Lots to report

I've been a bit remiss -- again, but here are the most recent pictures and news of Little Miss Azara Bean. The one in the dress was taken on her eight month birthday, the one in the high chair shows one of her party tricks which involves her, rather disconcertingly, bashing herself on the head. The one on the boat was Azara's first time out sailing.
As you can see she's growing and developing a rather strong, wilful personality. The more witty (?) of my relatives have already told me that it's pay-back time, but that aside, it's nice to see her so happy and full of beans. I suppose the biggest news to report of recent days is that she is now crawling. She had been going backwards for a week or so and I had spent quite a while on all fours showing her that there was another direction, when she mastered it by herself last Friday. All of a sudden, we have had to start moving things higher, making sure we don't leave things lying around that are not for her eyes or paws, or even mouth. Still, it's proving quite a challenge, especially when she tries to crawl away as we try and do up her nappy; this after several attempts ruined by her pulling the nappy off. She invariably manages to get to the bag of nappy sacks or the wet wipes before me and these are so much more interesting than all her toys, except perhaps for the ones she can make the most noise with, like the building blocks she bashes against each other, or anything she can use to attack the high-chair table. That said, the crawling hasn't been the only development recently. The last couple of weeks really seem to have been eventful, what with the clapping, the crawling and over the weekend, she has started pointing at things she likes, or, more frequently wants. The funniest is when I get a banana and she starts pointing then waving her arms around, calling out ' da'. She takes the whole banana and tries to put it all in her mouth, which can be quite alarming and messy. She's onto other finger foods as well and we introduced her to little sandwiches with cream cheese over the weekend and I've just tried her on raisins today. She loves apricots too, but bizarrely one of her other favourites -- aside from the banana, which she's loved from when she was a foetus and she'd kick me when I ate one -- is cucumber which seems to act as a brilliant teething ring for those nasty teeth.
We discovered this when we took her out sailing for the first time. We had managed to borrow a baby life-jacket from some friends and Jon had managed to borrow a dinghy from the yacht club. It wasn't too windy, but Azara screamed almost incessantly for quite a while as we went out on the water. I think it may have been the lifejacket, which left her trussed up a little bit like a Michelin man and was probably desperately uncomfortable and itchy. We gave up and went for lunch, where I gave her a ring of cucumber so she didn't make too much noise and rub people at the yacht club up the wrong way. She loved it and hung onto it for dear life until we lost it after we went back out onto the water after lunch. Apparently exhausted by all the morning's upsetting activities, she fell asleep for quite a while, but was just as grumpy when she woke back up and we were still in the boat.
Oh well, we'll have to try again sometime, but perhaps not for a while. I enjoyed the chance to go out sailing with Jon on Saturday night though, even if it was a bit blustery, as Nanny Hils came to stay for the weekend. It was fantastic to have her to stay and she was a brilliant help. We had some nice walks and I think she was particularly pleased to be here when Azara was doing so much for the first time. Well, I think I had better sign off now. Azara has been having a few bad nights when she wakes and screams and will only calm down when we go and comfort her. Last night was particularly exhausting and I'm hoping tonight isn't going to be the same.