They sure grow up fast...

I have suddenly realised that my 7 year old is sleeping through the night.  Admittedly getting her to go to sleep is still a nightmare but she goes through the night time routine without complaint and if she doesn’t go straight to sleep she is happy to read in bed until she nods off.  Getting her up in the morning is now the problem but that’s nothing that can’t be dealt with by dragging her duvet off and shouting like a Boot Camp sergeant.   I have however well and truly shot myself in the foot by constantly snuggling down with the 4 year old in recent weeks.  This week I resisted the temptation, mainly because since children my menstrual flow has become a menstrual flood so once a month I have to shroud myself in gauze, much like an Egyptian mummy, and remain horizontal until morning.  When I complained about being presented with a see through plastic bag in which to carry my super plus tampons home a friend commented that I should be grateful as it shows I’m not yet menopausal.  This is the same friend who tried to compliment me by telling me I look like Ros in Spooks who to my mind looks ravaged by age, has a too high forehead and the charisma of a dead duck.  It has not been a good week.

Predictably the four year old woke in the early hours.  Husband was supposed to be on duty but it takes him so long to respond to her plaintive cries that as ever I found myself rushing through bleary eyed to comfort her.  The following night, realising that I wasn’t going anywhere she came through to us and last night husband reluctantly plodded through to pacify her.  It’s entirely my fault and I am ashamed that I am giving her such mixed signals.

I have just employed a super nanny to try to sort out my seven year olds daughters next problem, her phobia of dogs, though when I e-mailed her about it I inadvertently referred to it as a phobia of god.  Something her father has but the girls as yet have shown no sign of developing.  Living in suburbia every neighbour has a four legged friend which seriously hampers our ability to drop in on people unannounced.  On Hallowe’en a friend invited us in for drinks and knowing she has a dog the seven year old was reluctant to cross the doorstep.  Thankfully the absence of said dog, plethora of teenagers and booming sound system temporarily conquered her fear and she and her friend stared open mouthed as the 13 year old daughter slow danced with her boyfriend in front of her mother and grandmother. I too was open mouthed but for completely different reasons.  I feel completely unprepared for how to deal with their relationship with the opposite sex.   
I was relatively young when I had my first boyfriend but far more chaste than my strict Presbyterian parents suspected, much to the irritation of the various boyfriends.   However I now share their fear and am not sure that I would be at all happy if my own daughters came in at the age of 13 to tell me that they had a boyfriend.  Last night the oldest girl wandered into my bedroom, picked up a black bra and putting it on wiggled her hips in the mirror saying ‘I’m a girl’ in a ridiculous faux American accent.  Had it been the four year old I would have laughed, as it was my increasingly precocious seven year old I flipped at such an overt display of sexuality then felt terrible when she said she was just imitating the DVD of The Cat in the Hat.  I know I should just be grateful that one problem is over before I worry about the next but have no doubt that when she does start going out in the evenings I shall be in for many more sleepless nights.