Ok, so there's not stacks of time to sit quietly and think on some aspect of the day. Ellie's just gone down for her late morning nap, so for a change, I'm going to try writing some stuff down rather than cleaning the kitchen and doing the laundry, which has been my normal morning routine. And it works-- but then there's no time for reflection really, or at least no time to record reflections.

We went to the zoo yesterday, just for a couple of hours; it was great-- not a beautiful day, and it was after 3, so there was hardly anyone there. We had all the treetop monkeys to ourselves, which was nice. Ellie was quite excited, she saw monkeys and giraffes and elephants and the pygmy hippo and ducks and meercats. She likes animals, or she knows we like it when she gets excited around animals, so performs for us. It's hard to know what's actually going on.

Before her naps, I sit in the rocking chair with her and let her pick books from the bookshelf beside the chair. I think she likes the picking as much as the reading. Sometimes she drops the book, other times I think she just throws her least favourites on the floor. Her favourites are

• Baby Signs for Mealtimes which has nice pictures of babies
• ? - let's explore the house with sam the kitten. Not my favourite, and she seems to rush through it, quickly touching the thing she's supposed to touch before turning the page. The last page has a mirror on it -- she really likes that, and kisses herself.
• My first colours board book -- She likes this one, but maybe because I talk about each coloured thing that was recently in her life -- a red shirt, like the one you wore yesterday, yellow butterflies-- we saw them at the zoo, etc. So it changes a bit.
• Oops, and Oh, David-- these were her favourites for a long time, and are probably still her most favourite, especially Oops.
• Ellie's Photo Book-- some photos of her and people she knows and some of her old toys that she doesn't play with anymore (it really needs to be updated)

There's a bunch of others that she's ok with-- but often she'll close the book before the end. And then there's some she really doesn't like, that she'll close after the first couple of pages. Most of my favourites fall into the last category, not surprisingly.

So it's been busy, and mostly fun. I find the endless drudgery of housework to be a bit like endless drudgery, and I think that taking pride in a nice clean house will just frustrate me when my partner messes it up, so I'm not going there. I like being organised, and having things ready on time, cause then I can have a few minutes for one of my own projects-- which, sadly, mostly involve organising other things, so that eventually I'll be able to do that really great thing I've always wanted to do, whatever it is.

I'm not seeing many people, which suits me pretty well for the most part, but I think I'm becoming more curmudgeonly.