Another week passes and more damage is inflicted upon the house only this time not all of it is Bethany's fault. Rushing around last Sunday as I tidied before going to pick Alison up from work I wiped some crumbs from the wooden chopping board only for it to slip out of my hand as I turned to put it back. It caught the rounded edge on the front of the worktop taking a sliver out of the surface which cut through the board and embedded itself in the wood. Save for a small fragment that sliver glued back into place which is hardly professional but looks better than the exposed MDF or chipboard underneath.
   Not that Bethany hasn't been trying her utmost to redesign to her own specifications, mainly through the medium of crayon. The polystyrene style stones on the fireplace were brightened up with some pink crayon as well as the surround. While I applied Flash to the surround and sought help from Twitter for the 'stones' (WD40 apparently - although I've yet to try as the reverse had the graffiti so just left them for the time being) Bethany contiued her artwork by colouring in the screen on the television in the kitchen. Thankfully a damp cloth was all that was required to restore it to its usual condition.
   Her climbing continues apace and if you turn your back for the briefest of moments she will be on the dining room table and shuffling any papers you left there thinking that they were out of her way. Her
latest trick last night was to wedge a disc in the DVD player and as I stuck my fingers in to try and extract it to no avail she thought it funny to keep pressing the on/off button thus causing the drawer to open and close with my hand still inside and the cogs inside tickling my fingertips. After she went to bed I returned to the scene with a screwdriver and took the casing off allowing me to get the errant disc. It is working now but sounds a bit 'whirrier' than it did before. The remote control is still missing for it also.
   Bethany is also gaining more confidence climbing down as well as up when this morning she refused my hand and led herself down stairs using the banister for support until she got to the last few steps where the safety gate was in her path and she took my hand. Also in the play area at the Shuttle & Loom last week she managed to climb to the top but struggled to get back down. There were some other children playing in it who helped her down but she went back up later on and halted at a section of tubing where the floor was cut out and criss-crossed with straps. By this stage Alison had to retrieve her and we expected the same today but she crossed the straps no problem and paused at the perspex end of the tube to wave at us. She also managed to get down herself although Alison did have to go up a couple of times as the top level step was a little too high. She was about to hoist herself up that last step on one occasion when her ice cream came to the table. Telling her it was ready she understood and came down for her dessert, which she tried to share with us thus spilling chocolate ice cream down my front.
   Whilst her vocabulary continues to develop and she can repeat strings of words together she understands far more than you would expect from the still limited speech. I can thus ask her to put something in the bin or tidy something up and she will do so. If I put her shoes on and say we're going out she is standing by the door pointing at her coat and saying "coat" and "Let's Go". This morning round my parents she was trying to get out into the garden and using a padlock key on the door when my mam told her that "Grandad has the key, you'll have to see him". She duly went into the other room, brought my dad back and pointed at the door until he gave her the key from his pocket. We definitely need to stop swearing when we're not thinking.