The Great Glitter Explosion 2017

This post shall not be littered with photos - I shall expect you to use your imagination - as long as it constantly throws glints of gold from every angle, its working well.

Allow me to preface this with the first world acknowledged fact that young girls do like a bit of the glit - well, all young girls who I have birthed that is true for, anyway.

And we all know there is never "just a little bit" of glitter, is there?

So yesterday, we saw out the end of Summer with a little craft before bedtime - a pinch of gold was used to accessorise the odd colouring in, but all in all it was relatively contained - if relatively equates to across the table, on the dining room floor, around the rubbish bin and traipsed through the house.

But relative is relative.

Last night, Paris was slow to go to sleep.  I put it down to it being hot.  I put it down to being melancholy at her sister starting her new life far away.  I put it down to her fidgeting.  I put it down to her needing to go to the toilet.  She took an age to wash her hands post this reminder.  Hindsight would have cued the ominous music at that point.

Then she started crying, and voiced her fear that the whole school would laugh at her.  I did my mum thing and lay down with her and talked her around from the anxiety of anticipated bullying and mean girls and how to win the schoolyard skirmishes and positive approaches to the new month and resilience and by the end of my little talk, even I was feeling like grasping hold of life anew.  Go me!!!

I could even feel glitter between my teeth when I was getting ready for bed, and I did notice that the bar of soap had a very bright sheen.

As I said, relative is relative.

We are currently breaking Paris of the habit of crawling into our bed and taking up 70% of available real estate EVERY SINGLE NIGHT.  Until recently, our mattress was extremely uncomfortable and truth be told V and I almost raced each other to nab hers when that moment occurred in the wee hours of the morning.  However, her area requirements are growing AND we bought a more comfortable mattress, so we heralded change in this area to go with the changes in every other area of her life this year.  It is an ongoing process.

She went REALLY well last night - only one 3:30am sneak in for a cuddle and return to her own bed.  I was very chuffed at her and vowed to myself that the promise of scrambled eggs was as good as cooked.

When I had finished my morning rituals including the promised eggs, I went in to waken her for the start to her new day, the new month and the new attitude to life, and...

I awakened a GOLDEN child.  From her eyelashes to her toes, there was glitter.  The trail of glitter across the books at her bedside (and strangely, bottle of nail polish.  Huh?), pooled throughout her bed and piling underneath the bed belied a saga of a little girl who had a glitter nailpolish desire after lights out, and how it went so HORRIBLY wrong.

The poor darling.

No amount of showering, scrubbing and empowering discussion would erase the hue, the tone and the fear of eternal chastisement from the THEM at school and she never, ever wanted to leave the house again.

It was a VERY LONG MORNING.  The eggs helped a little.  The promise of school swimming today had torrential repercussions.  There was the leading with the front foot lecture (where the title of this post comes from).  The negotiations required were very delicate, pivoting precariously at every juncture.

When we got to the classroom this morning, she was slightly buoyed by the greeting of one which didn't SEEM to be too mean.  The teacher had just dealt with one child broken down by the lack of her swimming bag, and greeted Paris with "well, at least you aren't crying and you have your togs, hooray!" 

I advised her of our morning and she remarked "you look quite glorious yourself" to me.  When I told her of Paris' big fear, she deserved every shekel of her salary when she responded "Oh darling, they won't laugh at you.  They will be jealous.  You look FANTASTIC!"