The day, in brief

It's after 1am, so I must be quick here and go to bed.

Today we had a girl from Jade's Brownie pack round. She's a confident, chatty girl who I thought would be a good first pick to come round so that the more comfortable Jade gets with each girl, the happier I hope she'll be at Brownies. She is very happy to go, but still not confident enough to let me leave her there on her own. The visit was a reasonable success, although Jade did show a bit of a tendency to want to do solitary things like play on the computer or do her magic painting book, and had to be encouraged to find things to do for both (and later for all of them once L from next door arrived too). While the visitor was here we carved a large pumpkin, bought yesterday but I was way too tired after we got home to get round to carving.

Visiting girl was here from 10am to 3pm, and after she went we took the dog for a walk, along with a neighbour's dog. Then I finished off the pumpkin and sweetcorn soup (Delia!) which we ate with garlic bread for an early dinner before dashing out. Shannon was off to stay with a friend of mine for 3 hours till DH could pick her up, while Jade and I went down to the Forest of Dean area to watch Monty Roberts do a horse-training demo. He is an absolutely phenomenal man, with what I think is a life-changing message even for people who have nothing to do with horses, if they will but listen. He has many basic beliefs, including "no-one has the right to say 'you must or I will hurt you' to any creature, animal or human", "there is no such thing as teaching, only learning", and "everyone has the right to fail". And though it was expensive to go, I had to give Jade the possibly once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see the man in action. She was ecstatic! We saw him work with four horses - one almost totally untouched youngster who was taken from nowhere to receiving a saddle and rider on his back within about 30 minutes, one horse who had been taught to jump by using an electric prod to shock it into jumping as high as possible, and who consequently was now absolutely terrified of going anywhere near any jumps at all (and who was going over a 1' jump without a terrified dash for escape after landing by the end), a pony who was totally unrideable through ill-treatment, who took a rider by the end of the session and his owners were totally shocked and amazed at this being possible, and a horse who was scared to load into a trailer who took only about 15 minutes to teach how to load himself without even being led!!! It has given me lots of thoughts and inspiration about how to help Jade with her anxieties!

Tomorrow I have a vast amount to do to prepare for Shannon's 4th birthday party which takes place on Sunday afternoon. Her actual birthday is on Monday. I need to plan/buy/make food, cake, decorations, games, buy an extra present, wrap presents, etc! I'd better go to bed then.