By all mean thrash

A slight start when Alison walked through the door as I was preparing tea with nearly 4 hours of her shift left to go but not as much as the start Alison received when a patient bit her at work. She had tried to call but I was out so she had walked back from casualty armed with some antibiotics after it was decided that a tetanus was unnecessary.
   It is probably just me but there seems to be a spate of baby stories although I presume that I am more aware of them in the same way that adverts for car insurance on the back of busses become noticeable when my premium is due. My own personal take is that one would think that the younger the baby the harder it would be to take care of but I look back on the first 6 months now and think it was quite straight forward. While everything needed to be done for her Bethany's needs at that stage were quite simplistic and she slept for a lot of the time. Added to that Alison was still on her maternity leave so at least freeing up our weekends when we would go out somewhere - often to the seaside if the weather was nice.
   As Bethany got older, however, I realised that you could no longer just put her down somewhere if I needed to nip to the toilet for instance as she started to crawl around and would require strapping in somewhere first. Now that she has outgrown the baby bouncers and seats and happily toddles around we were required to baby proof the house and move everything out of her reach - the dining room table can become quite cluttered during the day. Yes there is no more sterilizing bottles but there is the falling over and the teething and as I work during the week and Alison at the weekend we seldom have the both of us on hand to help each other.

   I am perfectly aware that if I think it is tougher now when I was almost willing this time to hurry up when we could have more interaction with Bethany then I know that it will get harder still as we look forward to the "terrible twos" and the temper tantrums and the moody teenage years. For all that, without wishing to be overly sentimental it is absolutely worth it for the times when Bethany is laughing and dancing around the room or doing some new thing that excites her. Today it was to tease me with her food as she has found it fun to feed us with her food as if she was repaying the compliment only this afternoon as she proffered me some dried mango and went to put it in my mouth she withdrew her hand at the last moment. This she repeated several times before eating it herself. On the less cute side she also managed to climb into her high chair with only the tray preventing her from sitting down properly. Alison managed to rescue her from that predicament as her legs dangled dangerously from the sides.