Six

R turned six today! Her specifications for her party invite were quite complicated, but we got there in the end with half a potato and paint all over the place! Said party had to be postponed to this weekend unfortunately due to THE bug, but we celebrated with a little birthday tea today! Luckily the specifications for her cake were not quite as complicated (she knows I am not in my mother's decorating league!), as long as it had purple on it somewhere, which I cheated at ever so slightly!
R has grown so much in one year, taller and wiser, and with her first two missing teeth! She is beginning to enjoy reading, which she is gradually mastering. I love watching that "light-bulb" moment when she sounds a word out and it suddenly makes sense! School is slowly becoming something she enjoys rather than dreads, which is also nice! As I have said before, putting your child in a foreign school can be daunting initially, gone are the familiar things that they rely on to start up conversations and friendships (something like Cinderella in one language is obviously something completely different in another)! It's nice to see her interacting with her peers from all over the world more confidently as she gets bigger, and appreciating different cultures and languages, a verified global citizen! Happy Birthday beautiful girl!

Owls appear to be one of the themes of my week! We spotted this one at the Royal Library yesterday. The architectural space inside the new building (The Black Diamond) is amazing, and I loved the sympathetic way the architects have "married" it to the attached old building from 1906 by carrying themes from one building to the other. It's worth doing a guided tour if you can, not only because you get access to the storage rooms which are beautiful, but you get to hear all of the insider stories too, like the one about the Book Thief! If books and architecture aren't your thing, then it has a really good restaurant!