And by the way, a very happy new year to everyone! We are going out with Elsie for a little while to see our buddies and have a couple of drinks in a bit, but then it'll be back for nine to get Elsie to bed, and then we can see in the new year just Rob and I - oh the rock and roll life of parents!

Here is a picture taken on Great Uncle Andrew's phone that I have just managed to download.

This was on the 28th when we all went out for our big family curry meal. She is wearing her amazing monsoon top from Sarah that she got for her birthday - I love it so much!

Close up of the shoes!

Granny and granddad's Christmas present for Elsie was a year's worth of shoes, hoorah! And as she is getting to be such a big girl now we took her to Clarks while we were up in Halifax to be measured for her first proper pair.

Here she is this morning, eating second breakfast and wearing them!

On in the background here is Elsie - the Movie! Shot by granny and myself, and edited magnificently by grandad, it is possibly the best film ever!

Jingle bells, jingle bells...

Play it or cuddle it?... hmmmm...

My little beauty.

Happy Christmas to everyone!

We have been in Exminster and Krumlin for the festive period, so I haven't blogged in a while. It has been lovely seeing so many people (lots of whom normally only get to see the little lady on this blog!)

Elsie is changing so much - a lot of people have told me they change in many ways when they get past one, or maybe it's just that I've spent so much time with her (which has been gorgeous) so I see the difference.

Anyway... I haven't got long now so this is another picture from a couple of weeks ago - here Elsie has whipped herself into a crazy drumming frenzy!

And here she is with a couple of her musical shaky things from Great Grandad John and Great GranMary, which she also loves.

Oh, I also wanted to say a huge thank you today to everyone who sent Elsie lovely cards, pressies (or furnished us with the means to buy her pressies!) for her birthday. She is a very lucky girl indeed.

Here she is with her drum from gran and grandad, which she loves! She got lots of musical pressies and enjoys them so much, it is brilliant.

The other exciting thing about these pictures (taken yesterday) is that she is wearing the top that Paula bought for her when she was born, which fits her now. I have been looking forward to her wearing this all year, it is sooo beautiful!

Beautiful girl.

Elsie with granny, when she came down on her white charger to save the day!

Elsie is down for her afternoon nap - following another humungous poo (she is doing a lot of these recently, ones that escape from the nappy and make soo much mess, I thought those days were behind us!)

We have decided on a change of tactic with her food - after much deliberation between Rob and I. It is hard because we are so different and we have very different instinctive ways of dealing with the situation (Elsie is refusing food more these days, and prefers finger food that she can feed herself with). Rob's instinctive reaction is to say if she doesn't eat what we give her she doesn't get anything, and mine is to see what she wants and give her that as long as it's healthy. I think, with food particularly that we should be more relaxed and flexible with things. The thing is she eats pretty much everything and we are really lucky about that, she is just going off being spoon fed. I don't want to just give her everything she wants all the time, but I don't want to create issues where there needn't be one. I don't know. The thing is neither of us knows, no-one knows for certain I suppose what is for the best. I do know that we both want to do the right thing for Elsie, but it's hard when our instincts are telling us different things.

Anyway... we're going to try giving her more food that she can eat herself, and hopefully that will be fine. I just don't know what we'll do with the twenty seven boxes of frozen stuff I've already made up for her, which are currently in our freezer!

This is Elsie with RobBob in Carluccios, back on our trip to London.

Today brings a break with Elsie’s blog tradition, and we feature a picture that doesn’t contain Elsie – weird! What’s the point in that?! I hear you cry – but this was Dan’s birthday card for Elsie and I liked it so much I wanted to share it. It makes me laugh because it is a bit like Rob and I were (and still are sometimes!) faced with this unknown creature a year ago. But we have done ok, more than ok – we have a beautiful, happy, healthy (most of time!) little girl who smiles and laughs more than anyone else I know.

So, here’s to not being perfect parents, to not being super mum, to not reading too many books about what to do that make you worry you’re doing something wrong. Here’s to just doing what feels right and trusting that between you, you can figure out what works for you – and believing that you have a lot of the instincts needed to be really good at it. Here’s to having a baby that may occasionally have poo on her face in public, but who is loved so utterly, completely and overwhelmingly. Here’s to wells of previously unimaginable joy.

I would like to dedicate this post to all of the un-super, but very loving and marvellous mums reading, of lucky babies both born and unborn. Hoorah!

Oh no, the scanned card image is only a bloody bitmap isn’t it, which means I can’t upload it, how annoying. Oh well, it’s funny, you’ll just have to trust me!!

So actually we won’t break from tradition at all! Here is Elsie, yay! Just chillin’ on her walker.

Birthday supper!

Elsie is one! Can you believe it?! Woweeee!!

I forgot to take a picture that I could upload tonight until she was just about to go to bed, so I'm afraid it's a bit rubbish - but this is Elsie on her first birthday!

Friday 24 November
Playing with the treasure basket, and we are playing peek a boo with the teddy. Elsie really enjoyed this activity.
We are watching the trees blowing, and waving our arms and dancing like the trees.

They didn't write much yesterday and she wasn't in for ages before that, so we have to go all the way back to...

28 November
Elsie was playing nicely in the garden centre.
Looking at books with Ace, Millie and Kay.
Playing in the Hip and Hop nicely. Enjoying singing nursery rhymes with all her friends.

This is Elsie and the lovely Lizzy having a marvellous time in Carluccios. This was just after we got stuck in the hail storm in Hyde Park.

We haven't had an update from nursery in a while so here we go:

6 December
Playing happy with the rattles.
We are painting Christmas trees for the display board.
We are singing and dancing to the Christmas songs.

And then we had a go together!

But unfortunately night was drawing in, so after a quick go on the swing with granny we had to head home, but what excitement we had had...!

We've caught up with piccies now - back to our adventures in the park. This is Elsie on the slide!

Lovely of granny but Elsie looks quite gormless!

Elsie with her granny, not the last visit but the one before!

Last night was the worst night we have had in months. She was up every five minutes between half ten and about one, so I am so tired today. She went straight to sleep tonight though so (frantic touching of wood) hopefully she's ok. Her cold is still pretty bad and she's definitely still not herself, but I think she may be slightly better than she was.

Here Elsie has remembered that there is something even more joyous than drumming that can be done with a spoon!

Drumming with a whole pan kit. Elsie's cup overfloweth!

The wonderful musical world of pan and wooden spoon drumming!

I forgot to say I also read Leo the Late Bloomer (the best young children's book ever) to her tonight for the first time and she gave Leo a clap at the end when he makes it! So that was another gorgeous thing.

I think I had the happiest moment of my whole life this evening. Elsie built a tower of three building blocks all by herself, which made me cry a little bit, then she wiped the snot away from her own nose, which made me cry a lot. Then Rob put her on my knee for a cuddle, and she used her tissue to wipe away my tears. I thought I was going to explode. Just when I think I am getting my love for my daughter under control, it overwhelms me totally once again.

I am also just getting my head round the fact that she will be one next week – it seems pretty incredible that she’s been around for a year, although really she’s been around for longer than that, especially to me.

The other funny thing that happened today was that she’s been playing with Rob’s tape measure all day (she had the day off nursery to go to the doctor, she is still really poorly with this cold, and was coughing so much this morning that we feared she might have a chest infection, but she doesn’t) – and he is very proud. It’s the equivalent of Louis Armstrong’s daughter picking up a trumpet or Charlotte Bronte’s daughter picking up a pen for the first time. Rob’s daughter has begun to measure things!