evie_progress

This page charts Evie's progress and reminds us of her milestones. Facts as well as photos....

So our little girl is now 5. The last 3 months have been full of fun & relaxation with most of the time away from school. The key accomplishment is being able to ride a bike - as with so many things with our children it is all about incentives. We had been trying very hard to get her riding and it was always a chore. Even with Smartie blackmail. However the strangest of things suddenly made her dead keen on riding. We put a shopping basket on the front of the bike - fixed on with tie-wraps!! Now she wants to ride all the time. Video.....here

Just after her fifth birthday was her first day at school in a uniform. She's now moved on from the playschool to hardcore learning - by the end of the year she should be able to read apparently. Amazing.

We are slightly perturbed by how quickly she is growing up in attitude and appearance. That old chestnut about not having them for long does seem to be playing out.

The thing that took Evie's attention the most at the start of this period was writing. She couldn't get enough of practicing drawing her letters but for some reason this tailed off after about 3 weeks. From a recreational point of view Evie has finally cracked swinging. See here. She was as pleased with herself as I have ever seen her and spends hours swinging away. She even started trying to teach Ollie. What a star.

The dressing up as a princess reached a peak during this period - with every spare minute at home being spent in a Cinderella or Snow White dress. However things have toned down quite a lot now and she doesn't seem anywhere near as obsessed. She wears these outfits when friends come over but that's about it. However one feature - not wearing trousers - remains.

- When things don't go her way we have started to receive the 'sulk'. After quite a lot of trial and error we have come across the quickest and most effective way of dealing with this. While she is in the sulk (and refusing to speak to anyone) offer her something she really likes to do. Then don't speak another word to her. After about 10 minutes of the sulk she come across as if nothing has happened and asks to do what we've just offered. If you're weak and speak to her first this prolongs the sulk. Mind games with children - is that right?

- She is bordering on the obsessive about princess and fairies. She refuses to wear trousers and on the rare occasions we actually insist (when it is just too cold), we are faced with tantrums, sulks and the silent treatment. This is usually only as long as it takes to get out of the house then she is happy again but it is still quite a challenge.

- She is still playing very well with little bro and they really do miss each other if one is away. She's also pretty good with Poppy singing to her sometimes but she doesn't spend too much time with little sis. I think Poppy just doesn't do enough yet.

- She loves going for walks around the woods and sand dunes around Wassenaar. She runs off all the time and wants to be in the lead (unless there are Gruffaloes around - then Daddy has to go first).

- We have just restarted the bike riding lessons but so far we are still behind where we left off.

- She has learnt a lot of nursery rhymes and stories from school and remembers them very well. She retold Goldilocks and the three bears to us in great detail.

- Evie's also picking up a bit of Spanish with the arrival of Hannelore - her first word was fairy. We're hoping she'll be speaking Spanish by the end of the year ..... unfortuantely the school she is at does not do languages so we're hoping a Spanish au pair will fill that gap.

- She's started school (the British school in the Hague) at the start of September. She really enjoys the school and has settled in well. The only fly in the ointment was that her new best friend left Holland at the end of the 1st term.

- Mummy and Daddy went to their first parents evening where we heard lots of nice things about Evie.

- A bit later in December we went to Evie's first public performance. The school had organised a Sing-along for the parents and kids. It was pretty impressive the kids had memorised about 6 Christmas songs.

- Being in Holland we've just started bike riding lessons (end November). She had almost got it but the cold prevented sessions of longer than about 20 minutes and the snow prevented all sessions. We'll have to wait until the snow clears. See here for the first session.

- She is very very good with her brother. Talking to him, looking after him and worrying about him (especially getting trapped in elevator doors for some reason).

- She can now finally count to 20 without missing out 17. That 17 had been a tricky one.

- She retells us stories that we have read to her in rather good detail. It's very cute and she takes it very seriously. The cutest thing of all however is that she sometimes sits down with Ollie with a story she knows and 'reads' the story to him.

- Everything, really everything, is to do with princesses, Cinderella and Snow White. It really borders on the obsessive.

