The weather is steadily improving here, with more sunny breaks throughout the day - although they can sometimes be quite fleeting. Our back room is now Isobel's 'playroom', and can get quite bright with the sunshine ... and half an hour later we have the lights on again when it gets overcast!

Isobel is well and truly 'cruising' now - along the fireplace, along the couch, and she can almost move from one chair to another around the kitchen table. Her two upper middle teeth have come through, so she now has six teeth and will happily chomp down on anything ... but she knows better than to bite Mummy (so far) . She can walk for a few paces with Mum or Dad holding her hands and leading her along, with a huge smile on her face - we have a funny feeling she'll be an early walker rather than an early talker. She's also started to play peek-a-boo with us, pulling a towel up and down over her face while she lies on the change table in her room. It's a great distraction at the moment, which buys me enough time to change her nappy before she starts squirming and trying to turn herself over again. She looks very cute peeking one eye out from under her towel, as if to check whether we're looking to see where she was hiding!

Isobel and I are also making the most of the good weather while we can - it takes about half an hour to walk down to the nearby shopping centre, so I can pop into the bakery, get to the post office and get a bit of shopping done. I've also learned to pack a couple of toys for her to play with, and strap them down good and hard to the stroller - or they'll end up on the footpath when she's done with them! We've also had a lot of road workers in the street in the last few weeks, and if the traffic on the main road is too busy they'll grab their 'slow' signs and stop the cars so we can cross the street ... very kind of them! The walking is saving us from 'cabin fever' while we're one car down - the Mustang is still with the mechanic, as he's been rather busy and hasn't had time to get around to finishing ours yet. He did promise to have it back before Andy's next trip back to Australia ...

We had another netball game on Saturday, we had enough of the social players to scrape a team together and made a decent show of a game against one of the competitive teams ... still lost, but it wasn't a complete whitewash! Isobel was up from her nap by the time I got home, so we packed our hiking gear into the car again and headed off towards Tiger Mountain. The loop was a bit over 3 miles, most of the height gain was in the first mile which made for some pretty rough going - Andy got lots of sympathy from passing hikers for hauling Isobel up the hill in her backpack carrier!

The rocks were pretty spectacular - I sat for a while with Isobel while Andy scouted around for photos. Another couple passed our spot on the trial with a huge dog, and Isobel looked a little confused - what on earth is that thing, Mum? It was well behaved, and passed close by before continuing on down the trail ... and Isobel nearly fell out of her seat trying to watch it trot away! She looked amazed - she hasn't seen many dogs so far, and certainly not one that big before.

We had thought about taking a different trail and looping around Tradition Lake before heading back to the car, but Isobel made her thoughts known about the idea and we decided to head home instead. She fell asleep in the car on the way back, and we managed to get her into the house without her waking up - it's been months since she's been asleep like that in the car.

On Sunday I spent a few hours with my crochet guild working on some charity donations - a couple of times a year we spend some time making baby hats, blankets, eyeglass cases, scarves and the like. One of the guild members had just returned from a crochet tour of Ireland, and had some wonderful stories about intricate Irish lace made with thread not much thicker than sewing thread ... I haven't done any thread crochet for years, but I think I still have the ridge worn in my finger from tensioning my work! That stuff is like towing rope in comparison .

We've spotted the deer a couple of times since the excitement on Monday, and Andy has since informed me that it's probably a young buck rather than a doe. Apparently the photo last week showed antler buds on its head, so just substitute 'he' for 'she' on that last post . There are still some broken fence panels from last year's storms on the other side of the main road near our house, so we think it's living in there - not sure why it's attracted to our yard though!