All Saints Day of Leave

We had Bird Baby for longer than usual this morning. I was worried that she would get tired and be unhappy, but she was a champ. She fussed a little when her dad left, but cheered up, drank some milk, played around, and fell asleep on the Sparrowhawk's shoulder. She slept for half an hour, as usual, and then was up and ready to go. Every week, she has made another little bound in getting stronger and more coordinated. She spent quite awhile watching Mariss Jansons conduct Mahler's Resurrection Symphony on the Sparrowhawk's phone, but then decided she'd like to eat the phone instead. We do a lot of music and noises with her, because she seems to like them. She stares at things and opens her mouth, as if she could make them teleport to her by looking. When she gets hold of something and is frustrated in her attempts to manipulate it, she makes a funny growly noise. When I imitate her, she thinks it's hilarious. Eventually, Dr. Music came back to get her, and we gave him some of our extra Halloween candy!

I worked on the novel, but it was mostly fiddling plus going off in the wrong direction and having to backtrack. Tomorrow will probably be better. We hauled a whole bunch of leaf bags down to the curb to be taken away and composted. The rest of the day was taken up by going to church for All Saints Day--a cool service with thundering organ and massed choirs, in a gorgeous building full of varicolored marble detail etc, but LONG--and making an apple cake for Dr. Music to take home when he comes tomorrow to give the Sparrowhawk his lesson. I wanted to make them some apple crisp, but Dr. Nurse fears that eating dairy makes Bird Baby have a fretful tummy, and the apple crisp does have rather a lot of butter in it. They seem to be overscheduled again at the moment, so I thought maybe a treat would help.