Twas the night before Christmas ... and some poor folks have only just got their power back from the outages last week. Very grateful we were only out for a couple of days, that was enough for us! Andy's now finished up at work for a couple of weeks, so we've been able to whip around and get some last-minute gift shopping done. Mainly for Isobel, of course! We've never had so many boxes under a Christmas tree before.

With Isobel nearly four months old, we're starting to try and teach Isobel to fall asleep on her own. Up til now she's been dropping off at the end of a feed, so after waiting ten minutes or so I can pick her up and put her to bed pretty easily. That's worked really well so far, but I don't want to end up having to do that every time!

Picking the right time to make an attempt has been the tricky bit - during the day it's easy to tell when she gets tired, so we're starting to see a pattern develop. Bedtime is still a challenge, though, and I think we're stuck in a catch-22 situation - she doesn't want to go to sleep before around 9-10pm, and then she'll sleep through til 8-9am the following morning. I don't mind the opportunity to sleep in, but I think we're going to have to make a choice between mornings and evenings. Is it bad that we want to have both??!!

We also finally received Isobel's citizenship certificate back in the mail this week - she's now officially recognised as an Australian, so we can begin the next step and start applying for Medicare and her passport ... more paperwork!

We ran a little late with our Christmas cards this year - they are in the post, but probably haven't arrived yet . Tomorrow's going to be a fairly low-key day for us as Isobel's too young to really get into the spirit of things, but we've certainly had a lot of fun preparing everything. Merry Christmas everyone!