Time to give the final account of the course that the chicken pox ran. As Mike said in the previous entry, Bridget had a set of about 20 spots by the time we went away. No further ones appeared on holiday and those that she did have have now faded to being almost indistinguishable from her back. She's confused us a few times in the last couple of days by producing insect bites that look like the might be the beginnings of a new outbreak, but there's been no blistering, so we are finally out of quarantine and were able to go swimming again today - an outing that brought a broad grin to Bridget's face the moment that we got into the water. It's good to know that she remembers things she likes.

Sorry about the longish silence. We went away for a week over half-term, and have taken a little while to get back into normal mode here.

Our holiday saw Bridget's first journey to a foreign country - Wales. We had a wonderful time, staying in a cottage near Brecon that we'd visited last August. Days mostly consisted of pottering around in the morning, and going out for a walk with Bridget in the backpack in the afternoon. The walks had to be timed well if we were to cope without a screaming child when she got too tired, but we were generally successful and managed to see a bit more of the country than last year. Bridget has even climbed her first hill now - not, alas, one of the Beacons, but a small peak just north of Brecon, with great views of the surrounding countryside. Streams went down better on the whole, though, since Bridget likes lots of moving things to look at, so a couple of visits to mountain valleys were more what she had in mind.

Since the cottage only has one bedroom Mummy and Daddy came back rather more tired than we went. When Bridget has other people in her room, she tends to wake up early (round about 6) and not go back to sleep again, because she can hear us turning over in bed. Thankfully, this righted itself as soon as we got back home again.

Other highlights of the holiday included Bridget's first pub lunch, for which she received many admiring comments about how good she was, and some glorious weather, and Bridget's first swallow (it perched on the windowsill outside the cottage for half a minute or so, while we had a good look at it). The one lowlight was the loss of a toy - a teddy Bridget was given at her baptism. Despite searches by both Mummy and Daddy along the path we had taken it was not to be found, and the company has stopped selling them, so we'll have to go for a different replacement. Bridget hasn't really noticed his loss, but we were a bit sad about it. It's the first part of her childhood that's been irrevocably left behind.

Several more entries to come when I've got a free minute.