Rachel, Owen and Kathryn

Every child can make the noise of a fire-engine or ambulance, even though they don't actually make that sound these days (well, only occasionally). Last Sunday we made our own dash to the Children's Emergency Department of Manchester's brand new women's and children's hospital. While admiring the naturalistic representation of her favourite lion picture in the City Art Gallery, Katy fell and hit her head on a seat frame: wails and blood everywhere - she had a nasty gash on her eyebrow. After nearly three hours in three different queues we emerged slightly frazzled but in one piece, thanks to some surgical superglue and very skilled nurses. We all managed to stay very calm and collected, and even wolfed down enormous quantities of fish and chips that evening, but after I'd put her to bed and sat down with a glass of wine, I was the one suddenly in tears.

At 2 years and 2 months Katy is moving out of toddlerdom and into 'early childhood'. Her language skills are becoming ever more advanced: she can name most letters of the alphabet and recognise them in different contexts ("that's an M for Mummy"). From about age 2 she was starting to use pronouns, but was mixing them up ("Mummy, sit next to you" meant "sit next to me"); now she has mastered even the deictic pronouns although she doesn't always get the case right: "Let I tuck you up" she tells her toys. As well as knowing numbers in sequence she has actually grasped the concept of 'twoness' and 'threeness' ("there's three cars", "look, two green bottles"). Talking of number twos ... we've started toilet training and she's making steady progress now - though initially I thought that what we saved on nappies we were spending on carpet cleaner!

Smithills Open Farm (near Bolton) one Saturday. She seems soo confident - and liked so much she had another go!

Katy's birthday celebration was a distibuted affair, with visits to the grandparents on the weekends either side of a Thomas the Tank Engine cake at nursery mid-week. We were also able to piggy-back on the much grander party at Marple Garden Centre [picture with big 2] organised for Celeste (daughter of an Anglo-German couple we met at NCT antenatal classes). We had a miniature train all to ourselves for the whole afternoon.

In the last week of August we set off again: this time a car tour taking in Cambridge (well, Chesterton to be precise), Hempnall Green (Norfolk), and Leicester. Katy enjoyed boating on the Cam and paddling in the sea at Walberswick.

Before the summer becomes a distant memory there's just time for a quick catch-up. First week of August: we all got on a plane to Berlin, to stay with Julie. I realised over dinner one evening that we had known each other 25 years. That's just a tiny bit frightening. But the weather was great, Berlin's Tierpark was fantastic, sandy playgrounds were almost like the beach, and open-air swimming pools under blue skies made it feel like a real holiday.