Lovely Little E at almost 16 months

E is a delight to be around lately.

She is a very busy, important litlte thing. Quite steady on her feet, she trots and bustles around the room, perfectly intent on completing whatever task is at hand. She has started engaging in the cutest imaginative play. Big favourites are her teddy, plastic dolly and a little dog on a string who barks when pulled around. She is obsessed with feeding all three of them and putting them to bed. When I suggest "is dolly hungry?" she grabs the cloest block and shoves it at dolly's face whilst yelling "yum yum, yum yum!" If I then say "does dolly want to go to bed?" she shoves dolly into her wooden cot and throws her blanket on top. Two seconds later dolly invariably wants to get up , whereupon her blanket is ripped off and dolly grabbed by one arm so she can wake up. She gives dolly and various other toys cuddles which involve clutching them to her chest, rocking back and forth and vigorously slapping their backs. (She also sometimes gives D and I lovely cuddles which involve resting her little head on our shoulder and then patting our backs).

Every day we notice more and more language. Her latest additions are "Dee" (Daddy), "bean" and "where's it gone?"

She still loves books and is developing firm favourites if not obsessions. The latest ones are anything with flaps, particularly Spot and a Peek-a-boo book, but still Shirley Hughes and books with photos of animals. Her favourites we can do 10 or more times a day; often as we hit the last page she turns straight back over and demands loudly "more! more!"

A large part of why I am finding our days easier is that I am getting a really decent break in the middle of the day. We seem to be in a reasonably fixed routine (famous last words!) of waking up between 6:00-6:30am, having a big breakfast, snacking throughout the morning, a small lunch at about 11:00-12:00, then sleeping from about 12:30pm for 2 - 2.5 hours. She then wakes up happy at about 2:30-3:00, has afternoon tea and plays pretty happily until about 4:30/5:00 when I turn on Playschool so I can get dinner ready. We are trying to all eat dinner together at about 5:30/5:45 depending on when D gets home.

Although I am still hoping to find a few days work a week I am really enjoying my days at home with E, and I think I will look back fondly on this time.