As for the pictures, barely a month after mastering crawling, Olivia has now decided that walking is the way forward, and now spends her time hoisting herself up by whatever means is available, wobbling a bit, steadying herself, wobbling some more, moving a tentative foot, wobbling some more, then falling flat on her behind. Our role is now to move swiftly behind her and play the role of landing mats to cushion the many tumbles that the next few months are inevitably going to be littered with.

Hence one of the first post-holiday tasks was to hotfoot it to the shop and get some stair gates, as the staairs are already proving to be a favoured practise gound for her experiments with vertical mobility. As for the promised holiday snaps, don't fear they'll be here soon in their hundreds...