Thirteen months

There are so many things to learn during your first thirteen months of life... for example, what to do with the paper tissues the grown-ups insist on wiping your snotty nose with. One thing you can do is to rip them into confetti and throw the bits all over the floor, after which someone gathers them up and puts them in a bin. This is an amusing and satisfying game, at least for a while.

Alternatively, you can forestall the undignified wiping of your nose by someone else, by taking a tissue and doing it yourself. This generally garners quite a lot of applause, which is always appreciated. Once this trick becomes a bit old hat, you can elaborate on it by wiping first your own nose and then Grandma's - which induces hilarity among the grown-ups, but also a certain amount of consternation in Grandma, who seems to think that your viral load might better be kept to yourself. When you elaborate still further, by wiping your own nose, then Grandma's, and then the surface of the coffee table, Grandma goes and fetches actual cleaning materials and sanitises the coffee table, which - like much that grown-ups do - is inexplicable, but quite interesting.

Poor Baby B was a veritable snot-bucket today, and thus wasn't on top form, but R and I still had plenty of fun with him. It's endlessly fascinating to watch his physical skills developing, and new ones appearing, week on week. His standing balance is continuing to improve, and when he walks while holding someone's hands it's clear that he's working hard to balance by himself, and putting the least weight he can manage on the supporting adult hands. His vocalisation is also getting clearer, and he understands more words every time we see him - when asked, he can now point to his own nose, for example, which is (of course) quite charming.