Time flies

Baby Spouse is walking, proper decent walking, a bit of falling over, but he's been very good at it for a few weeks now.  The Oracles say that you should get them measured for shoes about 6 weeks after they start walking - he's in very soft baby shoes at the moment, and I'm thinking "cruiser" shoes next but oh my, the price, and they are all hideous and massively gendered too. We have been given some hand me down shoes, but they are mainly a smaller size and more advanced structure (as they are from a few babies, but babies that walked earlier).

He's also saying more cute things, "bou bou" (bounce bounce) is Tigger, "mamamamama" is both MORE and Mamma, "doe" is "no". There is quite a bunch of words he can say, as some of you know I do this for a living, and I've got a mental note to fill in the questionnaire we're using at work, and keep it to one side to see a) how he progresses and b) how he compares to all the other children in our study when we've collected all their data.  My guess is that he's mid-lower end but I know he's doing well enough not to raise any red flags - and the order in which children develop at this age, unless it's really slow, doesn't predict how well they do at school age, really.

He's nearly 18 months (in about 10 days' time) and we promised Nella a mid-year phone call, so we are planning to email a single picture (we don't really do emailed pictures) to the grandparents, saying it's time for a phone call if she'd like to call us. We'll see what happens.

We're about to go on holiday but I have a really busy week at work to get through (see also: childcare inconvenience, annoying inflexible nursery hours). We are going to a picturesque part of England with gorgeous scenery and lots of history (in fact, the part of England where I was born and where my grandfather used to live, so my childhood stomping ground), but unlikely to have good phone reception. But we have agreed that if we contact them shortly before we go, at least we'll be more relaxed to receive a phone call.

Only thing is, we aren't at all sure how we'll survive without broadband! If you see a battered and moaning Dr Spouse back in about three weeks' time, you'll know why.