It's a long weekend here, and we had a relaxing afternoon at our Mum's group BBQ yesterday. It was amazing looking around at all the bubs and seeing how much they have grown and are developing into little people. Sophs very much likes to take in a situation, sticking close to us for the first few minutes until she's comfortable enough to go off exploring by herself. Some kids take off the second they are put down, others stick to their parents like little burrs. others like Sophia need a few minutes to acclimatise before they're off. It's fascinating watching their little personalities emerging.

We were having such a lovely afternoon on Saturday at our Mum's group BBQ until...we decided to get a group shot of the kids, no mean feat when most of them are trying to crawl off in one direction or another. We gave some of them coloured plastic balls to try to entice them to sit in one place for more than a few seconds. In this pic, Sophia has spied and is going for the yellow ball...little does she know that in a few seconds Sam, in the red shirt to the right, is also going to see and want the very same ball...

With a helpful shove to the middle of Sophia's back and a quick dash-and-grab manoeuvre, Sam has the ball, and Sophia is about to land face first on the grass...(and Amelie to the left of Sam has gone over backwards!)

My poor little baby girl howling post-fall. She was inconsolable for the next few minutes, but we eventually managed to calm her with a cuddles and a dummy (I'm just off camera next to her...). Sam is looking well pleased with himself.

We tried to get a pic of them all with Sophia not howling but she wasn't having any of it - she was out of there post haste!

Sophia update - she's 10 months old!

• 3 fangs and one more on the way given how much drool is bucketing from her mouth and how hard she gnaws everything and anything in sight (two lower middle and one top)
• crawling around very expertly and loving playing hide and seek and popping her head around corners and grinning at you and giggling at herself
• pulling herself to stand on everything she can get to; squatting to pick things up while holding on with one hand; letting go of whatever she is holding and standing unaided until she plops back to the ground and gives herself a clap
• clapping in the cutest way possible - banging her hands together in the general direction of each other with a big grin on her face
• loving the gate keeping her in/out of the bathroom depending on where I am - it's something else she can use to stand up
• hooning around fearlessly behind her walker which we have to hold onto until she learns to slow down a bit
• tumbling on a regular basis to the floor, against walls, off things, onto things - like today when we were visiting friends who have floorboards which Sophs found a bit slippery and I didn't get to her in time so she landed on her forehead (I wish she'd put her hands out!) and now has a big black/blue bruise.
  
• being generally delightful, sweet, cheeky, endearing, loveable, cuddly, giggly, inquisitive, determined, funny and the bringer of such joy and happiness into our lives. Who knew that such a little creature could make you feel so amazing??
  

I have my first exam on Monday - Advanced Research Methods (Statistics). I have never sat an exam with so little preparation before. God only knows how I'm going to pass. Comprehending the material is easy, retaining the information in my tired brain for any length of time is the tricky part. Better get back to my study on analysis of variance, interactions, descriptive interpretation, methodology, qualitative psychology, multiple regression, effects analysis (yaaaaaaaaaaawn)...

The whole point of crawling Mummy surely is to enable me to get to places where I can pull myself up to stand??

Missy Indepedent voluntarily left us for the first time yesterday, we were in the bedroom and she decided to crawl into and explore the hallway for about 30 seconds before coming back to see where we were. It was very endearing to see this little face pop around the door frame and burst into a smile at seeing us again. It made me realise it's the very beginning of her transition from dependence to independence.

Had yet another phone call with an idiot today re: the kitchen. After confirming an appointment time for next Tuesday afternoon I thought I'd better ask some specific questions (based on previous experience of workmen turning up and having been given the wrong information, or no information at all):

Me; so, just to confirm, you'll be putting the new subflooring down next Tuesday then?

Them: er, no, someone will be coming to have a look.

M: have a look at what exactly?

T: To see what needs to be done

M: Erm, hasn't the insurance company explained all that? Our kitchen is an exposed dusty concrete floor right now and needs covering urgently, my asthma is really bad because of this.

T: Well, we don't do screed work so that could be a problem.

M: Screed what?

T: making the concrete even.
M: umm, well even if you made the concrete even it would still be several inches below the floor level in the rest of the flat and the cupboards wouldn't fit back in. We need a floating floor.
T: We don't do floating floors.
M: what do you do?
T: Put flooring down.
M: (deep breath)
T: And you have to come to our showroom to choose the flooring you want.
M: um, we already did that, 2 months ago, with a different company.
T: So it's ordered?
M: Well, they brought samples to our house, we picked one, I assume they orderded it.
T: I have no record of that.
M: Well that's because it wasn't your company.
T: Well you'll still need to come in to choose flooring, we don't bring samples out.
M: But we've already ordered them, from the company we met with 2 months ago, I thought you were installing the subflooring, can you please call the insurer and find out what's going on?
T: So we'll keep the appointment for next Tuesday then?
M: yeah why not (I give up)

Random picture of the month (look closely at what she's holding in her arms).