Mixed weekend

Busy Saturday and Quiet Sunday.
Saturday starts with us getting up at 8am and off to drama at 9am - so far it hasn't been hard, wait till it gets colder and wetter though...
At drama I took the step of going off shopping while F was there, as I had to get presents for one of her friends, Ria, whose party we were attending that afternooon. That went fine, she didn't mind me going at all - my main worry was not that she would be tearful or clingy so much as that she might just decide to walk out the main doors and explore! But sensibly she stayed in drama and apparently did an improvisation of being a sad girl who plants a tree, which grows and then brings birds that cheer her up and she turns into a bird and can fly with them. As for once I wasn't there in the entrance hall half-listening I don't know how much of that is from her imagination but the main thing was that she had enjoyed drama again. Her focus is still a bit here and there, but I'm hoping that will improve.
On the way back a girl riding a pony trotted alongside us for a while and then we saw them again galloping at the park, which was lovely as F is still very keen on ponies. At the park, F did a lot of new things, mainly involving balancing while moving up and down different pieces of equipment and then walked on the wall very confidently and with good balance on the way home.
Back home with J, we opened up a conker case that we had found on our way back from the station on Thursday and looked at the brand new conker inside that noone had ever seen and felt the padding and the prickles of the case and talked about how they protect the conker. F said 'it grows the thing that it grows from' about the tree. So we talked a bit more about how trees make more of themselves and mentioned that animals and people do it too.
We walked over to Ria's party, glad it didn't start till 3pm. Pirates and princesses was the theme and it was a joint party for Ria and C as their birthdays are within 2 weeks of each other. Ria was one of only 2 girls who had chosen to be pirates rather than princesses - I do love that child, she's fab! The venue was really good - a big light room with windows all down one side out to the garden space, so that children were easy to spot (always handy, although of course half a dozen did manage to find the only space out of sight, squeezing down the side of a shed next to a wall!). The party was mainly a run-around and eat nice mixture of food type of party with a couple of games: musical statues and pass-the-parcel. F was very thrilled to be in the last four of the musical statues and it was nice to see her really concentrating - she certainly can concentrate but if she's not interested she doesn't make herself do so, which has a certain logic to it. She came 2nd I think (it got a bit vague as these things sometimes do) and won a nearly life-size plastic rat.
It was interesting to wander round and mingle a bit, I was surprised at how many people I knew, given that we are not on the 'school circuit'. There were 40 people there and probably as many adults and I found I knew about 10 adults ranging from people I see in the park to people I know from Music and Movement to neighbours. Katya had her hands full and I'm dying to see her properly sometime soon as we haven't had a good natter and a laugh since July - they were away for 3 weeks, after that I was busy with my dad and everything, and now Ria has just started school and so has Katya (PGCE!) so they're finding life very hectic.
I spoke to a few people I didn't know too, in most cases the 'school' question came up as it's bound to in a room full of 5-yr olds and so I had to declare myself repeatedly. People's reactions were pretty favourable and interested.
Back home we found that J had tidied the living-room in preparation for our guests later, so F had plenty of space to dance around in her princess dress especially when Strictly Come Dancing came on later. First she played a bit of Marble Blast Ultra.
Our guests arrived and we got F to bed and had Chinese takeaway and a good old chat. F came down at one point to tell me in an ear-tickling whisper that she had worked out how to spell the word 'a' from looking at it at the end of her name.
I excused myself earlyish as they are J's friends more than mine and the idea was that they might play some XBox games or look at PC games demos etc. So I took my laptop upstairs and played Literati online with a good mate and all in all that was Saturday and a lovely day it was.

Sunday
Was very very quiet, which was somewhat needed. I forgot to mention last Sunday that we made a bubble machine (Technokit - not entirely recommended as quite fiddly and the motor failed and J had to 'go in' to it and do something to the gears but it did work in the end which was fun).
This Sunday we did a bit of perfume-making, tried to make slime and didn't - I did stir to the point of RSI and that was enough.
And other than that I read a lot and went online and chatted to friends and J did similar and F played a bit of XBox and pootled around. Later we all ate salad and baked potatoes and watched a couple of Dr Who episodes.

Today: off to Monday group in a while and working when we come back.