Water, water everywhere...

July has been a month of steady progress for Saskia - more swimming, more eating, more nursery and more seeing friends and family left, right and centre. It also had a distinctly wet last week as the mighty Chelt burst its banks after days of rain, and turned the town upside down for a chaotic fortnight. Fortunately Sas' world wasn't badly affected, even if baths became a bit of a rarity for several days...

Saskia started off the month getting a taster of the exciting world of big kids (well, relatively speaking) at Hannah Wilson's first birthday in London. Quite a busy few hours for Sas trying to avoid being trampled on by the cosmopolitan Kensington & Chelsea NCT baby contingent as they showed how good most of them are at walking, opening presents, not to mention reorganising the Wilson living room. She found it a bit safer being held by her mum instead! At least the next day she got a go on Hannah's baby walker (see below).

Swimming classes have been carrying on weekly, with Sas getting more and more confident as she gets used to the trauma of her mum splashing her in the face - part of the lesson incidentally, not just Wendy getting frustrated. Unfortunately the last lesson of the month was cancelled following the floods as the swimming pool sank underwater (!), so Sas is waiting to test her new-found paddling skills somewhere else. We'll see if her holiday at the end of the month helps on this front.



She's been continuing to eat well, showing this off to Auntie Naomi when she came to visit early July. Cauliflower cheese is the latest favourite, and although we've taken the precaution of trussing her up head to toe in a giant bib she's not half as messy an eater as we feared - famous last words of course.

Granny and Grandpa also came to visit, just in time to have their grandparenting skills put to the test while Wendy was taken over by an urgent translation job! The three of us stretched our legs round rainy Cheltenham on several walks wheeling Sas around Pittville Park and Battledown leaving Wendy at home to work.



And finally to Cheltenham's semi-biblical flood of the 20th July. Wendy and Sas firstly got drenched in the rain as they went into town to get hold of the last few bits and bobs for our holiday, after which they turned up at nursery looking like a pair of drowned rats. A few hours later, Tim was on pickup duty and found himself literally coming through hell and high water on his way to the nursery - well, a flooded NT carpark, some Dr Foster-on-his-way-to-Gloucester-sized puddles and an improvised ford across Old Bath Road. Sas waited patiently at Circus contemplating putting her swimming skills to good use to get home, but fortunately things didn't quite come to this and we all got home safely.

Miraculously, while most of the rest of town was out of running water, Harp Hill seemed to have its own private supply and we were able to keep on washing etc for a few more days. Sas had to be washed in the basin though, as we had to fill the bath to use as our emergency supply! We didn't have to use the infamous bowsers - or not immediately at least.

So our holiday to the Dolomites came just in time, when our water did finally run out on the 26th. We packed up the car once again and set off gratefully to the airport looking forward to some welcome sunshine and (hot) showers.

Hip hip purée!

What a busy month Saskia has had! Since coming back from holiday she has gone to and fro across the country several times, eaten her first meals, learnt to swim underwater (kind of) and has gone to nursery for the first time.



Sas has seen her family quite a bit in this month. Firstly Gran and Grandad Weiss came to stay over the second May bank holiday weekend, when it rained almost continuously! We had a nice dinner though indoors as Sas slept peacefully upstairs, and went out to the pub in Lower Oddington for lunch the next day - the same pub Sas went to when she was a few weeks old in fact, although now she's twice the size.

Shortly afterwards Wendy took her on a three-day expedition to Hitchin to clear out her old bedroom. After a marathon six-hour journey through horrendous traffic (including an emergency feed on the hard shoulder), the two young ladies got safely to West Hill, where they then received multiple visits from surrogate aunties bearing gifts. After a few days of not knowing what to do with all these unbroken nights' sleep, life got back to normal for Daddy once more when W&S got home again, having visited Nicky and baby Jack in Watford en route.



No sooner than they were home, we went off to Rickmansworth for the weekend to stay with Pete and Clare. This was back in the glory days of when we thought we were in for a nice summer, so we all had a lovely few sunny days in their garden and around the parks and shops of Ricky. We also saw Sarah and Simone and their baby Leo for dinner on the Friday night. The only downer was Tim having to go bleary-eyed and hung over to a meeting on the Saturday morning in London - not sure how convincing I was talking about Economics in these circumstances.

The following Friday marked an exciting step for both mother and daughter as Sas started going to nursery. Only one half day a week for now, but a big event for everyone nonetheless. After her first afternoon at the Circus, the staff generously said she had been "a bit unsettled" which - reading between the lines - probably means she spent most of the time in tears... On the plus side, she seems to have got to know the entire staff from being passed round for a cuddle to cheer her up, and they couldn't stop saying how cute she is!

Seeing as we couldn't let a few days go by without introducing Sas to something else new, the next week saw her moving onto solid foods for the first time. Or almost solid, that is. She has now already gone through virtually the full menu of purée options - carrot, potato, courgette, broccoli and sweet potato, and that was all before the end of June! Sas seems to prefer her veg to her fruit for now, and enthusiastically grabs the spoon as it comes her way, sticks it and her thumb in her mouth at the same time and soon gets mushy veg smeared all over herself, Mummy, the table etc.



We were off to Cambridge later in the month to see the grandparents again, admiring the blooming gardens at Lansdowne Road and Clare College. This was one of the few nights when Sas has lulled us into a false sense of security by sleeping through from 7 till 7 - don't worry, she soon realised how ridiculous an idea this was and has resorted back to her usual 7-11-4-7 routine. She also wowed Gran and Grandad with her eating prowess, while splattering their kitchen with semi-liquid courgette...

Finally, at the end of June Sas had her first proper "Waterbabies" swimming lesson - having dipped her toe in the water (!) in Corsica and with the NCT crowd at the Leisure Centre. The teacher wasted no time and dunked Saskia and the other babies underwater before they realised what was happening. Sas and her friend Elliott (Seonaid's son) were the big rowdy kids of the class, splashing about while the younger babies cowered in the shallow end.

What an action-packed month then - July will see us go on holiday again though, so Sas won't be getting bored in the near future!