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I’m currently sat here with a cup of tea and a packet of jaffa cakes listening to the wimpering on the baby monitor and wondering if Zara is going to go to sleep or whether this day is going to go on even longer.

Today has been one of those days, you know, the ones where you wish you hadn’t got out of bed. And this day in particular started at 4.30am with those dreaded sounds of crying over the monitor that you just wish you could press the snooze button for a couple more hours. I dragged myself out of bed to feed Zara at least with the knowledge that after this feed she goes straight back to sleep until 8am. After putting her back in her cot at 5.15am and slipping back into my bed, being careful not to wake the husband I closed my eyes for all of 5 minutes before the wailing started again and so it began – the long day.

I did finally get another couple of hours sleep between 7am and 9am as I sleepily passed the husband on the stairs as he was leaving for work and I was going back to bed. A dose of calpol seemed to do the trick – and as much as I try to avoid it where I can, sometimes pain relief is all that will work. I can only imagine that having teeth errupting through your gums must be pretty painful based on the evidence I’ve seen so far.

I decided to risk going to Sainsburys with a tired, grumpy Zara otherwise a) I’d go insane staying in all day and b) I really need to put my action plan for Fathers Day into gear. Mission to buy a Fathers Day card, a couple of blank canvases and some paints suitable for hand painting with a baby. Mission accomplished without any screaming fits from me or Zara which I was pretty impressed with really.

On arriving home after another couple of hours of grouch baby I finally got her to sleep and set about testing the paints to see how well they would work. Thank goodness I tested as after liberally applying purple paint to the palm of my left hand and testing it on paper I then got the baby wipes out to test for a quick clean up. I can only be thankful that I did think to test this on myself first as it eventually took half an hour of scrubbing my hands with a scourer and washing up liquid to get the skin looking vaguely normal again although there is still a rather bizarre tint of purple if you look closely enough. I can just imagine my husbands face if he had come home to a multi-coloured baby! Proper finger paints now due to arrive tomorrow from Amazon and I have checked that they wash off skin easily. If Sainsburys think I am ever EVER going to give these paints to Zara before she is 16 they have another thing coming – I can just imagine the fun of getting it off toddlers!

After spending most of Zara’s nap time scrubbing my hands to within an inch of their life, I then managed to complete a few essential household chores before finally sitting down with a nice cup of tea and 10 minutes peace – cue wailing on the baby monitor – and off we go again. I wish these blinkin teeth would just appear and have done with it, we only have 2 so far and I’m already tearing my hair out.

Hmm all seems to have gone quiet over the monitor now so maybe my long long day is coming to an end – well for a few hours at least Now where did that whole packet of jaffa cakes go? :blush:

I’ve been wondering lately what Zara is destined to be when she grows up. With her daddy being a teacher of history and politics and her mum being an accountant you’d think she may just have inherited a bit of intelligence from one of us and so she could end up being the next female prime minister or something of that standing however I’m starting to worry that I may be wrong on my expectations.

I certainly feel that she has excellent problem solving skills – take her ability to work out how to get to toys out of her reach. Now most babies would probably be trying to crawl to them or be crying in the hope that somebody would pass them the toy but no, not Zara. She has already figured out that if she just pulls the mat which the toys are on then they will just come to her without her having to move. Hmmm is this laziness or ingenuity!

Her independence is already starting to assert itself – now normally this isn’t something I’d particularly worry about but as she currently can’t crawl or walk this is starting to be a little bit of a problem. Zara doesn’t consider this to be a problem however. My daughter seems under the illusion that she can cope just fine without me. Nowadays I can’t leave her anywhere without strapping her into various contraptions and the minute I unfasten anything she is trying to leap out – whether it’s the highchair, the pushchair or the car seat. Now I’m not sure whether she thinks she can actually fly or what she actually thinks will happen when she launches herself out of her restraints. Luckily so far we have only had once accident where she launched herself off the sofa in order to reach Izzy Cat and you’d think a bump on the head would maybe teach her that it really isn’t such a good idea but oh no, she seems on a permanent mission to learn to fly. Maybe she does take after me though as I have been known to jump out of planes at 14,000ft in an effort to fly myself – but at least I knew I was strapped to a rather hunky instructor and so knew I had a safe way of reaching the ground in one piece!

My next thought was maybe she would become a professional scuba diver or wannabe mermaid. Since about 6 weeks old I’ve been battling in the bath to stop her drinking the bath water and now she can roll she is always trying to get onto her front to “swim”. We go to waterbabies every week and whereas all the other babies are clinging lovingly onto their parent for dear life, my darling Zara is constantly wriggling and trying to get away from me – I mean, what does she think will happen if I let go?

So maybe she is not destined to be prime minister, an accounting whizz or a famous historian but I suppose I could live with her being an escapologist, a sky diver, a scuba diver or even a professional bungee jumper. One things for sure though, she certainly has a mind of her own and seems to know what she wants even if she isn’t currently capable of achieving it yet.