- Farting doesn't seem to be as entertaining as it used to be for her. She earnestly told me that princesses don't fart. I wonder if Mummy has been conditioning her. Thanks goodness Ollie still finds them funny.

- She's taken the move to Holland in her stride so far, but she has said she likes the sunshine more than the rain - not surprising. They have both been sleeping in the same room which we think has helped with all the moving. At least there's something familiar in each bedroom.

- On the flip side to that she is missing her friends from Qatar. When she plays with dolls and cuddly toys she gives them all the names of her old friends. It tugs at the old heartstrings a bit.

- At 3 years 7 months Evie started writing her name completely unaided. Before this she required some instruction. She can also have a good stab at 'Daddy'.

- Swimming wise she's got the breaststoke. She can swim on her back but not a proper back-stroke. Front crawl is progressing slowly - she has a bit of difficulty getting her arms out of the water. Only the right one seems to break the surface so its quite funny to watch. Underneath the water she's a fish. Its going to be hard to keep this up when we leave Qatar.

- A couple of weeks before 3 3/4 we dropped the bedtime pants (nappies in bed) as she hadn't had a wee in one for several weeks. So far so good. Only one accident after she had had a very tiring day.

- Sharing of the bedroom with Ollie in a big bed took a bit of a turn for the worse towards the end of the period. They just started enjoying each others company a bit too much - there is charging around, laughing, giggling and general mayhem. There have been a few nights when we've had to move Evie to the spare room so they would get some sleep.

- She also drew her first picture of the whole family. Its very cute and I've put it below. See we're all there. Evie and Ollie are a bit odd but Mummy and Daddy are pretty good. So I've joined the ranks of sad, doting fathers and it sits in pride of place behind my desk.

- Evie's suddenly taken a shine to dressing up. She loves pretending to be a princess. It's probably because her mummy is treated like one : )

- Her language continues to improve. She recognises the difference between 'Good' and 'Fantastic' and other more subtle things.

- Evie's back to swimming after the winter recess. She's taken to it and has just started learning front crawl. Also she's managed to swim the full length of the pool unaided - it was quite a struggle though. She also really likes being thrown from high into the pool and another Daddy demonstrated in the picture above.

- I rather liked this. When Evie was being nice to me because I was poorly I asked her if she wanted to be a doctor when she grew up. She said

"No - I want to be a Mummy just like Mummy" I asked her how many children she would like and she said 'Five'. We'll see.....

- Imaginative play has come on leaps and bounds. She can now play alone quite happily, which is a big relief for Mummy, especially now that nap time is almost gone completely. Ability to talk seems to have been the key turning point, her toys listen to her without interruption as she practices her words.

- The play is changing when she is with other kids as well It used to be chasing and random stuff. Now its much more role play-ish. Pretending to go shopping, go to bed, go to kindergarten etc etc and there are plenty of conversations going on during the play. It is very cute to watch. They discuss all sorts of stuff. Wow - they are just little people.

- Counting using fingers. Certainly it is not easy for a three year old to master holding up only three fingers, the look of concentration on her face is spectacular. She will count to five now unrolling a finger at a time - the merit for this goes to Kindergarten.

- She can catch a beach ball regularly now. Credit to that goes to Playball - a class she goes to once a week.

- Kindergarten has given her lots of confidence. She now smiles and says 'hello' and 'morning' cheerily to all and sundry which she wouldn't do before.

- Thank goodness. Evie has grown out of her anger at Ollie and plays with him very well these days. It is quite an amazing turnaround in a month. There's just the occasional fracas but nothing in comparison to what we were seeing. It began to get better when Jo moved into the cottage and by the time we were back in Doha she was fine with him. In fact she's gone the other way and is remarkably tolerant of his sometimes clumsy attempts at play.

- Overall she's just become quite a bit more co-operative. Maybe this is because she's approaching the end of the "terrible twos". She gets dressed, gets ready for bed, cleans her teeth with much less nagging and pestering than it used to take. It's just becoming easier.

