Don't look now, but...

Last night I went to bed at about 10 pm and Linnea went at 11 pm. Yes, that's right. I lay down to try to get her to sleep, and she leapt up revitalised and I couldn't move. So that was that. However, I'm putting it down to the cold I've had lately which is affecting my ears, nose and throat. On Sunday I kept getting hot and cold, too.

We all woke at a more or less normal time today and Rob went to work and Linnea and I set about our day. She napped from 2 to 4 pm, which is spectacularly good timing as far as her night's sleep is concerned, and we played a lot.

We played Hanging Out The Clean Wet Nappies, and Put The Nappy On The Donkey, and Putting The Washing On, and Hanging Out The Washing, and Washing the Dishes, and Brushing Teeth and Washing Hands, and Tidy Up Tidy Up, and Drawing With Chalk, and Rolling On The Floor, and Dancing Madly, and Cuddle Cuddle Cuddle, and Kisses (this one is complicated: A baby with a mouthful of masticated muffin pulls the unsuspecting adult in for a cuddle, presses noses in a charming and gleeful manner, love overflowing in bucketfuls, then closes in for a mouth-to-mouth kiss, grinning widely. Yup. You try kissing and grinning at the same time with a mouthful of muffin. See?), and Books, and then she took me upstairs and said she was tired.

She wasn't, but she did need a nappy change and a feed and a cuddle, so we did that, and then she played all on her own in her room for ages. Possibly an hour. It was a bit nervewracking for me, but she was perfectly happy with her blocks and her lego, and I did get the week's meals planned and the shopping list composed and emailed to the organic supplier, so that was good.

She came down for lunch and then really did want to go to sleep, only she didn't want to lie still, so I hypnotised her with TV again, and after a while she stayed still enough to be nursed to sleep. Then she had her monster nap.

While she was napping a market researcher came around, who had called earlier in the week while I was insanely busy, and I let her in and we had a cup of tea and I answered a whole lot of questions (Do we have Carlton or Meridian ITV here? How would I know? How many hours of commercial TV do I watch in a week? None. Do adverts in TV or in magazines influence my purchasing decisions more? Um, neither. Which daily newspaper do I read? None. And so on and so on).

Then Linnea woke up and demanded to be taken for a walk, so she walked me to Friend Nicky's house (no-one was in because Nicky was at work) and then to the playground, where she played happily for about an hour. She has a lovely new trick of climbing up the slide, running across the platform, and jumping off the ledge. The ledge is higher than my head. Rob had told me about this new game, and now I've seen it for myself, and I heartily concur with his recommendation that we avoid that playground like the plague from now on and only go places with much lower ledges. But they say an adrenaline rush every now and then is good for one.

I'm making more flapjacks. This time they have raisins in. I really must come up with some more things to bake. We're bound to tire of flapjacks and banana muffins eventually. I wonder if I could do a nice dairy-free carrot cake? Can anyone recommend a recipe?