With help from the Miller side of the family this weekend we have been investing "sweat equity" (as those in development work like to call it) in our house. Listing the myriad of things achieved during a weekend of hard graft would take too long but the main achievement has been to make our back garden path buggy and small child friendly. There is no longer lots of gravel for Philip and his friends to distribute to innappropriate places. And you can wheel a buggy with a sleeping child in it up into the garden rather than having to carry it over non-adjacent paving slabs. It's not rocket science but it's a job well done that makes us feel proud. And we had fun and lots of nice meals together, including a BBQ on Saturday evening. The weather was lovely.

Hoorah, it's holiday time for Ed. He's done his leaving speeches, been to lots of parties and now the weeks stretch ahead full of opportunity. Of course, not all those hoped for things will fit in in the end, but we have time away in Holland and at camp to look forward to and a lot less stress for a bit. For those of you we haven't mentioned it to before, Ed starts as head of maths at a school down the road from September.

Charlie (now 1!) is enjoying investigating everything, and getting much better at pulling himself up and reaching things higher up. He can also stand on his own for a few seconds, which I found very exciting and Philip just looked at me! He's loved investigating things that roll this weekend. He's also done his first bit of scribbling. And he loves playing with the fridge magnets, holding himself up using the ridge that forms the handle for the freezer, reaching up to get the magnets and then stooping down to pick up dropped magnets. He needs an eye keeping nearly all the time.

Philip seems quite stressy at the moment. Gorgeous sometimes and completely unreasonable at others. Often throws a fit just when you arrive somewhere - nursery or a toddler group - but these places are very understanding and have seen it all before. Sometimes amazingly articulate; sometimes reverting to baby babble. It must be all very confusing being a toddler. We'll be pleased when it settles down again a bit for him.

My work has picked up a bit with the addition of a bit of work for the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic games. Sworn to secrecy!

Philip got his first swimming badge on Saturday. So cute, he just loves his number 1 duck and has taken it to bed with him tonight. Hope we don't lose it.

Philip's nursery school place has been switched to a morning place so hopefully that's the end of that saga. Ed went to an open evening (first parent's meeting!) so we're pretty briefed on how it works, what they get up to and what it helps if he can do for himself (principally put his coat on). There's 3 classes, haven't come across anyone we know in our class yet. Got a bit of a bad behaviour report from nursery today, aparently he's been arguing back about whether it's a good idea to run around inside (can't really blame him but it's a rule for everyone's safety) and whether it's ok to hit (would you do that to Charlie? yes! he said). Humm. Looks like he's getting a bit big for his boots in the toddler room. Hopefully the weather'll cheer up and he'll be less trouble outside.

Took the day off work today as there's a bit of a lull in the workload and started filling in the forms for my professional engineering exams (CEng via IHT for those in the know). The whole prospect terrifies me having had one failure. Anyway I got on fairly well today and cleaned the cooker in between to keep myself sane (??!?). If things are quiet at work tomorrow maybe I'll get a bit further. Mid-August deadline if I want to get into this round.

Managed to watch the last 2 sets of the wimbledon final on Sunday. Great stuff. Much more interesting than men's tennis used to be. And a great aid to tackling the ironing pile.