- Two days before turning 3 she went to kindergarten for the first time. We were a little apprehensive - first time she's been left "alone". Fortunately she was starting with one of her pals, Sam. They arrived at pretty much the same time - saw each other and charged off inside playing immediately. They were the only 2 children not crying as the Mummies left. It's only for for 3 mornings a week.

- She's finally mastered counting to 20. It's been nearly there for quite some months but 15,16 and 17 used to cause her a bit of bother.

- She does lots and lots of pretend play, its very cute and her imagination is really quite active. The boundaries of play and reality are also a bit arbitrary. After sitting down with her for a good 10 minutes pretending to have a picnic (with plastic crockery), describing all the food, mopping up imaginary spills, feeding an imaginary Ollie and so on, I suggested to her that we should wash-up the plates. "Don't be silly Daddy, its only pretend. They don't need washing up" was the reply.

Two last photos. Sam and Evie going to Kindergarten and...nametags on clothes aaahhh

- Things are really messy with Ollie. After being a very good big sister up until this point she is now a nightmare. She can be an absolute angel playing away by herself or chatting to us and then Ollie comes in the room and she goes ballistic, screaming, shouting, knocking him over. It's AWFUL. This seems to have been triggered by his new found bi-podal mobility and I suspect by the attention Ollie is getting because of his new skill from relatives. She is having 3 or 4 meltdowns per day and gets sent to her room a lot. It's quite staggering how instantaneously she goes from angel to devil child. It's also remarkably difficult to calm her down.

- At 2 years 11months and 3 weeks Evie dropped her nap during the day. She's now a full on little girl with heaps of energy for 12 hours a day - much to the delight of Mummy as this happened while Daddy was back in Qatar.

- Following on from that she has the most amazing amount of energy and can walk miles (really, miles) before she asks to be picked up. She a very fit little bunny. She can easily wear out one adult so a kind of tag team was set up later on in the summer (involving Daddy, Grandad, Grandma and any other available relative) in order to tire her out.

- She has got a multitude of imaginary friends - there's Ghost, Ghost's Mummy, Ghost's Daddy and Ghost's Baby (who is called Oliver). There's Scarlet, Ruby (who are also real friends) and Itsy Bitsy spider.

- Her verbal skills have improved a lot (as you would expect) and this made for a more fun time for Mummy in the cottage when Daddy was away.

- The major progress this month is swimming. Yep she can now swim until she runs out of breath. We think it's fantastic. We've been going once a week to swimming classes which she loves but during the Phuket holiday where we spent at least 2 hours in the pool every day she really came on. She jumps in without fear, dives for toys and swims with her head down until she has to come up for breath. Videos: Swimming 1 (8Mb) is one of her early attempts on holiday and Swimming 2 (3Mb) is after we got back.

- She can entertain herself for ages with 'imaginary' play. All through the play she's talking away to herself. It's very cute.

- She loves birthdays and birthday parties. She continually singing Happy Birthday to anyone. What is really cute is that she takes things (books, toys anything really) and wraps them up in paper or a hanky. She then comes across and gives Mummy or Daddy a 'present' and sings the Happy Birthday song. It melts our hearts.

- She's learnt the 'ABC' song so she can now recall the alphabet. This is more than can be said for Daddy who always misses out one of i,j or k every time he sings the song, much to the disappointment of Mummy.

- She's got somewhat addicted to TV - and the Jungle Book to be precise. She loves watching it and screams if we turn it off. For the latter reason we're trying to stop her watching it. However she is remarkably good at asking in a way that Daddy finds difficult to resist - head on one side, wide eyes, cute voice, nice little smile and always with please at the end of the sentence. Do Mummy's teach their daughters this kind of manipulation or is it something girls are born with?

- Had her first haircut EVER on 2 years 7 months. It was only about an inch off to get out the knotted bits.

- In her swimming lessons she's just started going voluntarily under the water to get the little dive toys.

- Phew, the Mummy fixation has abated. Quite a relief I tell you (even for Mummy).

