

I hate...

mean people
pikle
brokle
wine

I hasten to add that she's only ever dunked a finger into a glass of wine for a taste. Honest. (And I was joking about the Benadryl too.) As for pikles and mean people, I don't like them much either. But personally I do like brokle. Have you worked out what that is? It took me a long while.