Six Month Review

I have been very pleased with Lyra's performance this month.

Lyra has consistently strived to achieve to the best of the ability whether in rolling, crawling, sitting or eating.

Sadly, her best is not always good enough. This is aptly exemplified by her poor sitting skills which still leave something to be desired and are woefully less adequate than her peers'. However, her sitting skills have advanced enough to allow her to progress to the next level of bath throne (see above). Management are happy to see this change as the previous throne is no longer fulfilling the requirements of our rigorous health and safety policy since Lyra progressed to the rank of 'roly poly baby'.

Despite her poor sitting skills, Lyra has shuffled ahead on the crawling front. She is now able to move fairly proficiently on her belly, generally in a worm-like fashion and often backwards though earlier this month she was seen to 'crawl properly' for three steps - before collapsing from sheer exhaustion.

Lyra has continued to excel at standing up and was seen to hold herself steady in an upright position for over a minute earlier this month whilst gripping onto the sofa for dear life.

So far as food has been concerned, again this has been a successful month for Lyra. She has gone from tentative first tastes to really enjoying her food. She needs rapidly to learn some table manners and to understand that until she can learn to peel her own oranges or chop her food into batons, she will need to be patient whilst mummy does her level best. Management accepts that Mummy is somewhat under-performing and needs to increase her effectiveness and productivity. But what can you do. You just can't get the staff these days...

This month has also seen several other firsts for Lyra, the highlights include:
*First time on a swing
*First trip in a buggy
*First time on a train
*Raising both arms to indicate a desire to be carried / cuddled
*First drank from a cup
*First poured a whole glass of squash all over herself and her manager
*First pooh during 'air-time'...

Despite the disappointment of not having learnt to sit proficiently yet, on balance the management agrees that due to her other successes, Lyra has earned her payrise this month.

We look forward to charting progress at next month's review where we hope to hear that Lyra has progressed to a less worm-like state of crawling.


Pooky Hesmondhalgh, Line manager

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Five Month Review

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(For those of you who were astounded Yesterday at Lyra's late wake up times... two confessions... 1. Today she didn't get up until 11.46am! and 2. She sleeps in purely because we keep her up until we go to bed between 10 and 11pm because we love to spend time with her in the evenings.)