- She has now started the trick of asking either Mummy or Daddy for something but if the answer is "No" then she will ask the other parent. Sneaky minx. Daddy has learnt the trick that if Evie asks for something bad (like ice cream or chocolate) he tells Evie to go and ask her Mummy. Then Mummy looks like the meanie.

- She now chooses what she wears. It's fine except she now gets seen in public with some very odd colour combinations.

And finally some more plasma cart action, this time Daddy chasing Evie on her bike....

- Her vocabulary is improving all the time. She's started using the past tense (putting "ed" at the end of verbs) which amazes me.

- Is it progress? At the start of the period she developed quite a Mummy fixation. Mummy had to do everything - from picking up dropped dolls to taking her out of the bath. No-on else could do anything. Luckily this began to improve slightly towards the end of the month.

- She cut her last set of molars on her bottom jaw and these caused her quite some discomfort. Probably linked to the Mummy thing.

- She got her first bike. A bright yellow one called Zoom. She's pretty good on it but it's not as fast as some of her other modes of transport.

- Also this month we pulled out the Plasma cart. This is quite a toy and I love it, it's great around the tiled floors of the house. Not quite as good outside. Video of it being driven around our house is below. If you listen carefully you can hear Evie saying "Evie's turn, Evie's turn".

- She has really got into music class and is doing all the actions to the songs - see video below

Last video is just one of her playing on one of those rocking horses with a big spring underneath. She's really making it move.

Also a video that is really more of Ollie but on the other hand it wouldn't have been possible without Evie - it's a big download but worth it.

- Major event is that Evie is potty trained!!! It worked. Unbelieveable. We bought a book that was titled "Potty Training in One Week" and I'll be damned it actually worked!! It is a lot more pleasant, Evie's poo's were getting quite something.

- Can now pedal a trike, although her shortish legs mean she is fairly limited on what trikes she can ride.

- In the last week of this month Evie began POTTY TRAINING!! Whoohoo. Every time she goes for a wee or poo on the potty she gets a star. When she gets three stars she gets a smartie (yes a whole smartie!! - we're very generous). After 3 days she is getting 75% of her toilet stops.

Also a few videos to mark her progress - the first two are at a birthday party on the compound and the tent one gives her doing her goodnights:

- She's started sleeping in a big bed. This was a much more seemless transition that we were expecting. She hasn't got up out of bed even once in the night. Quite amazing

- Has started getting simple questions on "how many.." correct. If the answer is 1,2 or 3.

- The dressing herself is progressing - sort of. It's just hard work for us - she can do it, but the tiniest thing can distract her from the task at hand and it takes ages to get her back on track.

- After countless trips to the pool she finally goes under the water without crying. She knows now to close her eyes and mouth.

- We're up to 3 word sentences now: "Cold in there", "Ollie had Poo" and so on. She can even say "Draft Excluder"

- She can do a pretty good attempt at dressing herself. Sometimes items are the wrong way around but hey - it's getting there.

And she can dance. Look at her shake her bootie. Some lessons from Dad came in here I think.

- She is now a big sister....amusingly whenever we ask her who Ollie is, she answers - 'noise'. In actual fact she makes much more noise than he does.

- After a couple of days of arriving back in England (having not seen Evie for 5 weeks) she said "Daddy"...

- She runs everywhere. Very little walking going on and she loves playing chase with anyone (big or small).

- She can jump. It's been a long time coming but finally it is an accomplished jump.

- Her play-time is changing subtly. A lot of her play is just copying what we do in our everyday lives - laying plates, washing up, cooking. She want to do all the same things. So to this end we've starting getting her to do the hoovering....it is not, however, particularly efficient.

- She's also very investigative of objects. Seeing what things do. One way this manifests itself is that she loves playing in cars. All the buttons, knobs and lights. Just don't leave her too long or she'll flatten the battery.

- She's had a few tantrums. The thrash around on the floor screaming type ones which is amusing (when you're not in a hurry to get somewhere) and very irritating (if you want to get somewhere).

