The older Amelie gets, the more convinced I become that one day, her artwork will be studied by learned scholars, possibly in a courtroom setting, in an attempt to understand and explain her future actions. And then form them into a documentary for the ID channel.

I spent yesterday doing a lot of vital chores, such as washing, hoovering, shopping and making cheese scones for Lisa, but amidst all the hard work, Amelie presented me with this:

Amelie's writing tends to be a bit like the Countdown Conundrum. She has all the right letters, but at first glance, they might not appear in the right order. The word cloud on the left actually reads 'Chloe Cat' and 'Toby', while the word at the top is 'Gardner'. She has a habit of drawing 'R's like wingnuts.

Interestingly, she's named every member of the family, including herself and the cat, and written 'I Love You' in the red heart, but has somehow omitted my name. Unless she's calling me Gardner. Which is the sort of disrespectful thing she might do. Silver Award, my arse.

Lisa suggested that the reason I'm not mentioned is because the picture was for me, and that therefore I'm the overall focus, but personally I feel that's a bit like giving me a Father's Day card which states how much she likes her mother. So I'm not happy.

And that unhappiness has been confirmed by this morning's pictorial communications. Amelie was keen to start her Sunday with sweets for breakfast, which led to an early morning discussion in the bedroom, during which Lisa and I pointed out that a diet of neat sugar is not recommended by the World Health Organisation, and is likely to lead to an appointment to have her eyes photographed by her father. That was followed by a frank exchange of views, during which we were accused of always being unreasonable, unhappy and unkind, and before we knew it, Lisa and I were being presented with this:

Apparently the figure on the left represents us, which is why it has a tick next to it (albeit facing the wrong way), while the happy-go-lucky person on the right, who looks like the kind of naive fool who would cheerfully give in to every demand of their five-year-old daughter, is accompanied by a cross, indicating that we've failed to achieve those high standards of childcare.

Under normal circumstances, of course, having your parenting skills marked by someone who's only just started school and should have a learnt a bit more respect, would be considered unacceptable and result in a telling off, but frankly we were too busy laughing. Although we tried not to show it.

The good news is that having reflected on her behaviour (and asked for a lolly instead), Amelie saw the error of her ways and apologised for her actions twenty minutes later by means of this picture:

We're all a lot happier, and wearing very fetching trousers. But she still hasn't addressed it to me.