brave cake in Days of My Destiny

M is so brave. She's progressed in leaps and bounds with her swimming lessons in the last month. She's gone from just putting her face in the water to SWIMMING UNDERWATER!!! And when she comes up, there's water all over her eyes, and she just opens them slowly and blinks lots and lots and looks SO happy with her achievements. She's currently doing the intensive swimming at school, and just yesterday she hopped in the big pool for the first time and I was told that she swam the width of it (with the help of a pool noodle) and even touched the bottom of the pool with her feet. On Monday I made a lemon cake and I termed it the Brave Cake. I gave her some once we got home from school, to celebrate how brave she was at swimming and we've had a slice everyday since, to celebrate her braveness.

Yesterday afternoon she had a bad fall just before catching the bus home and grazed both knees. She hopped off the bus, holding her dress up, revealing two blue crosses over both knees, blue band-aids. She didn't want a bath so I got her to wash herself with a wash cloth. This morning, of course, one of the wounds was infected. I was annoyed that there is this common belief that bandaids fix things - they don't, they make things rot (which is why I speak what's on my mind rather than holding back and try to sugarcoat things). But I was also annoyed at myself for not having that foresight. I spent half an hour with her this morning, slowly, ever so slowly, taking off the bandaid and applying tea tree oil to the infected wound. I got her to do that part herself so she'd have some control over the situation. Poor girl, she cried so much, and when the tea tree oil stung, she wept. We kept pausing what we were doing to take deep breaths together to help her stay as calm as possible under the circumstances. After that we ate some more Brave Cake.