Am loving my new job so far. Why didn't I change earlier? (apart from the stress and it's better to get a redundancy package ...) Much more in tune with what I want to be doing with such skills as I have. Sure there'll be ups and downs along the way but for now it's great. Get cycling and walking everyone!

Charlie's at that stage where he's gaining loads of words every day. Very rewarding. It sort of began around Easter but now he's got a big enough vocabulary to be able to say something vaguely relevant in most situations. Animals and attempts at colours (best established by reference to the Bob the Builder characters), "naughty", "no dark yet", recognising his favourite numbers (3 and 8) all come out and sometimes jumble together. It'll be his 2nd birthday next month.

Philip absolutely loves nursery school. It's all so exciting he needs lots of space to wind down through playing at home at the weekends. Which is a bit tricky to juggle with Charlie wanting to be on the go all the time, but makes for relaxing Saturday mornings when Ed takes C shopping while I "look after" Philip. He just gets on and entertains himself. And would probably do so for most of the weekend if it weren't for his little brother crashing into his train of thought.