Rachel, Owen and Kathryn

It certainly kept me out of financial trouble as a student, and we hope our increasingly mobile infant will be safe when we need to leave her in this cunningly redesignated 'play DEN'. We finally caved in and ordered the mini prison, and not a day too soon as Katy is now crawling forwards , with tremendous enthusiasm although no great efficiency. She doesn't seem to resent the pen too much, and yesterday I came back to find her 'reading' a book by herself. Maybe she'll start classifying her little collection soon. Oh, and there's those famous teeth.

I have to blog this just for the record: this morning Katy had a one-hour nap in her cot . I resisted the urge to put yet another load of washing on and was able to drink coffee and talk to Owen - unheard of ;-)

Yes, I managed to get to my concert venue together with a)correct instrument, b)music, and c)music stand, played my bit and scuttled back home to find the baby-sitters reading magazines and drinking tea while poorly baby slept quietly. She woke several times after they'd left but she's definitely perkier now, has stopped throwing up and doing the other thing, and has started eating again. Phew.

Just one tantalising exerpt from the kind of silly ditties one ends up singing all too frequently at playgroup. I'm told they are edukashunal and help with numeracy (5 little ducks) and literacy (There's a worm at the bottom of my garden and his name is Wiggly Woo?!?). Poor Kathryn has been sick x 3 in the night but is now blissfully and charmingly asleep on my lap. Am hopeful she'll perk up enough for me to nip out and play 3rd oboe in Till Eulenspiegel tonight. Didn't think it fair to blog a pic of sick child so here's some Spring flowers from my fave woodland walk along the Mersey Valley - a great compensation for having a Baby That Will Not Nap.

Katy has mastered a new form of getting about, under her own steam (as opposed to being pushed about in the buggy whilst sleeping, pictured her with factor 50 sun cream). When I was at post-natal aerobics this morning, energetically performing star jumps, knee raises and cha-cha-cha steps combined in a sequence very challenging for a mum's brain, Kate took advantage of the sprung wooden floor to propel herself at some speed - backwards! I'm sure this has absolutely nothing to do with her dad's dyslexia and she'll get the hang of this crawling business in no time now.

And so did Kathryn Sarah, when her aunt Sarah came to visit at Easter. Much fun was had at a picnic locally and good meals at home. Katy has now tried red lentils (loved them), salmon (ok), scrambled eggs (indifferent) and sugar snap peas (came apart in her hand so deemed pointless). She's taking much less breast milk, which I find surpisingly sad although I know it's the whole point of the exercise (sniff).

Katy and her Dad relaxing at the end of a busy day of walking in beautiful woodland, and defrosting the freezer. The question remains: who ate all the chocolates?

A baby's first word is a tremendous event, eagerly awaited by the parents: will she say 'dada' or 'mama'? Yesterday Katy and I were sitting on the sofa looking at my latest purchase from Amazon, with Katy doing her best to turn the packaging into pulp. Tigga jumped up to join us and miaowed assertively, to which Katy responded 'Ca! Ca!'. Mama and dada foiled by a feline! The day before we had a wonderful first picnic at Dunham Massey, where we did the deed and joined the National Trust. So we must be a proper family now.

Well, a baby of course. Unlike her mum who is full of cold and can't sleep at all. If mums get exemption from prescription charges for a year can't we get exemption from illnesses in the first place?