Rachel, Owen and Kathryn

Cava for Katy! Only joking, honest (she prefers a good malt whisky). At a recent get-together of our NCT antenatal class we had 2 birthdays to celebrate, and I discovered that that tho' I'm the oldest mum in the group there are 2 others the wrong side of 40. It was really exciting to see how babies develop differently: one with teeth already, another doing tremendous belly laughs, and the smallest but eldest sitting up unaided. Not that this kind of thing makes us competitive you understand, but Katy was the most linguistically advanced and clearly the longest. Funny you can't really say 'tallest' of someone who doesn't stand up. Her latest trick is to pivot round from her head, whilst gleefully holding onto a big toe. Less happily she has been plagued by infant eczema, which has ruined sleep for all of us. This is when one appreciates being in an amateur orchestra dominated by medics, as the 1st bassoon is a consultant dermatologist - very handy.

Watch a Poirot mystery with an insomniac baby and two permanently disgruntled cats. Pic is Kate in her inflatable ring thing, trying to get a tune out of the 'octave-puss'. Seems she's still growing like crazy: at 4 1/2 months she's wearing 6-9 month clothes, and they're not exactly baggy.

It seems that we're running an "Elephant" theme during this initial period of becoming a family! We, Rachel and I, have received elephants - (two, pottery, with trunks entwined, apparently from a German Christmas Market in Munich - I'm sure elephants play some important role in the zeitgeist of 21st centuary German Christmases!) So, we have two, Katy has loads! a hanging vibrating elephant, Bella the bath elephant, and a very American mother and daughter elephant duo - very American! - the mother Elephant "sings" to her daughter - great! (If our blue colonial morphish - and mawkish! - teething implement/momma and daughter combo become Katy's travel companions of choice, we're in real trouble). To get to the point - there are so many of these Elephants around the place it becomes impossible to keep track of them all. Because of this; My attempts the other night to sneek quietly into bed without disturbing Rachel were duly thwarted by our "Ameri

Realising on the way home that we urgently needed some more nappies but recognsing at the same time that waking Kathryn was A Very Bad Idea, I stopped the car for a nano-second so that Rachel could jump out and then proceeded to drive very slowly six times around the whole of Morrisons carpark whilst Rachel got supplies

"Who's there?" "Jesus Christ - in THREE incarnations!" Katy & I just squeezed into the last day of the exhibition "Holman Hunt and the pre-Raphaelite vision" at the Manchester Art Gallery where we saw all three versions of the marvellous painting The Light of the World on display at the same location for the first time. Did you know the painting went on tour as a kind of peace envoy? Or that Holman Hunt became really Very Rich, a kind of Damien Hirst of his time? All fascinating stuff. Then we squeezed the pram onto a bus to come home, which made me very chuffed with my achievement.

This wintry weather has provided lots of opportunities for 'firsts'. On 2nd January the three of us went for our first family walk in the park, to Didsbury's Fletcher Moss Gardens, looking enchanted in the snow (pictured). Then my new friend new mum Sharon (another sarf Londoner astray in the north west) drove me & Katy to Dunham Massey, where she experienced the squawking of canada geese and mallard ducks, the squeaking of coots, and saw her first deer. (Well to be absolutely honest, I saw the deer on her behalf, as she was asleep by that stage). Then we broke out the sandwiches in the picnic area, picturesquely situated next to a frozen stream, and I tried my first breast-feeding al fresco - oh dear! Happily the breast feeding seems to be working well in general, however, as during the 4 weeks since we last had her weighed before Christmas Katy has made a tremendous growth spurt and rocketed from the 25th to the 50th centile on her growth chart (in case that should me

Several times, actually. On the third occasion I staggered as far as the window to find that Chorlton's streets were covered with snow that looked just like an inexpert sprinkling of icing sugar. Undeterred I wrapped us both up warmly and set off for the Monday mums n tots group, only to find it had been cancelled. Time to find a quiet coffee instead, then. Toss up between two adjacent cafes, and which do I pick? The one full of chattering mums and squealing babes from the cancelled group.

This pic is just to prove that I do sometimes remember to put Katy on her tummy to play. She can of course make a game out of anything: yesterday I had her on the changing table, with a small bowl of water to wash her face, and before I knew it she had grabbed the bowl and with a deft flick of the wrist thrown the contents everywhere. Nights of mayhem continue as Katy is starting to teethe. My oasis of calm in the day, 8 to 11pm, has become a mirage.

2009 got off to a perfect start for Katy, as she reached her 4-month milestone. She had a quiet night, sleeping from her late-night feed until 6am, then had a lie-in until 9.45. She ate sensible amounts at the right times, enjoyed the fresh air of a new year's day walk around a frosty Chorlton Ees nature reserve (otherwise known as having a long nap while mum tackled off-roading with the buggy and some new friends from NCT antenatal classes), had lots of interaction with mum at a squealingly enjoyable bath-time, and went straight to sleep at 7pm. Looking after a baby can be immensely rewarding but it's also a heavy responsibility to try and ensure she gets everything she needs for her development and well-being, so when everything seems to click like this it makes me feel so much better. I didn't even mind the fact that I again spent New Year's eve and day without Owen, who was busy helping to satisfy the public demand for vast quantities of Viennese waltzes at this tim