and I mean hated to the extent that I would tell her how many days she had to go before she could have her next school holiday.
(Yes... I am aware that at her age a count down of days probably wasn't that concrete a concept for her to gauge, but it seemed to help and there really wasn't much more I could do).
It may have been because the class size effectively doubled in size again.
Not literally this time, but with an open plan classroom layout that housed both classes overlap was inevitable.
Or it may have been playtime and lunchtime with double the amount of children that was to blame.
Or just yet another new regime and a new teacher and TA (Teacher's Assistant) to get used to...
I don't know..
Probably all three and many more.
***
Milly made friends with a child named Zosia that year.
Zosia was the first child that Milly particularly single out as friendship material and initially things went well. Milly went to play at her house with a small group of friends and later, Zosia came to our house with her mum.
I remember Zosia's mum telling me what a delightful and well behaved child Milly was in comparison with the small handful of other children that went to play that day.
By all accounts the other children were all jumping up and down on the chairs... but not Milly.
But then one day Milly came home from school and told me that Zosia had grabbed hold of her and hurt her arm...
I spoke to the school about it.
And I spoke to Zosia's mum.
And I had a meeting at the school about it.
It didn't end well...
Both school and Zosia's mum were convinced nothing had happened, but Milly wasn't a liar - it simply wasn't in her nature.
In hindsight (I'm sorry, you are going to get sick of reading this phrase, I'm sure) I suspect that Zosia meant no harm at all and was probably just far more heavy handed that Milly could cope with.
But all I knew back then was my daughter was upset and nobody believed her.
The joys of parenting, hey?
By this stage, parents were also inviting children to their child's birthday parties - and there were a lot of parties all closely grouped together - between November and December especially.
Every party seem to last around the two hour mark... and that's when I found out that Milly struggled with them...
If you've read my 'About Me' section on my craft blog you will know that Milly loved the party bag you got at the end of the party, but two hours was far too long for her to cope with.
She would inevitably be sitting on my knee and crying for about the last half an hour or so.
Ball Pits were not her 'cup of tea' either, but even those parties that did something less 'energetic' still had her in tears back then.
Sometimes life can be just so very, very unfair...
***
This was also the year that my mum died.
Diagnosed with Leukaemia a week before Milly's second birthday, relapsed a week before her third birthday and died March 11th when Milly was four years old.
We would often drive down at the weekends (an hour there, an hour back) to see my mum...
and we always reiterated to Milly that Nan wasn't well so she had to be a good girl.
Milly didn't disappoint us at all. Not even once...
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