Little girl was playing with me; she was supposed to be going to sleep, rocking on my knee. She'd put her head down for a few minutes, then Boing! Up, big smiles, and pushing away, trying to escape down my knee to the floor. I even fell for it the first couple of times, thinking she must not be that tired. But I held on to her, and after fighting a bit, she slept. Odd resistance.

She says something approximating baby for her baby doll, which she's recently taken an interest in. She likes her bedtime bunnies too. The baby she'll pretend to feed before picking it up and banging its head on the floor (it makes a good sound).

When sitting on our knees, she's taken to pulling herself up to a stand using the neck of our shirts. She likes to pull up to a stand on the backrest of the sofa. I think she likes the pulling on to loose fabric for support. Today she did a quadripedal position for a little while, as well.

Before becoming a parent, I'd have put more emphasis on the yuckiness of the job; pooey diapers, messy eating, general chaos. That's really the easiest sort of stuff, just non-issues. I don't really spare much thought to any of that-- I just deal with it as needed. It's easy to be competent in making sure Ellie's clean and fed, that she's got clothes to wear; all the basic room and board sort of things.

I have much more anxiety about other things-- to what degree should I show my moods, or show disapproval even, at this stage. Am I doing enough structured play with her, versus just watching that she doesn't hurt herself in her own, self-directed explorations? Am I forgetting to stimulate some area of her life-- have we been drawing enough recently? Has she spent too much time in the pram when I've been shopping, or on walks. Do I spend too much time cleaning up and not enough time playing with her? Is it good to let her throw her books on the floor and choose another one after only a few pages? Am I talking/signing to her enough? In the right way? How come I haven't gotten around to reading the baby books I've been intending to read-- am I missing something important?

The hard stuff is the same as with any job-- how do I use what time I've got to make sure I'm working on the most important things. How do I get better at working this out?

Ellie has a new word - "hat".

Her cousin who's 6 months younger is doing 4 point crawling, moving very well. Good for him, but it makes me sad.

Ellie has a new cousin arriving in the next couple of days.

She's got an annoying habit of throwing things. I'm probably a bad example; I tend to throw things into place rather than putting them there-- little games I play with myself.

She's been sick recently. She isn't sick much, which is good. I've been sick as well; everything goes to pieces, It's hard to keep up momentum on anything other than our basic needs.