Last night Rachel woke us up three times, at 12:30am, 1:30am and 2:15am. Thankfully this is quite an unusual occurrence since we started the 'Goblet of choice'.
The 'Goblet of choice' is a system whereby each of the kids has their own plastic cup in which they are supposed to collect pennies they have earned. Each night at dinner we see who has the most pennies. The winner gets to drink whatever they choose (within reason) from the 'goblet'. Pennies are earned for sleeping through the night without waking Mummy and Daddy, doing something after being asked only once, putting shoes away without being told, being helpful, and having good manners at mealtimes. Pennies are lost for hurting someone, lying, incessant whining, and running away from me in a shop. For the time being the system seems to be having an effect because the kids have been quite pleasantly behaved since we started a few weeks ago.

Yesterday I took David and two girls to Spanish. The girls were friends of David's from his class last year. One of them was Skylar Umstead, David's 'girlfriend'. From the time they all got in the van to the time we arrived at Spanish, Skylar could hardly keep her hands off David. She had her arm around him all the time and kept laying her head on his shoulder. She called him "my hero" and Sophie (the other girl) commented on how crazy Skylar is whenever David is around. Apparently when she sees him in the playground at school she always chases after him. Later in the evening I said something to David about how much Skylar likes him. "I know," he said, "that's because she fell in love with me last year." When I asked him if he liked it he said "Not really" and then "Well, maybe a little."