I've been trying for the last few days to interest Bridget in rattles that aren't hung from her baby gym. She hasn't seemed that bothered, but maybe I was using the wrong type. Yesterday, I got down one of the rings that's on her baby gym and has several bits strung along it to make a rattle. I wrapped her fingers round it and helped her to shake it. Left to her own devices, she managed to keep hold of the rattle for several minutes until her thumb got too far away from her fingers, at which point the rattle fell out. I'm not sure she's quite got the hang of the cause and effect of her shaking the rattle herself, since she wasn't looking at it most of the time, but, hey, it's a start. We have pictures of the great event, which we'll try to put up soon.

Bridget seems to be developing all the time. As Hester reported, she now has a repertoire of vowel sounds (ah, uh, eh, and the occasional double - ayoo being a favourite). You have to wait around for them, though. The most common is the grumpy 'ung', which is barely more than a cut-off cry; the others crop up a couple of times a day at most. At other times, though, Bridget can be silently conversational: giving her mouth and tongue a workout in a way which the books suggest is practice talking. This seems to happen most when she's being talked to, and when she's looking at the person talking - but I wouldn't like to bet much on that.

Then there are hands and arms. She is definitely aware that she has these things, and I am now far more convinced than I was a fortnight ago that she can activate them deliberately. That is, she seems to be able to think 'I am in a situation where my arms might do fun stuff. Go arms!' Hand-eye co-ordination is not really on the horizon. Nor is eye-hand co-ordination ('Wow! I just hit something! I felt it! Now where the heck is my hand?') We just have an 'activate arm waver' instruction, and then pretty hit-and-miss-and-miss results.

But there is an exception. When Bridget gets her hands near her face, she seems to be able to make a pretty good job of getting her fist to her mouth after a few tries. She started doing this a little bit some weeks ago - at first in the 'Oh, there's something here: SUCK!' mode, then apparently more deliberately but still quite rarely; it has become the norm only over the last two weeks. And, today, she started extending a thumb and sucking on that. It may be an accident - but it's an accident that has happened three or four times in one day. In fact, this evening she had a bit of a disturbed half-hour in her cot, sucking her thumb, then losing it and crying - then finding it, then losing it and crying - then finding it... you get the pattern.

Minutiae, I know. But gripping stuff for us.