This week is a bit crazy. For one reason or another I haven’t run for over a week (but I DID nail that 25 minute run on the third attempt) plus I’m up to my eyes in packing to go on holiday shortly. I have posts promised for BitchBuzz that I should be writing, but this week also marks ten months since I first met a certain little person, and I have to take this opportunity to mark that.

This is truly the golden bit of babyness, I think, if there is one. Sometimes when you’re on the treadmill of teething and nap schedules gone astray it’s hard to remember how very exciting the bit between six months and toddlerhood is. Each stage has its own joys, but it’s just so lovely to see her burgeoning independence now.

She crawls (yes, she finally got it!) just far enough to be able to pull herself up and cruise the furniture. She then flomps down, deliberately, next to a book, and turns the pages, groaning and grunting the story to herself. She changes her mind from one meal to the next about whether she wants sludge or finger food, and what she’ll deign to chew, and she’s obsessed with her water cup. She wakes up dozy and cute and then pulls herself up to look over the cot at me “like a small rising moon, wearing a wig” to quote her father. She examines her toys minutely, and has taken to stroking a stuffed weasel and groaning at it (the repetitive drone is something of a favourite with her when she’s got something interesting to look at, like, erm, a label). She knows Winnie the Pooh and the Trouble with Bees so well that she knows when I’m quoting it, even if it’s nowhere near her, and she smiles in anticipation of the ‘buzz buzz buzz’ lines.

She is observant and smart. Today a woman in a shop gave her a great compliment: “she’s so alert!”. Sure she’s adorable and cute and precious and all those things, but how much better to be recognised by the sparkle in your eye and the brightness you exude.

I am outstandingly, abundantly, superlatively proud of her. And at the same time as being impatient to look back on her first year, I’m in no hurry to wish these days away (except the teething. Please. God. A tooth. My virtual kingdom for a bloody tooth).