Dear Jess,

Hello, it’s Tippi! I can’t wait to see you in Sydney at your birthday party next week. I wish I were turning 6 too – it’s not fair that you always get to have a birthday before me. But it’s ok, I love you anyway.

We got back from our holiday in the UK and the South of France yesterday morning. It was a very long flight from London, and we flew in to Sydney so early in the morning it was still dark. I didn’t sleep much on the flight – Mummy kept asking me to go to sleep but I wasn’t tired. Mummy mustn’t have been tired either, because whenever her eyes closed, I would ask her for a cuddle and she stayed awake too.

I have had a mazing holiday. On our first day there, Mummy and Daddy made me walk all over London. I was very tired and it was a bit boring, but I did it and it made Mummy and Daddy very happy. London has these wonderful shops everywhere full of useful stuff with English flags on them – money boxes, pens, cuddly toys, t-shirts and loads more. I love love love those shops! Mummy calls them souvenir shops and says they are full of overpriced crap. I’m not sure what that means – maybe that they’re lovely – but she did start to get her cross-face on whenever I asked to go to one. I got a Big Ben statue that broke that very same day, here is a picture;

I told Mummy that it doesn’t matter, we can just buy another one. She got cross-face again and I wasn’t allowed another one.

Then we went to my cousins house in a place called West Sussex. My first tooth fell out! I wrote the tooth fairy a letter and left it and my tooth under my pillow. The next morning the tooth fairy had left me one pound, but did not reply to my letter and I was a little sad. I wanted to know what they did with all those teeth. Mummy says maybe she was too busy that night to write back, and she might write next time. Now I have another wobbly tooth and cant stop wobbling it.

We went to France where everyone speaks funny and I don’t understand what they were saying at all. It was super hot, I was very sweaty all the time. But we were close to the sea and we were able to swim lots and lots. I swam in really deep water with my Mummy and Daddy, and could look down and see all the way down to the bottom. I learned to use a snorkel and saws loads of fish. We even went out on a boat one day.

Best of all, I played with my cousins who are English. They are three girls, Stella, Rosie and Hattie, and their big brother Charlie. Charlie is a teenager and I was scared of him at first, but it turns out he is really nice and funny. My girl cousins played and played and played with me. I got a bit sad when they went off and played big girls things that I couldn’t do like long swims out to sea, and playing cards. Mummy says that she was the little one once and also got sad when her sisters wouldn’t play with her, but that one day suddenly she was big enough to join in. I was still sad and didn’t like being the littlest.  But soon they would come back and we would play again or watch my new favourite show Barbie Life in the Dreamhouse. We even did a show for the grown ups and I got to be Queen Elsa.

Now we are home and we picked up our dog Pepper on the way. It was still early in the morning when we got home and Mummy wanted me to have a sleep but I still didn’t want to. But then I did fall asleep for hours and hours. Mummy tried to make me wake up in the afternoon. She said that if I didn’t wake up in the day, I would be up during the night but I was so tired I didn’t care I just stayed asleep whenever they weren’t looking. Then I did wake up and had dinner and because I’d slept all day I didn’t want to go to bed. Eventually Mummy got really cross and went to bed and Daddy lay with me till I went to sleep. I woke up first and it was still very dark – Mummy says it was 2 o’clock in the morning. I was really hungry and finally got to have a midnight feast! It is morning now and Mummy wants me to have a sleep but I’m not tired, really I’m not. She says that there’s no way on this earth am I allowed to sleep this afternoon, and I promise I wont. She says that stopping me from sleeping will be like holding back the tide, like it was yesterday. She often says things that I don’t really understand.

I didn’t eat much while we were away. All the food tasted different and the food on the aeroplane is yuck yuck yuck. I really only liked the bread and croissants. Now I keep asking Mummy for food and she gets me some, but when she gives it to me I don’t really feel hungry anymore so I take one bite to be polite and leave the rest. Then in a little while I feel hungry again, or maybe just bored I don’t know, so I ask for more food. Mummy says to eat the food she put out for me before, but I want something else so she gets me something else. When she gives it to me I find I only want one bite of it again. She is sighing a lot, I wonder why?

I have to go now. Mummy seems a little cranky so to cheer her up I am running around the house singing “fly birdy fly” over and over again at the top of my voice but she just wants to type on her computer. I think I’ll have a little nap after lunch, I’m starting to feel a little tired. I wonder what’s for lunch.

Love,

Tippi xxxx