The worst of the teething for tooth number one looks like it's over.

We've both seen and felt the tooth, although Katie is skilled at preventing us putting Bonjela on it or cleaning it with a toothbrush. Her tactics include simply clamping her mouth shut or sticking her tongue out or just licking the Bonjela off our finger before we can apply it to the right area.

I've solved the tooth cleaning problem by giving her the brush. She puts it in her mouth and then I move it around to the right place.

Obvious, really. She feeds herself (we had decided to do baby-led weaning anyway) and she doesn't like to be fed from a spoon that someone else holds.

Won't be long til the next tooth...

Not only do I automatically go into a charity shop whenever I pass one to see if they have a Teletubby video we don't already own, now I find the Tubbies are invading my mind in another way.

I bumped into a mum from our NCT class today, she was taking her baby to the supermarket.

I smiled at the little one in her buggy and she smiled back, revealing two front teeth.

All I could think of from then on was: "She's got the same two front teeth as the baby whose face appears in the sun above Teletubbyland."

Been meaning to post this for a while.

It's part of a nice letter sent to us from friends of ours whose first baby arrived not so long ago. I should think most parents can relate to it:

"The first month has certainly been a steep learning curve. It's amazing how one little person can totally turn what you consider to be normality on its head.

"To start with, we arrived home from the hospital with our precious little bundle and didn't really know what to do with him or where to start.

"That first night we put him down to sleep was really scary. Not only we were waking up every couple of hours so Rachel could feed him but also in between times to check he was still there!

"But several weeks in we can't imagine what our lives were like before he arrived or would be like without him."

An edited version of a viral e-mail I received this week:

1. You spend the first two years of your children's life teaching them to walk and talk. Then you spend the next sixteen telling them to sit down and shut up.

2. Mothers of teens now know why some animals eat their young.

3. Children seldom misquote you. In fact, they usually repeat word for word what you shouldn't have said.

4. The main purpose of holding children's parties is to remind yourself that there are children more awful than your own.

5. We childproofed our homes but they are still getting in.

ADVICE FOR THE DAY:
Be nice to your kids.
They will choose your nursing home one day.

AND FINALLY:
IF YOU HAVE A LOT OF TENSION
AND YOU GET A HEADACHE,
DO WHAT IT SAYS
ON THE ASPIRIN BOTTLE:

"TAKE TWO ASPIRIN"
AND "KEEP AWAY FROM CHILDREN"!!!!!

I've had this week off work.

Needed a break and wanted to spend time with Urs and Katie.

We also had a hospital appointment this week.

A few weeks ago during Katie's eight-month check up a heart murmur was detected.

Probably nothing, we were told, but best to get it checked out.

Cue a worrying few weeks for us until this week when we took Katie along and got her examined.

She's fine.

All a fuss about nothing. Phew.

We were handed a leaflet called Innocent Heart Murmur (which sounds to me like the type of name Radiohead would give one of their albums). It says:

An innocent heart murmur is a noise that is found in perfectly normal hearts. If we listen to children's hearts in ideal quiet conditions innocent murmurs can be heard in most of them. These murmurs come and go and vary with breathing, with heart rate and with the position of the child. These noises are something called:

vibratory murmurs
venous hums
functional murmurs

All these terms refer to innocent heart murmurs.

The murmurs are caused from the sound of blood flowing through the large veins of the heart or from the flow of blood around the bends of the heart.

Children's hearts are compact so the normal bends of the heart are quite tight meaning that the heart rate is faster than in adults. As a result the normal flow of blood creates a soft noise or a murmur (this can be compared to the noise that water makes in a stream as it curves around a bend).

These noises are often heard at a routine examination.

So now we know.

Last Friday was Children In Need day.

Every child at nursery had to dress in pyjamas and parents dropped a £1 coin into a donation box.

Katie doesn't have pyjamas but Urs improvised.

There was also the option of doing your child's hair in a wild and wacky fashion but Katie's hair (short, wispy) doesn't lend itself to that, really.

Katie baked us a very yummy Pudsey bear biscuit and brought it home to us.

Her culinary skills are quite impressive for one so young (nine months) or maybe she had some help. Hmm...

There I was trying to fold up the buggy after handing Katie over at nursery.

The nursery has a handy buggy park, you see, so you can leave your buggy there.

And as usual I was struggling to find all the straps and things that keep the buggy folded up.

"What are you doing?" asked a little voice.

It belonged to a girl wearing a cute pink coat with a hood up.

"I'm trying to fold up the buggy but I'm not an expert."

"What's a expert?" she asked.

"It's someone who is very, very good at doing things," I replied, ignoring her erroneous indefinite article usage.

"Daddy, are you a expert?" she enquired turning to her dad who was folding up his buggy.

"I don't think so," he said, despite obviously succeeding in folding up the buggy.

"You see," she said back to me. "Daddy folded up his buggy. He's a expert."

Crushing.