Rachel, Owen and Kathryn

Kate has learned to clap, and is jolly chuffed with herself. She can also wave, do a 'high five' (when minded to), and play bounce the ball between herself and a parent. Unfortunately her interactive play with other babies mostly consists of plucking away any toy they might be holding. Another sunny Monday on childcare duty today as Owen has been summoned to Birmingham: I feel a trip to the swings coming on.

Since the age of about 8 months Katy has really bonded well with her Dad.

Kate finds lapses in security, and demonstrates that she has mastered both standing up and sitting down.

Fun in the park today, with a brass band and a chance for doting dad to try his hand at bowls, while Kate weighs up if he might be biased. He was knocked out on getting his first Fathers' Day card, at least some of which Katy had made at nursery.

Especially in Katy's case! We're all upright and back at the library/BBC/nursery as appropriate. Kate is not exactly walking yet but she's trying to so desperately it's really delightful. Possibly inspired by other babies at the nursery? (Where, incidentally, she was jolly happy to be left this morning.) She's been 'pulling up' to a standing position with increasing confidence over the past couple of weeks, and has now started 'cruising' along furniture. Yesterday she managed to pull all her books and both her bags of toys off the armchair where they normally reside. Time to upgrade to Baby Proofing Level 2.

Smiling before disaster struck: on friday I got the dreaded phone call from the nursery that Katy was ill, with sickness and diarrhoea. Then the rest of us went down like dominoes. No sooner back at work than off sick! Katy thankfully is on the mend, but it seems like we're living in a plague house at the moment. At least the sun is shining.

And off to work I went ... without shovel or pick, and sans baby, but with lots of baby-related equipment ready to express milk at lunchtime and pick up the bundle of joy from nursery after work. What a bizarre and slightly traumatic experience it was last week. Katy really didn't like her first 'full' day at nursery, and was crying in a heart-breaking manner when I went to fetch her at 2pm. Next day she was better, and was only grizzling at 4pm but wouldn't eat anything. On her fourth day she was much happier and scoffed everything they put in front of her. It took me a day to get over a nagging feeling like I'd left a really important briefcase full of data on the tube somewhere, and switch off the repetetive speech and sing-song intonation; accessing the full riches of an adult English vocabulary may take a little longer, however, as I seem to have partially lost the ability to construct complete sentenc

Nine months old today, and already a keen reader. She's been outside me as long as she was inside, and today sees a further stage of separation as I've left her at the nursery for a whole hour, and someone else will feed her lunch. I'm only at a cafe round the corner but it feels a whole world away.