1. Watching Ellie -- she's now 16 months old -- negotiating the step from the path to the lawn. She practises again and again until she can do it.
2. She is at the copying stage -- at lunch I catch her resting her face on her hand like I am. And she pretends to re-fill our glasses from an empty bottle. She also walks up and down the garden 'sniffing' at flowers -- she hasn't quite got sniffing yet; she blows instead. Alan and Cat say that she got this idea from her grandmother.
3. It is remarkable to see Ellie starting to make sense of the world. She points at the green man on the street crossing; and she spots and identifies a stencilled graffiti cat. And she recognises that her toy lion, a lion in a picture book and the Lion King logo are all lions -- which is quite an achievement to my mind.
4. Ellie's wicked laugh as she destroys my towers of bricks. 'That's a new laugh,' comments Cat. 'Where did she get the bending double from?' But even more pleasing is Ellie starting to build her own towers. At first, she's rubbish at it and they fall down because she doesn't balance the blocks properly, and tries to pile things on the orange curved brick; but after a few tries she gets it, and her tower begins to grow -- although she gets excited and knocks it down before it is very tall.
