Am sitting here listening to my poorly girl yelling out 'Mummy, here?' and 'Mummy where are you' over the monitor? Trying to find the balance between meeting the emotional needs of your toddler without them thinking that whatever they ask for they will get immediately from their own personal Mummy and Daddy servants is a challenge at times. I'm sure I get it wrong on many occasions. But with bedtime back to being a bit (understatement) of a nightmare stretching out over more than an hour, with frequent night wakings, we are a little low on energy at the moment. It's not her fault, she has had yet another double whammy with painful infections in both ears, and now has a raging sore throat and is off food (still). She's going through a bit of an insecure patch and needs a lot of reassurance and cuddles at the moment, which we are more than happy to lavish on her during the day, at bedtime and when she wakes crying in pain at night, but trying to work out what is best for her crying tired little self when 'bedtime' goes on and on is a conundrum at times. Tonight we resisted her attempts to be picked up from the cot/leave the room/go into our bed/use the toilet and gently insisted she stay in her room in her cot. And to think we have to move her to a bed some time later this year. We'll probably spend two hours taking her back to bed every night!

Stu and I had a night out a few weekends ago and used our marvellous, wonderful, fabulous babysitter - Miss Danka from Sophia's nursery, in this photo. She is quite a find for us, we don't have to worry about putting Sophs to bed before we go out, and it's quite a relief to be heading out the front door as your toddler happily calls out 'Bye! See you soon!' before disappearing back into her room from where raucous giggling can soon be heard.