The last few weeks have been really busy though looking back, I’m not sure what we have achieved. Heidi continues to thrive and is becoming even more interactive each day.

The big smile is always there but she does keep an eye on what’s happening around her, and happily figures out where sounds are coming from when I tap on the window, or call her name, out of sight. Television is a big attraction at the moment, and obviously brightly coloured fast moving images fascinate her. At the moment, the household is transfixed by In The Night Garden. Plus I have wheeled out my Bagpuss DVD which is a hit, and I reckon theTin Tin boxed set will go down a storm.

Initially I wondered what all the fuss was about In The Night Garden, but then became hooked myself. The website explains what it is all about and seems fairly logical to me. The nonsense the Tombliboos babble is beyond me but Heidi and Rachel are occupied by it on a daily basis. Normally it is watched in the morning when Heidi is taking breakfast, or just after her bath, wrapped in a fluffy pink gown, eating her tea.

She ploughs through a fair amount of milk each day still, supplemented by cereal, fruit puree, yoghurt and now – pureed adult food. The only food she has not liked was the sprouts really, and made her nappies smell even worse. Obvious I suppose, but needed to be tried. Not sure about beetroot and stuff like that, wonder whether it will permanently stain the cloth nappies, but who knows.

We will progress her to more normal meals in her own time but she seems happy to accept whatever is thrown at her. This moves us on to highchairs and the like.

Prowling Mothercare last week end we identified a chair that looked good. She has one already that is kept at Grans, and she likes the sitting up, watching what’s happening. It’s much easier too of course to feed her at her level rather than sit on the hard floor and try it.

Today saw us head over to a colleagues house, to have a look at a Chicco high chair they no longer needed. It was just what we were looking for, adjustable height, reclining, things slide on and off and was really sturdy. Heidi has now realised she is coming up the pecking order in that she is at our level and can sit happily upright, playing with things on her little table. She initially appears a little concerned then it’s all smile for her. Another little milestone.

We also supplemented her fish tank with some new inmates. These are not fish but crustacea – little shrimps normally for live feed, but hopefully big enough and wily enough to survive our three tiddlers. Gerry has grown somewhat since his arrival and could be a source of trouble for the shrimps, but they are agile and defensive. We will have to see but five went in and 30 minutes later five are (or were) still creeping about. I love shrimps!

Heidi is happily rolling now on to her front and her legs are starting to try and propel her forward, though the strength is not there yet. Her head is up and she can sustain the weight of her bonce for quite a while. It must be tiring though as after a while she gets a bit grumpy. She needs to sort her strength too, as they tend to lurk below her and she is not sure what to do with them yet.

Another new trick is to hold her moocow by the leg and violently shake it up and down with quite a force, but not letting go. She hit herself in the eye I suspect, but she laughs so much whilst she doing it, it must be good for her.

Yesterday was the CLIC Sargent coffee morning arranged by Rachel, her mum and some others in Chagford. The weather was good and the flea market was on too, and so it was another great success. 36 draw prizes ranged from the slow cooker to many bottles of wine and grub. It was predominantly craft and foods so in the two hours we raised exactly £1000.00 which was good. This brings the total of all the fundraising our friends and families have done to somewhere in the region of £9500.00 since Fred was diagnosed. Thank you very much for all of the generosity, not just with money, but ideas and effort to actually get things moving. That will be going off to CLIC Sargent shortly. We normally specify where it can go, i.e. to a particular section which would be in the South West area, probably Bristol as that is where we were helped so much.