Yesterday, I was tired after dinner. H had to work late. My daughter (11 years old) told me she was bored.

I thought about it and figured I did have enough energy to do a no-bake dessert kit with her, which she was all for the instant I mentioned it.

Wow. A little can go a long way with kids.

My psych issues have put up a barrier between us especially lately, and I have been trying to improve things there.

So we made this kit (not hard), refrigerated it, ate some, not the point really.

The point is that from the minute I put that dessert into the refrigerator until H got home (over 2 hours later, pretty much her bedtime), she was talking to me nonstop. Not about surface things like she'd been doing awhile. More about school, her friends, her feelings about things that had happened at school. Not as deep as the stuff I know she talks to H about, but a lot deeper than she has talked to me about in ages, maybe close to a year.

Wow.

I played a doll game with her today (tedious, but I'd promised when I overslept Monday, and she had to rush to get ready for school, a situation neither of us liked, but she had behaved very well, especially considering the cir circumstances. We did the game longer than I'd promised which made her very happy (not to win brownie points, it just happened) though with breaks for lunch, washing the dishes, feeding the catsuntil finally I did need some time to unwind before dinner around 3 PM, and she was tiring of it anyway.

So 2 good days with her.

One very tired mom.