- Food has become far less interesting. She often doesn't feed herself and we have to do it. She's easily distracted from eating by all the other things around her.

- Very competent at drinking with a lid-less cup. Spillages only happen when she tries walking and drinking.

- Words are still coming along. She's got Daddy (of course), Grandad, Pete, Nanna, Gran, Brandy. R's are not generally pronounced though. Other words are Matt ball, plate, duck, boots, wellies, seat and spoon. Her talking is very cute and said very earnestly on occasions. It sounds so good I sometimes wonder if we're not the silly ones.

- Her understanding is also getting pretty good, to the extent blackmail is possible. For example - if you eat 2 spoons of gruel / weetabix I'll give you a raisin. If you stop crying we'll go on a walk to the river and look at the ducks. If you carry on crying you are going to your bedroom. Believe it or not this actually works. She'll go from being in full tantrum to a low snuffle in about 10 seconds.

- Shoes are still very very interesting. We went in a shop to buy some clothes and Evie got straight into the high heels and started trying them on.

Just before leaving Qatar Evie started swimming around the pool with just her buoyed swim suit (no arm-bands)

- She's identifying animals either by the noise they make or the actions we've shown her. Cows go 'Moo'. Sheep go 'Baa'. Donkeys go 'Hee-haw'. Gorilla's beat their chest, Kangaroos jump, Chimps scratch their armpits, and so on.

- Evie's first sentence. When asked where Mummy was - answer: "Mummy Gone". She was right Mummy had gone to the doctors.

- She's swimming. With her inflatable swimsuit and armbands on she's now making good headway across the pool by herself.

- A few new words: Mummy, Dad, boat, slide, see-saw, car. Mummy seems to have 2 meanings. The one you would expect and she also uses it whenever she wants something regardless of who the person is with her.

- Is doing a lot of copying. She's copied me waggling my legs while I was laid on the floor. More amusingly for us we recently went to some show-jumping. At prayer time our Islamic friends took residence in a tent and, facing Mecca, began praying. Hope and Evie found this quite entertaining and faced the praying group coping their praying, rocking forward and touching their heads on the floor. A photo or video would have been fantastic but I thought it was a little insensitive.

- Her humungous appetite seems to have reduced to a more normal amount for someone her size.

- A great bit of progress is that she's now on one sleep per day. It means she can now play with the 2 year old twins next door as they are awake at the same time. It also means we can actually do things together that take longer than 2 hours!!

- Co-ordination is improving all the time. Climbing, walking, throwing a ball and playing with things. She uses steps properly rather then going on all fours up and down them.

- She started taking a liking to more types of food. Mild curries, rice (which she never liked before).

- When she hears songs that are played in her music class she starts doing the actions.

- Her understanding is improving more (but her own speech is still just a babble). Jo was asking Evie what where the dog was, where the cat was and so on, in one of her books. One of the questions was where is the boat? Evie didn't know but started doing a rowing action - something she learned at music class from "Row, row, row your boat", which we thought was quite cute.

- She loves slides in the parks here and climbing up to get to them, although a fall at the start of February (after one of her climbing expeditions) has left her hobbling so she's slowed down a bit.

- She's now mega into climbing. So far she has solo scaled the heights of the sofa, the bed, her pushchair, the playstation in the garden and can also now climb into her highchair unaided.

- Is pretty good at sharing. Starting offering her food to other kiddies and Mummy and Daddy.

- She said her first word (i.e. pointed at something and said the word) - sadly for her Daddy it was "shoes". Obviously that doesn't bode well for the future. I'm sure diamonds, horses etc are not far behind.

- Fortunately later on in the month (13 months 3 weeks) I was proved wrong. 'Birds' was added to her vocabulary - she loves looking and pointing at them in our back garden

- Another thing I guess can be classed as progress is that she seems to know more and more what she wants, conversely that means when she's not getting it she's not happy bunny. Ah the growing pains.

- Loves playing with a ball - but being a girl obviously her throwing skills are a bit poor.

