We had a lovely day. Nanna came and Nathan showed her all his new skills, including his "fake talking" where he says "ahh mmmh vvvvv mmmmm" etc, just like real speech patterns, but without real words (at least not words we can understand).

By chance we offered the lad a Mars bar, and he took a few bites. This is pretty amazing because all previous encounters with chocolate were of of the urgh variety.

Another first. Nathan crawled over our bristly welcome mat, previously a no-go area for him, and down onto our front door step, where he threw bits of kicked-up gravel onto the driveway, until Mum came home.

Nathan was in a really good mood today. He's discovered that he can stand up in his cot in the morning, open the door, and look out. It's a funny sight to see. He was more independent than usual, and seemed quite happy roaming around the house, causing havoc.

In the afternoon the lad had a feeding frenzy, demolishing a couple of chocolate digestives and a third of a banana. More than he usually eats in a week in fact. He also managed to communicate that he wanted a different (Nathan said "di") book to the one that had just been read to him.

We came home via Monkey World in Dorset.

Nathan loved being back home so much he crawled up and down the house like a mad thing for at least half an hour.

A late start today. The lad had a sleep when we were still at home so we sat about reading until he awoke. Then we went to Exmouth beach for the afternoon.

We've been trying to teach Nathan to say "pardon me" after burping, and today he did (he said "Paa")

Nathan's learning to count. If you say "one" he says "two", then he sometimes starts off with "one", you say "two" and he says "three". He's even been known to say all three when "lummoxing" (the only word that adequately describes the lad when he throws himself around).

We didn't waste the first hot day for a while. We spent the day on the (sandy) beach at Exmouth.

Nathan sat on our blanket for a while but got a bit tired of the sand after a while, and spent the last hour in his buggy, happily looking at the world around him.