Seventeen

My girl is 17 years old today. I knew this in advance, of course, but it still feels astonishing.

She’s ensconsed on the sofa watching Charlotte’s Web with her two sleepover friends. PWS BFF (Prader-Willi Syndrome Best Friend Forever) hasn’t seen it before, but she has just announced that “I know the spider dies”. ASC BB (After School Club Best Buddy) has yet to reveal any other spoilers.

We’ve already given my girl’s new Taylor Swift LP a spin on the turntable. The vinyl version of 1989 was top of her birthday list, thanks to a recent sudden fascination with our own record collection. I’m quite happy with her choice; it’s a hell of an improvement from last year’s musical favourites, One Direction. 

Other presents include a Thomas The Tank Engine Story Collection and a mobile phone, which kind of says everything about the idiosyncracies of our amazing, anomalous daughter.

The two PWS girls have been in food heaven, with some carefully managed treats: they demolished some healthy chicken tikka in the curry hut last night (whilst my son overdosed on not-so-healthy mango chutney). We took over the restaurant: there were 14 of us, including my mum and dad, and a couple of LOTIWTSW (Lovable Old Trouts I Went To School With), their other halfs and offspring. No-sugar ginger beer was drunk, candles on the cake were blown out, and slices of spongy Minion Dave cake were substituted with Weightwatchers caramel cake bars.

The girls conked out on their airbeds in my daughter’s room at around 10.30pm last night. My boy, filled to the brim with poppadoms, didn’t even attempt to bother them. Impeccable behaviour at home from him is so unusual that I can confirm we saw flying pigs in the night sky, soaring above a hell that had, indeed, frozen over.

It was a perfect evening, apart from England crashing out of the Rugby World Cup. Mind you, perversely, even that sporting disaster made us smile: the kids had taken over the telly for an after-curry film showing, so us adults were huddled around my computer watching the game. After the second Australia try, my husband stomped off to join the girls in the other room with the immortal words: “Bugger this! I’ve had enough. I’m going to watch Cinderella!”

Song is The Beattle-Ettes - Only Seventeen

Fourteen

My daughter is 14 years old today. The floppy baby who couldn’t move, or feed, and who we thought might never manage either of these things on her own, is FOURTEEN.

We were numb when our brand-new, little girl was diagnosed with Prader-Willi Syndrome. We thought she’d have an awful life. We thought we’d suffer with her. We wished things could be different. We wished it hadn’t happened to us.

I thought about this last night as I watched her painstakingly typing away on my computer, fervent and wide-eyed, shouting spelling queries over her shoulder at me as she searched the internet for cool stuff to buy with her birthday money (which I pointed out she hadn’t actually received yet).

I could never have imagined her being capable of this. This delicious slice of normality. Admittedly, I didn’t think it quite so appealing when I had to practically drag her off the chair in order to get her to have a shower before bedtime, but let’s skate over that, shall we?

This morning, although her excitement and anticipation levels were sky high, she refused to get up early to open her presents. The sight of a girl who is ravenous for her breakfast waiting in bed until exactly 8am every school day still amazes me. When she was little, she used to pad into our room demanding food at 5.30am: really, painfully, properly, physically hungry.  The hunger is still there, but currently her own self-enforced timetable is unbending. She has got the 8am school day reveille set in her head and somehow, the ‘stubborn’ slider in her brain creeps up to max, just loud enough to muffle the ‘hunger’ track.

At 8am precisely, the family piled into our big double bed, her brother ‘helped’ with the removal of paper, and her presents were unveiled. We had, under strict instructions from our daughter, bought her a foot spa. The road to bubbly foot heaven had been rocky, especially when I realised that the EXACT model that she wanted (because she’d used one like it at Girl’s Club at school) was discontinued. Weeks of repeated explanation, negotiation, and exasperation, had finally seen an accord reached. She would be happy with the squareish pink and white one from Argos as opposed to the previous roundish pink and white model* (*My eyeball is doing a poppy-out thing right now, and I’m clenching my fists tightly enough to crack walnuts, but honestly, I didn’t find this drawn-out, repetitive, painstaking process too stressful...)

So I held my breath as she ripped off the wrapping paper, and examined the long-awaited foot spa closely. "It is the right one,” she agreed, smiling, her clasped hands quivering with excitement. I exhaled, relieved.

I’ve just taken her to school, and handed in Weight Watchers cake slices for her and her classmates to have at the end of the day. We’ll be having her three grandparents round for tea and more presents, later, when candles in a no-sugar fruit cake will be blown out. On Saturday, she’s having friends over for a takeaway curry (low-fat tikka), a film, and a sleepover.

She's such an amazing bundle of contradictions: grown-up in some ways, childlike in others, predictable, unfathomable, strong, vulnerable, amenable, defiant, and wonderful. She's our daughter. Just look how far she’s come.

Video is Laura Marling - Oh Mama How Far I've Come
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Teen

Teen

My daughter is 13 years old today. My sweet, odd, wonky, wonderful daughter is a teenager.

She's not your typical teen:

• She still believes in Father Christmas
• She asked for a Tinkerbell duvet cover for a present
• She never really wants to stay up past 8.30pm
• She's never been allowed out of an adult's sight on her own
• She's not got a mobile phone
• She hardly ever answers back
• She thinks Doctor Who is just about the monsters
• She doesn't do status updates, texts or messaging, although she does send emails on her iPod Touch, at a rate of about one paragraph per 20 minutes
• She's never got drunk on alcopops in the park
• She always eats everything on her plate, even Brussels sprouts
• She keeps her bedroom very tidy
• She still wants to hold your hand when you walk down the street.

It's been interesting getting from Ground Zero to Teen Queen.

I've a feeling it's going to be even more interesting getting from here to her 18th birthday.

Bring it on.

Video is a Kevin & Perry clip from the Harry Enfield show

Video is Teenage Fanclub - About You