- She's just starting to get into questions like 'where's Daddy?' and 'where's the ball?'. She's not right all of the time but she's getting there.

The birthday photos are in the news section of the website. Walking is now very confident and she's striding around everywhere. She's also becoming more vocal again. The pictures from her birthday can be seen here.

MAJOR progress. After 10 months and 30 days (we'll call it 11 months) she's walking. Jo had been very kind to me and not attempted to get Evie walking. However on a flying visit from Qatar I put in some intensive training.

And by the end of the day (note the sleep suit) this was the result. One very proud dad.

- well she's had her first cold. Not so great. Daddy was in bad books for giving it to her.

- potty wise, still going well. She's doing her poos 3 times a day on the potty. Regular as clockwork 10minutes after getting up and directly after lunch and dinner. Jo has to eat mountains of bran to be that regular.

9 months old today!

You can just see my two bottom teeth in this one!

9 months 1 week sees her finally get the hang of crawling crawling. It's a little slow but it's on all fours. She's also started pulling herself up onto her feet.

- She's got an opinion, she's found a finger and points at everything she wants or find interesting, it's a little scary. Below is photo of her pointing to some eagles:

- She's now got 2 front top teeth and it looks like 2 more either side are on the way.

- She waved for the first time as she said goodbye to Joe, Hermione, James and Katie on holiday.

- The assisted walking has come on a bit more. Here's a short video of her at 9months 3 weeks after 10 days of walking practice with James and Katie on holiday.

- On Saturday 5th May, Evie cut her first tooth (bottom right). As parents we are feeling very proud of her, not sure why given all babies do it.

- At 8 1/2 months (14th May) she made her first deliberate and successful movement towards something she wanted. I describe it like that because to call it a crawl would be rather over-selling it. Anyway we're really chuffed and we think Evie was too. Towards the end of the play session we remembered about the camera and got the last go on film. The light isn't great though.

- The crawling didn't really improve that much over the month. She's got quite a turn of speed now but she just propels herself along on her tummy. We have tiled floors which a quite skiddy. She seems to be taking a far greater interest in walking as the following clips shows...

- Evie is now on 3 meals a day joining in on our meal times. She has now tried dairy foods and Wheatabix. Her number 2s are still pleasant although we are about to add fish and meat to her diet.

- She still sleeps 3 times a day although the routines in the books suggest that a long morning and short afternoon nap should be sufficient, perhaps this will come in time.

- Reaches for things she wants and only occasionally falls on her face rather than achieving her goal. She doesn't moan if she cannot get something herself, although if I move something she is after she has squealed at me once or twice.

- Evie can feed herself, here she has a bottle of water but she also drinks from cups now:

- Progress?.... Evie has had her first fall. Mummy feels awful about it as it is her fault. Evie can shuffle herself backwards - right off the bed, thud, onto the tile floor, yep, head first. She did not cry for long, I took that to be a good sign and there is no lump or bruise. Daddy has also produced tears this week by accidentally dunking Evie under the water in the Jacuzzi.

- Making some progress with a long morning nap and short afternoon one. Bedtime can move forwards from 8pm to 7pm, I think.

- Evie is getting two new food tastes a day so is now eating a wide variety of foods.

- Just before reaching 8 months Evie's just able to feed herself. Somewhat messily. Here's a video showing the early attempts

- Evie has been experimenting with finger foods, toast soldiers were ok, pear was a bit slippery and ended up on the floor! Somewhere along the line she has mastered the pincer grip with thumb and forefinger.

- We've made Evie's room darker for her to sleep in her cot in the daytime (she is really too big to sleep in her pram). This has given us a bonus hour of extra sleep in the mornings too - great stuff. This means she is sleeping from 7 to 7.

- Evie has started to clap her hands (Evie can now join in with 'pat-a-cake', Gran!). She makes a really sweet sound and looks totally thrilled with herself when clapping.

- I left Evie for the first time with a babysitter, I don't think she missed me :(

- Thanks to Dad's good instruction and persistence, Evie is rolling. She is not fully skilled yet because she often seems to have an arm stuck out and she doesn't realise that this is stopping her. We have found her sleeping on her side and tummy.

