great ideas

Does anyone out there have girls? I got two really lovely ideas from Mothering magazine, one of which I've just put into practice.

The first is for when she's a little older - you get a group of mothers and girls and organise a kids' book club. You pick a book, obviously, and you have discussion about it - everyone has to put an opinion in the hat, maybe. But as it's kids, there's far more you can do - book related art, pick a venue related to the story, activities - anything from tree climbing to a museum visit? Beautiful idea. The group in the book had been meeting for years.

The other is Saturday Spa Night - originally phrased as Sacred Saturday Spa Night but I found the language a bit cringy (the kids were 'unschooled' for example), though it has its place. This woman and her eight year old daughter would lock themselves in the bathroom with candles and an assortment of fancy smelly stuff - lip gloss, creams, nail stuff etc - they created a little ritual along with lighting the candles, pamper themselves, cleanse and beautify and really talk, honestly. It became a place for big talks like for introducing topics like sex, and also just getting closer. When they finished, they'd blow out the last candle and officially end Spa Night.

She found it brought them much closer together and reminded them during the week of how much they love eachother basically - they just say 'remember the principles of Spa night' and it helps keep things even.

I've just had the first effort (well, no, we tried on Saturday but there was no-one here to put the baby to bed, he was sick and didn't settle, my daughter was gung ho and jumped into all of it while I was trying to settle him, I got stressed and narky and we decided it was Sad Night, not Spa Night and we drew a line under it!) tonight, we had a rose scented bath with candles and little massage - she's still young enough that she wanted to play rather than have deep and meaningfuls, but that's fine for now (although rather against the grain, she wanted to play 'emenies' with plastic animals at war on each side of the tub!). We got hot, got out, brushed our teeth and let the boys come bathe in our still hot water (I'm glad my husband got a chance to be in the bath with the baby, he'll never do it - the downside is, the baby still had stinky ears afterwards, his Dad really is just useless at certain things) while we sat on her bed and used decolletage cream, Mama Bees belly cream (!) foot cream, and I did her nails.
Nice!

Now if she'd just go to sleep, I'd be laughing - two interruptions in one post so far, but I suppose you can't have everything.