Yesterday was the momentous occasion, if Clarks' are to be believed, of the purchase of babe's first pair of shoes. Along with the newly-shod baby you get to take home a booklet about babies' feet, a certificate displaying her size (two and a half G), and a framed polaroid. (She refused to smile for the camera until she had demolished a whole row of floral wellies.)

Apparently 2.5G is ridiculously small for a 12 month old, and the only ones in her size (as well as being outrageously girly) were crawling shoes. That's as opposed to cruising shoes, for walking around holding on to furniture, while the real shoes are reserved for those who are walking unsupported.

Anyway, I'm proud to report that in her crawling shoes this afternoon the babe effortlessly cruised for the first time, from the bedside table (she pulls the drawer out first to get a better grip on it) to halfway along the bed. And I bet she'll be walking in them soon too.

We celebrated the babe's birthday a day late, as she doesn't know any better, with her two fairy godmothers. She began to get the idea after the first few presents and when she was shown Nanny and Noo Noo's truly enormous shiny gold package she got quite excited. With good reason - it was a ride-on bike thing with squeaky horn, clock, storage space under the seat and a mobile phone to encourage good driving practices. She tried to get on it herself after we'd shown her what it was, although we have to do the pushing because she hasn't found any forward gears yet.

To show her appreciation of the fairy godmothers' gifts she closely examined the clips of her new dress and sat firmly on top of her new jigsaw book.

The highlight of the party for me was when a fairy godmother used the word 'dancing' in conversation and the babe began shaking her head. This is what passes for dancing in the world of babe, and if that seems strange, you should have seen Ganny and Gandad this summer showing her what they think the word 'dancing' means.

This time 12 months ago I was in Barnet General, catheterised, still high as a kite having given birth at 1.21 that morning and with a very small person screaming in my arms. She was confiscated by a large bossy nurse shortly after for keeping the whole ward awake. I had to go and reclaim her from the Confiscated Babies Department the next morning, dragging my catheter with me. I try not to relive the whole birth thing too often because all the excitement comes flooding back and I can't sleep.

The next day we left the hospital with the babe in a car seat which had been sitting round spookily in our sitting room for weeks. Babyfather kept looking over his shoulder nervously in the car park, expecting someone to shout 'Where are you going with that baby?' ' His thoughts on her being a year old are 'grateful that we haven't broken her yet - at least not so you can notice.'

She's more toddler than baby now. Tonight I was looking at a book with her and I said 'Where's the pussycat?' and she pointed at it straight away. I had no idea she was paying any attention to my 'There's the pussycat / dog / bee / butterfly' patter, or even that the pictures on the page made any sense to her. I'm the one with the lack of comprehension...

It's hard to imagine there was ever a world without the babe. I can remember pre-babe life but it's hazy and unreal. I haven't had time to do anything other than live in the present since the birth, which is probably the real reason why years seem to fly by when you have kids. I sometimes - often - miss my own time, and all the possibilities that babelessness brings. There's no logic to it; having a baby when you have the choice not to must be the most irrational of all decisions. But I wouldn't go back and be babe-less, not for anything. She couldn't possibly not have existed, she is so utterly existent. My eyes fill up at the idea of that small, loud, demanding, ginger-haired being not being. At about 5 or 6am on the morning of the birth, as I held her properly for the first time alone, it all suddenly hit me - that God had brought us safely through the birth and she was here. I just thanked him non-stop, laughing and in tears, for about half an hour. And I don't feel any different now. Thank you.

It all started on Monday at breakfast. I was, as usual, spooning cornflakes onto the babe's highchair tray so she could pick them up with her fingers (thus avoiding the indignity of being spoonfed), when she picked them up and put them back into the bowl again. Not without an air of 'that's what I think of your cornflakes', I might add.

This was not a food fad - thank God, and she did eat her breakfast - but a new skill! Now she can not only take things out, but Put Things In! And we have been Putting Things In ever since. Bricks into box. Toys into drawer. Peas into pudding. Toast into bookcase. Shoe into pillowcase. Etc.

Apparently, even after all these months of grabbing, it takes a long time to learn to let go . (A friend of mine with relationship problems says she knows how that feels). But now I can say 'Give me the spoon please,' and she places it gently in the palm of my hand, although the mood might still take her to throw it very hard at the window. She also hands things to you in a pointed manner and waits for the correct response. For instance, if she hands me one of her little pink leather shoes and I don't keel over with exaggerated disgust after smelling it, she cries.

I'm sure the babe understands more of what we say to her than she lets on. But it's hard to gauge.

We spent a lot of time in Ganny's kitchen saying 'Where's your fox?' She would go and get the fox (a favourite cuddle of hers) almost every time. This seemed like great comprehension until you said 'Where's your doll?' and she would also go and get the fox.

