The last few weeks have seen Heidi develop a little more each day, and more of her personality come through.

Not a great deal has happened for her, other than her crawling is almost there and she really is trying to get to grips with that. Her legs push well, and she lifts herself up at the front nicely, only it does not work yet.

Rolling to her destination is a viable option but is doesn’t always work quite as planned, so a clunk on the head sometimes results as she heads off the carpet to a piece of furniture.

Waving is her new one and this becomes more animated during “In the Night Garden.” In fact if you stand between her and the television she cranes her neck to see the screen. Not the best developmental milestone, but she seems to enjoy that part of the day at 1815h after her bath. It is good to see she is immensely curious in some things that distract and other times she seems to filter it out, engrossed in something else.

Her foods have got more lumpy now and she really likes all sorts of food. Its quite interesting trying out different combinations for her to try, and Rachel is the main chef on this. I’ll do chicken and meat and finely chop it, then carefully freeze it for later. Hopefully soon we’ll get around to pureeing own food for her, minus salt and seasoning which will be good for her and Rachel, but not so for me.

Heidi is heading toward her first Christmas and so presents are arriving, which is nice. The tree is up and she likes to look at the lights. In the next day or two we’ll put the presents under the tree and get a picture of her rooting about.

Paper really is her thing at the moment, with her destroying my newspaper the other day, reducing it to a small ball withing minutes and then chewing as best she could to eat it. Even Lidl’s flyers are not left alone. She’ll regret paper cuts in due course.

So today is Christmas Eve, and Heidi has been spying her presents and packages under the Christmas tree. All different sizes and shapes, she was agog at them coming out of the bags. Two years ago we were in Bristol, at CLIC House with Fred when he came down with norovirus, and subsequently us too – all round a grim time. Hopefully Heidi will enjoy her next few days, being busy and cuddled a lot more than normal.

Happy Christmas from the Wills family……