- Evie is quite accomplished now on her tummy. She has hated being on her front up until about 7 1/2 months and now often rolls onto her front on her own. She pushes up with her arms but cannot hold this position for too long so drops to a face plant and waggles her arms and legs frantically then raises up again and looks and see if she has moved forwards, unfortunately, all the waggling is to no avail!

If she is on the slippery tiles though she does move backwards when pushing with her arms, she managed a circuit of the bathroom like this this morning.

- Jo's stopped breastfeeding. She was rather uncomfortable for an entire week appearing to be trying to produce cheese not milk. Jo thinks she has dropped a cup size already :(

- Evie is already an accomplished potty user. We have been using the potty for months for her regular morning motion but she is now really predictable after every meal so we've expanded the routine.

- She's giggling quite a bit now as well. She finds dogs especially amusing. Here's a small giggling session...

She loves food and is eating loads but does recognise new foods and initially pouts a bit until she is used to it.

- While working in the kitchen, Evie plays in her 'exerciser' - it is on wheels and she has just grasped how to move in it. Thanks to great nanna and great grandad for the exerciser she loves it. Click here for video (15Mb).

- Evie is keen to get moving and likes to stand (no sign of a crawl yet though). She stood up in the bath unaided but hanging onto the soap dish the other day for 20 seconds. Bit of a fluke we think.

- Another breakthrough has been in vocalising, she now goos and gaas and says dada.

Started having 1 meal of running baby rice at 5 months 1 week. She was starting to need something extra to what mummy could provide.

Whoohoo - 5 months 3 weeks (23rd Feb) she's sitting up unaided. A little unstable and lots of concentration required - but still there.

A week after the initial sitting up - this is the result. Click below for short videos. The second one was videoed with the camera on its side and we don't have the technology to turn it - you'll just have to turn your PC or head.

The week before Christmas. She Absolutely loved the attention of all her relatives. Some big progress steps:

- Smiling at mummy when she walks in the room. Not just reacting to someone smiling at her but starting smiling at her most special person....

- Strong grip and really playing with toys and grabbing them - not just hitting them.

A couple more photos. Evie's getting much more chilled, she's going to sleep much easier again and is generally being cute. We're giving her some 'tummy time' as well to get her used to holding up her head. She's started looking at her hands - a sign apparently that she's now realised they are hers....

- Finally managed to capture those smiles....at last we can share what we've been seeing for 3 weeks.

- The co-ordination is coming through - she can now grab things on her mobile with a reasonable success rate.

Those are the good things - the bad thing is that she seems to have forgotten how to fall asleep......she cries for ages before dropping off.

The smiles are becoming much more common and as a reaction to people, but it's proving tricky to capture them on camera. The flash and anti-red eye seems to literally take the smile off her face...

She's also taken to the sling we bought to move her around - allows us to be a bit more mobile than just a pram.

We heard the first noises that weren't cries. The start of gurling/talking noises.

Week 5 was back to Boston to see lots and lots of people. Evie took it all in her stride and I think rather liked the attention. We saw her first ever smile. This was the week she really got an appetite and we had to feed her on formula for a few days as Jo couldn't keep up.

Right on the edge of 2-3 weeks we had our first outing to pub after Evie's birth. Aahh the beer tasted good. Nothing to do with her development, but it was the first time Mum & Dad felt life might one day have some aspects of normality about it.

The taped sleeve is to stop her from sucking a finger that has been covered with cream for against a nail infection.

Finally the graphs - weight....She was a very small baby - 91% of babies were bigger than her - not very surprising given the size of her parents. Directly after birth she fell to the smallest 0.4% of the population. After that we've seen a steady increase and she's piling on the lbs (well oz) now. She's progressed from having 1 chin to about 2.5 now and her legs are getting fat rolls on them. At 6months she was still on the small side but moving up the scale - only 80% of babies are bigger than her. By 9months she was getting close to average - only 60% of babies were bigger than her.