One week back into term and Ed has finished his antibiotics and recovered well from his African lurgy. Philip is crawling at double (escape) speed more often now so we went out shopping for stair gates at the weekend. And more toys! We now have a toy cement mixer that Philip has been allowed to play with on the odd occasion.

Ed's just got back with the take away Chinese - better go.

So we all waited patiently to find out ... would Philip recognise his Daddy after such along time away? And the answer is .. yes, after a couple of minutes anyway. We had to go and pick Philip up from nursery early as he was yelling the place down so it wasn't really the easiest of circumstances.

Then we headed down to casulty as Ed had a fever on his return from Africa and you have to get these things sorted out. I'd tried to make an appointment for him at the GPs but they'd advised us to go to the hospital as it might need a specialist. So we did the first triage in 10 minutes and they seemed to think there was something worth looking at, then we hung around for a couple of hours (luckily Philip went to sleep) and then Ed went into the assessment cubicle. It then took them over a further 12 hours to get the specialist to see him and decide it was roughly what Ed thought it was in the first place - and most importantly give him the drugs to sort it out. So Ed had to spend his first night back in the UK in a hospital bed!

All that meant we were less organised than we'd hoped and a bit later travelling up to Durham for Helen's (Ed's sister) wedding but once there it all ran wonderfully and we had a great time. Ed had to pace himself a bit and no alcohol as he's on antibiotics, but I had no such restrictions and a baby sitter and very much enjoyed dancing the night away.

Now it's back to tidying the house and getting ready for term. And the weather's suddenly turned lousy. Grrr.