Hi girls,

Yep- Amelie loves her hands too - as well as anything she can stuff in her mouth- including other people's clothing, my shopping list and on Saturday she was trying to put a toy that has two balls on the end of a ring into her mouth both balls at once and stretched her mouth so wide, I couldn't believe it - hilarious! She has also discovered her feet now and loves to stand up on my lap and giving her a bath is more like a wrestle as she pushes off from the end of the bath so hard that she hits her head on the other side! But she has started touching her feet and looking at them a lot, which is very cute.

Megan - I wouldn't worry about thumb sucking at this stage, if it's what helps Lucas settle (ps- love the name Lucas - Amelie might have been a Lucas if she were a boy!). I have heard that a lot of thumb suckers grow out of it, before it becomes a problem (ie, when teeth might be damaged by it).

Amelie has her christening this week, so I have started cooking for it. We are trying to make it a reasonably small event (around 20 people), but this has caused a lot of friction with my mum. She carried on the same way for our wedding and I gave in and invited her friends as well - mind you, we've never seen them again, and I knew I was right, just couldn't face the argument. Well, this time I've stuck to my guns and am only inviting people Amelie will have in her life, not every relative we have. And yes, that means that some people that I'm close to won't be invited, but these will be Amelie's great aunties and uncles, so they're not that close to her. Ok, starting to rant and rave now, and believe me I could go on and on!! Anyway, hopefully Sunday will be a nice day and we'll all have a good time. I am going to attempt my first fondant iced cake (like a wedding cake style), which will probably be a lot of work, but hopefully it will be worth it. Only problem is that the recipes I can find for making the marshmallow icing all use Crisco, which is an American vegetable shortening (not solid like copha) and I can't seem to get it here- I'm wondering whether I'll have to use butter instead...hmmm....