Having had a busy morning today (swimming, looking at the swans on the river Exe, visiting Daddy at work, Bridget only sleeping in the car and not at home), I was hoping for something more relaxed in the afternoon. I decided to take Bridget out for a walk in the backpack along the Taw before giving her her mid-afternoon snack and settling her down for a nap. She hadn't been in the backpack for a while (not since the Hillwailing episode), so I was a little nervous, and not reassured when she started screaming just a few minutes into the walk. However, she quietened down fairly quickly and things became peaceful - all too peaceful. Well before we reached the river, Bridget had fallen asleep with her head buried in the nape of my neck, and she stayed in this position until a little while after we got home, some 45 minutes later.

The result? Bridget didn't see the river at all (a shame, since she normally enjoys the visit); Mummy got neckache and no rest from looking after Bridget for the whole of the day.

Our health visitor has been off on sick leave for a couple of months, so it was only yesterday that Bridget finally had her eight-month check. She was in a bad mood for this, since she was very tired and snuffly, so the checks on motor skills were a bit of a washout. Admittedly, she did pick up the two small cubes that were put in front of her (to see that her grasping skills were OK) but the rattle (that she was supposed to shake) stayed rigid in her hand and then got dropped on the floor. These checks were followed by having a large practice golf ball (i.e. plastic ball with holes in) hung in front of Bridget's face and moved up and down and side to side to check that she was following movement easily: Bridget's response was 'Well I'll play along if I really must...'

Screams accompanied the removal of clothes and Jean's measurement of her height. However, we did manage to discover that Bridget is really quite tall for her age: 73.5cm, which puts her between the 75th and 91st centiles (an average girl wouldn't be expected to reach this height until close to her first birthday). She is, however, on the light side, because chickenpox and a cold have kept her appetite down and her increased movement eats up her food reserves quickly. We aren't worrying about this particularly, since Bridget seems pretty healthy, but we expect that, when she does finally get better, we will be hard put to keep up with the amount she wants to eat.

We also got the go-ahead for eggs (hard-boiled) to be included in Bridget's diet, so now it's only honey, cow's milk for drinking, and nuts that are off-limits.

With the return of miserably cold weather to Devon, both Bridget and I got hit by a nasty cold. Mine is just about over, but Bridget's seems to be dragging on and on. The snuffly stage had her waking up several times in the night, and demands for milk from Mummy. Now she's mostly just coughing, but this makes her throat very sore, so life's still a bit miserable for her.

The hardest thing has been finding things that she wants to eat. For a couple of days before we realised she had a cold, she was turning her nose up at her evening main course, whatever it was. Then she seemed to be off savoury things altogether. Fruit and other sweet things aren't a problem at all, but we've still got the bad bout of diarrhoea on our minds, so aren't too keen to repeat it by shovelling too much fruit into Bridget. So we resort to cunning techniques to get other food into her mouth, like putting a bit on one of our fingers and getting her to lick that in order for her to accept that maybe pureed carrot and parsnip (yes, back on much more babyish food) might taste nice.

Food excepted (hence, troublesome mealtimes still) she is getting much better and continues to improve her crawling, though she still hasn't shown much interest in using her legs.