Michal

It's not easy being Michal.

The poor girl is squeezed in there between three extremely powerful personalities (two older, one younger) and at times, she finds it hard to cope.

Whereas the others are tomboyish, Michal is the girly one. She cries easily, hurts even more easily and generally appears to get the worse deal of the four. Then again, she also possesses the sunniest disposition whilst understandably thriving on as much affection as she can physically handle.

Michal is the most musical of my girls. She has learned to whistle, which is no easy feat when you're only six and I'm sure that unlike her sisters, she will take to learning the piano in the same way that a duck takes to water.

Michal's fragility is ironically also her strength. Underneath the vulnerable exterior lies a character of steel. When her sisters flinch at scary moments in a movie, Michal sits there completely unmoved.

There's definitely more than meets the eye when it comes to this young lady.

Dassi is the confident one. Whatever she takes on, she does with gusto, particularly when it concerns contemplating a new idea or task. Talia, though less bold, also confronts her trials and fights her way through. Michal unfortunately doesn't possess enough confidence to take on new challenges and will always look for the easy way round. She is very fond of her comfort zone and as a result, will be very happy to spend as much time as she can, basking in it.

I've written all of the above, because I want to impress on you how proud I am of her today. At the beginning of last week, she started her swimming lessons again and spent the time literally screaming her way through each difficult stage in the learning process.

You can therefore understand how I felt as I watched her swim ten metres unaided, exhibiting considerably less hysteria than I'd previously seen. For anyone else, this would have been no mean feat, but when it came to Michal, it meant so much more.

She has made her old man extremely proud!