Charlie's latest trick is banging 2 cups together - he loves it and it keeps him entertained for ages. He had a bit of a grizzly day today due to a nasty cough but otherwise is doing great.

Philip was better from his latest bug by the weekend and has managed his 2 days at nursery, trying a new playgroup, his swimming lesson and a toddler group. After all that he seems to be catching up on sleep a bit. He's really coming on with his swimming from a very underconfident time 6 months ago when he wouldn't really get in the water and is now all giggles as we splash about. With his "number suit" (buoyancy jacket which has numbers inside to tell you in which order to take out the floats) he can float about on his own and is beginning to get the idea of propelling himself a bit with his legs.

He's still loving spotting numbers and encouraged by a tell the time with Thomas book can make the 'o clocks. Am not sure how much to encourage this as I don't really want him to know when In the Night Garden is on the telly! Counting is a big game where he knows the numbers in sequence so if he knows how many items there are he can do a reasonable attempt at counting to about 4 or 5 (whereafter he runs out of concentration). However this evening he was counting out fistfulls of books - 1, 2, 3, 4 , 5, 6. "There, 2 books" he annouces having moved about 20 onto his bed! He's so cute when we do the nighttime songs screwing up his eyes tight and joining in with the words in his childish voice.

Me, I'm just beginning to get restless at all this being around the house. Time to start taxing my brain a bit more. First target is to start moving the kitchen forward again (still got bare plaster walls) and then I've got some professional exams to take (again). Urgh.

This week I discovered why beetroot isn't high on people's list of weaning foods - red stuff everywhere! Should have taken a photo but decided in the end I'd better minimise the damage and clean up. Charlie enjoys experimenting with bits of finger food like rice cakes so we're having some wonderfully messy mealtimes at the moment.

Another bug in the household with Philip running a temperature. Seem to remember last January was like this. At least I'm not trying to juggle work as well this year.

Inspired by other peoples New Year resolutions and relieved by a bit more sleep, I'll try and get some more frequent postings on here. And hopefully some photos soon too (when I've cut Philip's hair!)

Charlie continues to be sunny and relaxed - how long can it last? He's sitting up pretty well now usually clonking down only if he tries to turn his head too fast to watch someone walking past or if he tries to overreach forwards. He grew up so much over the Christmas break it was incredible. No small baby anymore. He was 6 months on Saturday so I feel I can start to broaden his range of food and he tasted his first teeny tiny bit of meat. I've got a baby mincer called a Baby Dan foodmill which is a lovely gadget (if a bit unnecessary as all the best gadgets should be) and worked well on helping me mush up small amounts of left over veg.

Philip wasn't too well last week and so missed nursery on Tuesday, slept a lot and got through plenty of calpol. Thought he was better Thursday and let him skip his lunchtime nap - won't be doing that again in a hurry. He was completely overtired and just yelling. Now he's so much bigger it's difficult to find a place to keep him safe while he calms down. Eventually Ed put him in the buggy and he yelled himself to sleep. He's now stringing sentences together into jumbly stories and has quite a long memory. More difficult to fool! When I took him down to NCT on Thursday he remembered it was the same place where the "scary man" (santa) was over a month ago and started yelling and took ages to settle in.