Who: Victoria, Ava, Katie and Ian
What: Both of them are having problems with this 'parenting' thing. It's like a pow-wow parents' meeting.
Where: Jubilee Gardens, London
When: Noon-ish of the 30th.

It had become painfully obvious in the past few days that while she had been excited for trying the whole 'parenting' thing on for size, she was not very good at it. Ava had in the last 72 hours: peed on her shoes, punched her in the eye, and thrown her dinner plate out the window (and onto some very disgruntled people walking past, from the sounds of things immediately afterward). How had she been expected to know that Ava liked her apple slices cut in half? It had been a very frustrating meal -- she wasn't sure what she might've done if her brother hadn't stepped in to give her a break after the meal. Parenting a child that you hadn't had from birth was certainly a two-person job, and even though Scott was an annoying brat most of the time, she supposed that he had his uses. He'd helped her wrangle Ava into her jumper this morning, after all.

Victoria glanced down to the seemingly innocent two-year old holding her hand, managing to force out a smile for the girl. Ava had been better this morning after she'd caught Victoria sniffling over her cereal. She'd hugged onto her leg and told her not to be sad - Victoria doubted the girl fully understood why she'd been upset, but it had been a nice gesture anyway.

"So, I actually brought you here for a special treat today," she said as they rounded the corner toward the park, "we're going to meet another little girl!" And her father, but she figured that Ava probably wouldn't care much about meeting Ian Bell. She'd been born into a Quidditch family, meeting another Quidditch player was just ... boring. It was a shame she wasn't friends with any clowns.

Ava looked warily up to her, and Victoria gave the girl's hand a firmer squeeze. She'd been reading that it would be easier to get Ava to stop being such a brat all the time if she started to give her choices. "Before we meet up with them, you can have a snack - would you like oyster crackers, or apple sauce?" Victoria pulled her bag out to the side, rummaging through the sack while she waited for Ava's answer. Hopefully she'd be visible to Ian a mile away; there weren't many other parents at the park just yet.