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I love you, I hate you

We are currently experiencing the extremes of pre-teen sisters with the girls either absolutely loving each other or barely tolerating each other. To be fair there's probably more in between the extremes than I've cared to notice because mostly it seems to be all one way or another.

Last weekend Abj was off at Angie's, supposedly her birthday weekend but once again they'd forgotten she was coming, and so Izzy had us to herself. She made the most of this by inviting her friend Jessie over for Friday night where I'm embarrassed to say while I ran 5 miles on the treadmill they made themselves a snack of 2 jam donoughts, a packet of cheese quavers and a handful of haribo... I just hope she didn't mention how great the food is at our house! They then slept outside in the pod, something Izzy has been itching to do but needed a friend brave enough to do it with her!

Sunday was 'long' run day - actually I'm nowhere near a long run yet doing just less than 8 miles - before heading off to pick up Abi. What no-one there seems to appreciate is the fact that it's a 3 hour round trip and so when I arrived to questions of "could she come again next week because they forgot it was her birthday this time" I struggled not to have a sense of humour failure. We came home without any cross words but by bedtime (clearly influenced by one very tired child) we were into "its not fair, everyone else has a horse / better phone / better life" etc etc. Trying to rationalise as to just how privileged they are is clearly a complete waste of time so instead I just left her to cry it out. What more can I do.

The light in all of this was that on the way home Abi said she and Savannah had been discussing siblings and while Savannah thinks her little sister is a pain, Abi said "I realised I really love Izzy"! It doesn't take much to melt my heart and so I forgave her the fact that she then said "but don't you dare tell her!"

This evening has been a reflection of that. They have been joined at the hip and all we've heard is the two of them laughing together over goodness knows what. It helps that Abi is in a good mood because of course it's her birthday tomorrow and if Abi is in a good mood, everyone tends to follow. Yet another example of like father, like daughter. When asked what she wanted she immediately said she'd like some 'grown up' new wellies, ie like the adults at the yard wear. Once we'd established that she wasn't having the ultra-expensive ones, we went shopping and she got a reasonably price pair of wellies - only my daughter would want this for her birthday! Given this was last weekend, then she asked whether she'd be getting something else I said "what else do you want?" Her answer - I don't mind but I'd like a really big box to unwrap! I asked if it needed to have anything in it to which she said "not really, I just want to unwrap a big present!" Job done then.  In fact we've got her a bunch of little bits and pieces but at least we know her sights apparently not set too high. Izzy has asked to be woken up early so as not miss the fun - as the photo shows, she's still not a morning person!

Of course the problem with it being Abi's birthday?  Come tomorrow evening the countdown the Christmas really starts!!

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