Chris has written an entry on the wonders of cheap toys - specifically, stacking cups - on Jeyanth's blog. We know what he means.

Stacking cups are a favourite with Bridget as well, even though she has servants to do the stacking and would not dream of doing it herself. However, to keep Bridget really happy, all you need is a mail order catalogue - or, indeed, a patch of floor. Bridget can spend ten to twenty minutes sitting with a catalogue, or any book with lots of pages, turning the pages back and forth, or riffling them like a flick-animation book. She tends not to damage the books, though some bending and creasing can occur, and enthusiasm sometimes tears, but we prefer the safety of a large Argos catalogue with hardly any sentimental value, and she likes its weight and general paginess.

As for the floor - well, probably Bridget's favourite occupation, which can absorb anything up to half an hour (provided an adult is in view) is to sit and brush her heels against the floor. A new or exciting surface helps: the rough rug in the hall is better than its smooth sitting-room counterpart; the lawn is too exciting for words. We worry about carpet burns and blisters, but Bridget's skin seems tough enough so far. Of course, if she ends up needing a constant supply of carpets with new and interesting textures, this one could turn out to be the most expensive toy yet, but we hope she'll be interested in ballet, horses and boys before that happens.

About two weeks ago, I realised that if Bridget saw Columbine, she would often (maybe one time in three?) say a hard, 'A!' - a sound which isn't all that common in her vocabulary. Given that she doesn't do k or t sounds, we began to wonder if her first word had in fact been 'Cat!', and we had been too dull to notice.

Today, admittedly, she greeted Columbine twice with 'Ba!' but I'm still inclined to think that Bridget is deliberately connecting that vowel sound to Columbine, even if the consonants are a bit hazy - and I guess she is probably doing so in some kind of imitation of the word "cat". So yes, maybe that was her first word.

Whilst we were away, Bridget started crawling properly. A week ago last Thursday, in fact, while Hester and I were out shopping and Bridget was being looked after by her paternal Grandma, she took her first few crawling 'steps'. Now, nothing holds her back: she crawls anywhere and everywhere with alacrity. She can (after a couple of bopped noses) safely negotiate the shallow step down into the kitchen and up into the utility room; she can do a range of surfaces from slippy polished wood to unmown lawn; she can get into trouble quicker than her parents can chase her. It's all very exciting.

Last Saturday we spent a very pleasant day with my brother, Joe, and his family, when they came over to my parents' to visit. Unfortunately, they also brought a nasty stomach virus with them. This swiftly laid into me, keeping me up for most of Sunday night and out of action for the whole of Monday. We were, understandably, worried that Bridget was going to catch it too. So we were relieved to wake on Tuesday after a full night's sleep. However, we had a bit of a shock on going into her bedroom: Bridget had apparently been sick quite early on in the night, and had then slept in it for several hours; cleaning up her hair was one of the easier parts of dealing with the mess. We, of course, felt awful that she had been in that state for so long but we realized that (a) she couldn't have been very, very upset or she would have let us know; (b) even if we had checked on her in the night, it might well have disturbed her more to get her up and clean up the mess (which we would have been duty-bound to do once we'd discovered it); (c) since she wasn't upset in the morning, what was the point in our continuing to be het up about it. This last seems to be quite a common occurrence to me - Bridget has something nasty happen, screams for a few minutes and then moves on; we feel bad for hours or days afterwards.

Apart from that one moment, Bridget came through the bug fine and without any accompanying diarrhoea (maybe she'd stocked up on antibodies from me). I had a recurrence after we got home, and Mike's been in bed for the last two days, hence the dearth of entries.

Bridget is a remarkably amenable traveller. Even with the advent of a new, forward-facing child seat, we set off somewhat apprehensively on travels around the country, since the last journey to Cambridge had included some long, long bouts of yelling. However, much to our amazement, Bridget was not only awake for the first hour and a half of the journey to St Albans but even happy and smiling whenever the passenger-seat parent turned round to look at her. She got rather cross after lunch, but we realized that this was mostly because she was far too hot and thirsty. Once we'd dealt with that problem, she was fine again. And so it continued throughout our time away. Driving back down from Stoke on Tuesday we had a grand total of about 30 seconds grizzling in more than four hours of driving. What a star!

Sorry about the blank space that's been appearing on Bridget's web pages. We've been away for a week or so, visiting both sets of grandparents and going to a wedding. There'll be lots to blog about in a while, but at the moment I'm dealing with a bit of a dodgy tummy and Mike's at work, so I'm going to make this one short and sweet.