Star, Butterfly, Star

At last!  I've been given something I've always wanted.

As anyone with a six-going-on-twenty-six-year old daughter will know, a mother's behaviour can sometimes go beyond the pail.

So it was for Anna-mouse the other morning, when I asked her casually if she would be cold without her cardigan.

No, Mummy,  she replied dutifully.

Are you sure? I said, as I do.  As I always, infuriatingly, do, having asked the question and received a perfectly good reply.  Doubly, I suspect, if the question is anything to do with whether or not she is/will be/might possibly not be warm enough.

A small hurricane ensued.

MUMMY! she yelled.  I'm a BIG girl now!  If I say I'm sure YOU DON'T HAVE TO ASK ME AGAIN!

Honestly, I muttered to myself, I only said 'Are you sure?'.

Right!  That's it! she cried, sounding so like me I couldn't help but notice,  Mummy, you are getting a star chart! 

Really?  This I had not expected.  I tried hard to sound nonchalant.  What for?

But she had vanished, only to reappear several minutes later with a bright pink piece of paper marked up with fourteen irregular boxes and wording as follows:

Mummys are you sure chart

if she says are you sure see gets nothing.

Prize if mummy dosent say are you sure is a masagine

I'm doing awfully well.  I haven't missed a day.  Every morning Anna-m gets out her stickers and rewards me with a shimmery star or shiny butterfly, filling the little boxes in a satisfying, alternating pattern.  Tomorrow I shall get another butterfly, and the day after that, if I'm lucky, a star.  Anna-m is impressed.

The prize, I must say, I'm looking forward to.   I love a good masagine.