For the past few weeks Katie's favourite hobby has been bird watching.

 

Whenever she spots a bird (and she's really sharp-eyed, spotting ones way before us) she points at it and says: "Bird."

 

Except she doesn't pronounce the 'd'.

 

And sometimes she points at dogs and says the same thing.

We should have been in Portugal this weekend. Katie's uncle Rob got married today to Leo but Katie (and I) weren't well enough to travel so Urs went on her own.

 

Urs had been under the weather on Thursday, too.

 

I wasn't quite sure how best to mark the day, given that Katie and I were a few hundred miles away from where we should have been.

 

So we made a video:

 

  

Hurrah!

 

I got a bucket, spade and beachball from Katie which will come in useful when we go on holiday.

We've gone from four teeth to seven in such a short space of time.

 

That plus the MMR jab reaction probably explains Katie's, er, challenging beahviour recently.

 

Yesterday Urs had her at home and bore the brunt of it.

 

I came back to see the two of them walking happily down the street together. It was a lovely sight (Katie's a lot more confident in her walking now) but it kind of masked how tough the day had been.

 

Swings and roundabouts...

We met up with friends from our NCT class this weekend for a picnic in the park.

 

Good fun.

 

And Katie had an ice cream.

 

Which she liked a lot.

 

It was parents' evening at nursery last week.

 

A friend kindly babysat Katie for us. This fortunately involved nothing more than sitting on our couch until we got back as Katie was on her best behaviour in her cot ie fast asleep.

 

Which hasn't always been the case recently. Some kids have an early reaction to their MMR jab, others may have a reaction seven to 10 days later. And that appears to be what happened, what with Katie's appetite being all over the place and her sleeping habits too - we've had a 2:45am session and a 4am session in the past week, which have left us all a bit tired.

 

Anyway, off Urs and I went to nursery to find out how things are going.

 

We had a good look round at the room where she will move shortly. As she can stand and walk on her own she's ready to move up to the next group but she will have to wait until one of the kids in that section moves onto the group after that, such is the number of toddlers and babies in our area right now.

 

The nursery provides a 'development folder' that shows some of Katie's artwork and lists some of the things she can do - all Ofsted approved, no doubt. I've shown a few of her early masterpieces in previous blog posts. She also had some of her work on the walls including some pasta she had glued onto a piece of paper. Tony Hart, eat your, er, heart out.

 

Overall the nursery workers are pleased with her progress and we're pleased with the people looking after her.

 

Such is the demand for places from new parents now, the nursery is accepting only applications for five days a week. No more part-timers like us. Lucky we got in when we did.

I was away in the US this week on a training course - left on Tuesday, came back Saturday morning.

 

Good time, learned a lot but it felt like I was away for far longer.

 

When I stumbled through the front door after an awful red-eye flight Katie was there to greet me with a nice smile and a hug.

 

Ah.

 

Just what a jet-lagged dad needs.