From the mouths of babes

I drove for an hour, getting totally lost, to source a bell jar to display Mollie's skull in. The girl sat in the back chatting endlessly, as per usual, until I yelled "OK, you need to stop talking now because we are lost and I need to concentrate on where we are going". She sat, sullenly but quietly, until we reached out destination.Bell jar purchased, we headed off to a teddy bears picnic. Now, I had set the alarm to go early, so I could get organised for our big day. My husband had other ideas. So with only 45 minutes to get ready, a few things got overlooked. The day had a space theme, so girl had decided to go as Batman - yeah, I don't get it either. But anyway, she put her costume on and was happy. The things that got overlooked were money and food. Driving back from the-middle-of-nowhere-bell-jar-hunting we ran out of petrol - at a petrol station!! How good is that? Anyway, three of my brain cells were functioning enough to prompt me to buy drinks when I paid for the petrol. We got to the peninsula where the picnic was, queued up for 20 minutes to get into the car park and then nabbed a spot right out front. Also good!! It was probably the last hot day of summer, it was dusty, and it was crowded. The peninsula was teeming with people and small children clutching teddy bears. Lots of aluminium foil and many coke bottles had been used to make space outfits for teddies (except ours, which was a nudist space teddy) and one teddy had a clear, plastic teapot on its head (I was impressed). The girl found a market stall selling masks and demanded a pink mask with pink fluff on it. She did the pleeeeeeeeese thing and I pointed out the mask cost $5 and I had $6.40 so nothing else after the mask. She enthusiastically agreed. The teddy put the mask on, we checked out the Daleks,
then queued in the sun for half an hour so the girl could spend a few minutes on the jumping castle. Of course, after that she was hungry. I had nothing (potentially my nomination for mother of the year?) except $1.40 in change and all the food was $2 or more. I tried to talk her into going home, but she wouldn't be in it. We wandered about a bit more, she whinged about her hunger and we joined another queue so she could pat a sheep. The third queue, for face painting, was closed. Tears welling, tolerance levels reached, hunger overwhelming and tiredness setting in, the girl reluctantly agreed that we could go home. In the car the tears finally fell, she sat there mumbling about how crap it was, "all I got was a mask that won't stay on". I felt so sorry for her. It must be hard having me as a mum.
The next evening she showed me a dirty, old dog bone that she had found in the schoolyard. She had carefully wrapped it in the cling film from her cut apple. I was horrified "why are you collecting and bringing home dirty, yucky stuff like that?". My brother, who was staying with us, said "she's copying her mother". The girl put the dirty bone on the table next to Mollie's skull. I had to admit I had been trumped. It remains. My organisational skills are rubbish, my foresight is non-existent, but I am not a hypocrite.