Poor old Twin 1. She had a poorly tummy today. She felt sick. So I cancelled my classes (lovely lessons for Valentine's themed around 'The story of us' by Taylor Swift) and sent her to bed with a hot water bottle (she wanted to watch telly and do colouring in, but I insisted that if she really was ill enough to make me forfeit a day's pay then she had to do it properly and go to bed - you are definitely not allowed to have any fun if you're off sick in this house, at least, not until lunch time). The problem was that there was a year 3/4 performance of The Lion King at school this afternoon, and she had the very important job, as the third elephant, of leading in Miss Corbett's class to the hall. 'But Miss Corbett needs me,' she whimpered, teary-eyed, when I said that sick children couldn't pick and choose which bits of school to attend. Her sister was also an elephant, and it did feel a bit as if the pachyderm would be incomplete without her, so we raced to school just in time for her to rejoin the savanna. Miss Corbett looked thrilled, but Twin 1 spent the whole performance regretting her decision, and her hand-painted elephant mask was wet with tears by the end of the performance (Twin 2, by contrast, ripped her mask off, swung her ponytail and belted out those Elton John numbers with an enormous grin on her little face Genetic clones, my bottom. Nature vs nurture, go figure...).
Ah, sometimes it's tough being eight and half, I guess.