Tiny steps, huge strides.

So, yesterday Sophie was restless, she was here all day and by 5pm I knew I was going to either arrange some kind of entertainment or suffer her caged in company all evening, I furtively arranged an evening at a friends house, watching a DVD and eating, she is my daughter, she enjoys that.
About 30 minutes before we were going to leave she said that Mel was going out and could she go with her. Hmmm, she is a party girl, she loves going down town, she likes to be with her friends and she is 19...far too young to tie down to evenings with her mother on saturday.
What to do? Well, what I did was to take her shopping, buy her one alchopop and give her £5. I told her that she was to stay with Mel and that when that £5 was gone, if anyone offered to buy her a drink she was to get Coke or juice and I told her that she was not to let me down because I would ask around and people are always willing to tell me what she has been up to.
I woke up this morning and she was here ( In Eli's bed) H said she knocked on the window at 5am, seems she was in my car from 3am.
She wasn't drunk, she got up when I told her it was time to get up ( noon) she played with the boys, helped with dinner and went home at 6pm.
I told her to be here at 8.45 tomorrow morning so she can come with me to take Seth to Plymouth, to basketball camp ( is there a more excited boy in this world? I suspect not.)
When I look at pictures of Sophie as a little girl, I can't believe that at that stage ( 10, 14, 16) that the child I am looking at was the same child that caused such mayhem wherever she went. I thought the other day that when she is 30, I will look at pictures of her now and be amazed that the things I read, that I am writing now, ever happened. I look back and see how she was a sad little girl who didn't feel she belonged anywhere. I don't want to look back and see that she still felt that way at 19 and I didn't do anything to make her see things aren't that way.
I find that as soon as she walks in, I tense up, I am always ready for the fight..I would lay money on the fact that she knows that and she rarely lets me down. I am trying so hard to not do that, though it's hard!
She is delightful when she feels safe, which isn't very often, I aim to make her feel secure more often. I am still going to run the show and she won't be moving back here. My ultimate plan for her is to get her well enough that she can hold down a good job and help her get a small flat of her own, once she has somewhere that is hers and she can believe that she is loved and worthy of good things, I really think it will be the making of her. Hope is a marvellous thing.
On a totally different note, Seth strikes again....
He doesn't do sundays very well, every week he comes down with a mystery ailment and tries every trick in the book to stay home from church ( little heathen!) The thing is, he has a hemangioma in his left eye, glands have formed under his eyelid so that when he is sick, his eye swells, he can't trick us, too bad Sethters.
So this morning he came down and "Mum! MUM! Is my eye swollen because I am really ill, I really don't feel good and so I know my eye HAS to be swollen, is it?"
It was general conference today that we can watch online so I said to him "Seth, if I tell you that there is no church today, will that help your state of health?"
He threw his hands up in the air and said " PRAISE JESUS I AM HEALED!" That was one of those moments where you know you should definitely not laugh....but you can't do a thing to stop yourself, his timing is always impeccable.
Today was a good day.