Twenty weeks! Unbelievable.

Best twenty weeks of our lives. (Not much contest for her, if you don't allow her to pick the weeks when she was in the womb. And, actually, not much contest for us, for less banal reasons.)

Bridget started sleeping through the night back at the end of November. With one or two exceptions, she carried on until about three weeks ago, when a combination of a nasty cold and the desire to start solid food began to wake her in the night again, sometimes once but mostly twice. (Bridget did a textbook run-up to solids, by the way: starting to wake in the night, and watching intently while Mummy and Daddy ate, whilst making chewing motions herself...) The cold finally vanished a week or so ago, and we had started her on solids right after our trip to Cambridge. And sure enough, Bridget went back to sleeping through the night four nights ago - and it was almost as glorious a relief as the first time around. (In some ways more so: we had lost the knack of waking up, somewhere along the way.) We're a bit worried that tonight might be an exception: Bridget seems to have worse than normal gum-ache, and took a lot longer than normal to settle... We'll see...

Baby rice - take it or leave it.
Carrots - nice.
Parsnips - very nice.
Pear - can I eat the whole saucepanful now, please?

We've been giving Bridget plenty of time without any clothes on, to encourage her to pee on the mat. Today, having accomplished this task, we moved her on to her bedroom floor while cleaning her up. I pushed her slightly onto her side to clean her back and a moment or two later she managed to get from that position right over onto her front. She hasn't yet managed this feat without any help at all, but we think that it's soon going to be a bad idea changing her nappy on a surface four feet above the floor.

Parenthood is full of things you never thought you'd catch yourself doing.

Like discussing the consistency of poo, and almost dancing round the house celebrating the effectiveness of the nappy-liner, solid-food-squidy poo combination. And if that doesn't give you more information than you needed, I'll just add that it means the plastic spatula can be retired from the upstairs loo, for now.

Or like sitting on the floor beside the computer table, making repeated high-pitched 'rrrrrrrrp' noises to a beaming daughter, suspended in her baby bouncer. Even though they must be one of the most annoying noises known to humankind. Or at least to husbands typing just two feet away. (And to now invisible cats.)

For a couple of weeks we have been dealing with some medium-bad cradle-cap. Then, the weekend before last, a friend suggested it wasn't cradle-cap but eczema. Which is nastier and more upsetting, even though not deeply serious. But we've done our research, and it looks like the diagnosis is back to cradle-cap. And it's getting better anyway. Which is a relief, not least because cradle-cap is easier to spell.

Last Tuesday was milky pap day. Last Friday was parsnip puree day. Today is...

Squishy Carrot Day.

Or 'The Day of Orange' as we call it in this house.