I think the teenage years have come early...

Although if she was a genuine teenager, she'd sleep a lot later in the mornings, instead of waking us at the crack of dawn by kneeing me in the chest, pulling my ears, and carrying out severe strangulation whilst biting my nose. She doesn't even have a snooze button.

This morning, having wrested me violently from my slumbers, Amelie then chose to return to her bedroom and pretend she had a walkie-talkie by chatting in a loud voice through Toby's baby monitor. She's been learning about space at school (sadly not about giving us any) so having witnessed astronauts contacting Houston with their problems, she proceeded to do a space walk across Toby's cot whilst telling Lisa off for not ending every sentence with the word 'over'.

After five minutes there was a loud crash, and as Lisa and I looked at each other in fear and trepidation, Amelie walked back into our bedroom and said this:

"Put your hand up if you're good at fixing things".

Fortunately it made us laugh so much we didn't care about Toby's broken mobile.

In other news, yesterday was Amelie's third Musical Theatre class, and after three sessions, she's now been there and got the t-shirt...

To be honest though, I'm wondering if we've got the whole thing a bit wrong. Amelie came out of yesterday's class with a dragon mask made out of a paper plate, and when I pressed her for details of that afternoon's curriculum, she told me they hadn't sung any songs, done any dancing or performed any plays. I started to panic that I'd dropped her off at the wrong place. When I asked her what she had done, she told me that they'd made masks and learnt about the Chinese New Year. Which is fine, but seems unlikely to earn her a Tony Award.

It was only when I read her t-shirt that I discovered that in addition to being a School of Music & Arts, they're offering 'Innovative Educational Study-Support'. I thought I'd booked her a term at stage school, but I'm actually paying for a private tutor. I'm the most middle-class person on this council estate.