This is obviously turning in to a monthly blogg, captain kirk would not approve I don't think.

Baby now 9 weeks old, still not quite sleeping through the night but getting there. Generally put her down at 8pm after her evening feed and then wake her at 10:30/11pm for her 'dream feed'. She will usually wake at about half 4 crying as if hungry, but after a short feed on mummy generally voms' it up and goes back to sleep until 7ish. So getting her through that early morning feed is the last frontier as far as sleep goes.

Getting a lot more alert now, loves playing on mat (with dangly things on it) and the bucket-seat type thing that vibrates, but which we call the 'chair of neglect'!!

The elder has still not hit her which is promising, although we had a few tantrums earlier in the month when introducing him to his new bed. Didn't like it to begin with after 2 nights of continually getting out of bed and crying (asking to get back in to his old cot!), we persevered with putting him back in and he now sleeps fine, and it also means we do not have to get up in morning when he wakes!! he just gets out and jumps on us.

He has also become progressively scared of the dark, which at first was very annoying as did not trust him to sleep well with the light on. However, we have turned the situation around to work in our favour. He sleeps with the door open and the landing light on, but with his room light turned off. If ever he is trying to stay awake or will not go to bed, we simply tell him that unless he goes to sleep now we will turn the light off and shut the door. Sounds a bit cruel, but he goes straight down to sleep every night. And when we go to bed we turn the light off anyway so he can't be too scared of the dark.

Before I sign off, our neighbours told me a story yesterday which should make you laugh, it certainly did to me. And is honestly a true story.

They have a son aged 2 and half, so talking ok, but a limited vocabulary. She was posting a package to her parents last week and so went down to the post office in town with him to get the stamps. There was a queue, and after walking in to town her son was a little restless so she had picked him up to go in to the post office.

As her arms tired she decided she had to put him down. So, as soon as she put him down he started screamming at the top of his voice, getting hysterical. This was a bit of an over-reaction even for a 2 year old so asked him what the problem was. His response was to point at the boy in the queue next to him proclaiming 'nasty black boy' again and again so that not only everyone in the busy post office, but everybody in the shopping centre will have heard!!! So she starts telling him off for using that phrase and trying to calm him down, apologising to the boy and her mum.

Now unbeknown to her, it turns out that there is a boy at nursery not unlike this little boy next to them who is a lot bigger than the rest and I am sure has taken a toy from him at some point, but no different to all the other boys, apart obviously from his colour. So she is obviously feeling very embarrassed at this stage, but it got worse.

She finally calms him down and gets to the counter, and with everyone looking at her with a scowl she whispers where she is sending the package. The counter staff claimed she couldn't hear, so she pushed it up against the screen, with the address showing and whispers again. Again the counter staff says she will need to speak louder, at which point she has to raise her voice and says 'Johannesburg'. Only a few people around would have heard her but to top her experience off the counter staff replies (quite deliberately she says) so that everyone can hear 'so you're sending it to South Africa'.

She is not going back to that Post Office.