Dining room progress.

I know it is all about Sophie but some of you may want to hear progress on the house. We have had the decorator in who did our hall and he has whizzed round the dining room to make a tremendous difference. Not sure how long it will take us to furnish the place but at least it now looks clean and after tomorrow the floor should also be down.

A spooky couple of weeks and then a solid start

"These solids are great!"

Probably best to start with something a wee bit funny - we started Sophie on solids this week and she seems to love them. the plastic aside she has had baby porridge and baby rice - both of which she seems to just get stuck into without even thinking twice. She still wants the milk though and she wasn't into the carrots yet.

"here's my innocent face."

We've had a real rollercoaster couple of weeks actually - Katie hasn't been well again which has been tough on us all (she's better now) - coupled with the fact we had a plasterer and a painter decorator in and it all became a lot more stressful.

The hallway if you remember had polystyrene tiles and adhesive spots that had to be removed.

In the end it kind of worked out like this - just the floor to be done and we have a hallway to be proud of!

But back to the real fun - Sophie has been an absolute star throughout all the upheaval and she's even been (on occasion) only getting up once during the night - which has been great for us all.

We've taken the decision to start weaning Sophie at 5 months and as mentioned at the start of this post she's taking it all in her stride - loving the food in fact. The next stage is to gradually increase proper foods and reduce the breast feeds.

Hilary and Ailsdhair paid us a visit to see how Katie was after her latest adventure - Sophie dressed up as a bumblebee as it was Halloween.

And talking of Halloween, Sophie had her very first parties. Our thoughts on costumes for Dave and Kate's childhood heroes party ranged from Mr T to Wonder Woman but after all the kerfuffle we kept things simple and used the same Cat costume for all the parties.

"If that skeleton touches those Haribo I won't be happy". 

"Got my own!" 

Kate's costume gets stress tested.

We took a wee day trip down to Ayr on Saturday - typically for Scotland the sun was out all morning and by the time we had arrived the weather had taken a turn for the worse. We had a great time regardless.

And then we went a long walk on Sunday to Mugdock reservoir - Sophie slept most of the time but we stopped to appreciate the great sky.

Finally - Katie and Sophie also caught up with Jenny Soep recently - a talented artist that Katie has known since childhood. She did a wee sketch of Sophie that I will post at some point.

Daddys arms

I am honestly struggling to type at this present moment as I have spent all weekend trying to get adhesive from polystyrene tiles off of the hallway ceiling. It is thankfully all done and the plasterer is coming tomorrow to make it look all shiny and new. Unfortunately my arms aren't feeling like new but I am looking a bit shiny from all the steam.

If anyone is ever thinking of doing this job I would seriously advise you to either a) think again b) give yourself more than a weekend.

Anyway - for those who are interested in the house progress as well as the cheeky wee girl - we're having the hall plastered tomorrow, decorated next weekend and then getting someone in to lay a floor next month. Then we should just about have a hallway we don't need to hide from visitors to our door.

Anyway - while all the work goes on Sophie continues to be a hundred miles an hour and as cheeky as ever.

She's been rolling around the mat and this week rolled from her front to her back expertly. She also managed to get her toes into her mouth and she is at the stage where everything needs to get grabbed and thrown away.

We wrapped her up last weekend and took her out for a long walk. She had a great time as usual even though the weather wasn't very good.

"ready to go yet?"

"Is the giraffe coming as well?"

"loving my new clothes"

Sophie and Katie have had another busy week of visitors - this week it was Noan and Hazel. Noan joined Mum and Sophie for a wee swim down the pool and then they met Hazel out and about for a bite to eat.

Sophie has had a really spectacularly busy week this week and over the next few weeks Dad is going to be spectacularly busy but we'll try and keep the pics coming.