She amazed me by using a hairbrush on herself correctly after only one demonstration (ok, the bristles were facing outwards, but it's a start) and seeming to respond to me saying 'brush your hair.' But I must have confused her when I later encouraged her to 'brush her teeth' because she started stroking her head with the toothpaste tube.

It's not that she doesn't understand English - just that 'Where's?' to her means 'fox' and 'brush' means 'stroke my head'. Fair enough.

For the last three days exactly, babe's favourite activity has been standing. She'll pull herself up using the bed / toybox / shoe rack / sock drawer and stand there for several minutes at at time, finding small things to play with that don't usually hold her attention. I take her out to the park and set her free from her pushchair to go anywhere she likes, and where she goes is back to her pushchair, to stand next to it and play with the straps.

How does she know that this is exactly what she's meant to be doing?? Has she been reading my child development books on the sly?

Other favourite things:

Pasta
Slides
Fridge magnets
Her shoes
Babymother's shoes (if I start putting on one, she'll go off and get the other one)
Babyfather's socks (impervious to smell, apparently)
Big bunny, monkey, spider, mummy & baby bunny, the two teddies and the cat (no cuddle opportunites unfortunately).

Favourite activities:

Being swung upside down by her feet
Sitting on babyfather's shoulders and holding on to his ears
Jumping off beds, bottom-first
Chasing the cat for that elusive cuddle.

1 The train will unexpectedly be one of those older models with only a small amount of standing room between carriages.

2 You rely on the space between carriages because it's the only place you can put the babe in her pushchair, where she might sleep (so long as the train is moving, the announcements are not deafening, and you are not caught in a slipstream of toilet-bound grannies who all want to talk to her).

3 There is no space in the luggage rack. You, unfortunately, are a travelling circus, with pushchair, massive rucksack on back, smaller nappy-changing rucksack over pushchair handlebars, dirty washing in basket under pushchair, ill-fitting rain cover which keeps falling off pushchair, unreliable dangling parasol, and a dozen colourful tie-on attachments intended to amuse the babe who makes up about three percent of the total mass.

4 There are too many passengers on the train. In other words, your policy of always finding two empty seats together and commandeering them both having only paid for one has finally come a cropper.

5 Therefore you find yourself, the pushchair, the rucksack, and the babe who occasionally refuses to sit in the pushchair, in the corridor wedged up against the door of the train apologising to passers-by.

6 The beer-bellied gentleman who helpfully offers you a seat next to him and finally finds a space for the massive rucksack is very forbearing of the babe pinching his arm and throwing raisins at him, but wants to make conversation, and that is difficult when you are trying to prevent the babe from grabbing all the seat reservation tickets (penalty for removal, £200, I know because I now have several) and the hair of the passenger in front.

7 The babe gets fed up of not being able to grab said items, of not being able to pinch arm of beer-bellied gentleman, and of peas, raisins, and pasta; and wails.

8 The babe does not want to sit in her pushchair in the area between carriages.

9 When the babe is finally coaxed to sleep in the pushchair wedged up against the door, the train thoughtlessly pulls up to a platform on the very same side and in the palaver of moving her the babe is woken up again and there’s still an hour and a half left til London.

10 How many more reasons do you want? Never again.

Had an excursion to the park during my last brief stay at home, and met a Somalian lady with a three month old baby. She turned up just as my little thug had finished chasing off all the pigeons (gone are the civilised days when I can put her down on a little blanket and lounge around on the grass). Anyway, I had pacifed her with a banana and she was busy flinging the individual pieces of skin, helicopter-like, around her head when this woman came into view.

I'm constantly amazed by how much there is to talk about to other mothers when we probably have nothing else in common. We covered: why her baby cries so much, Gaviscon (I am the Gaviscon evangelist), getting them off to sleep, night feeds, being tired, husbands, birth stories, second babies? and if so when? etc, etc. It was a very satisfying conversation. Meanwhile the babe, who had my much coveted wallet to keep her quiet, was offering this woman my credit cards one by one.

She ended up sitting on the grass with us with her baby on her lap, and when the conversation had gone on too long, up came the babe and whipped off one of her baby's socks.

I'm sure the poor visitor was thoroughly disappointed...

To people who nag me about blogging: Since the last blog, we've been back to London, had a long weekend with Nanny and Noo-Noo in Wales and after a couple of days in London are back in Scotland again. Anything to escape the builders. And our internet connection doesn't work. I've been keeping a blog in my head, and if technology isn't up to broadcasting that yet, it's not my fault.

The babe is, as usual, totally unfazed by all the palaver. She loved being in Wales: Nanny's cooking - babycousin's hair to pull - babyaunt to adore her - and the great-grand rellies are staying in a marvellous place full of nothing but grannies. Forty grannies to one baby. Attention was not lacking. I put her down on the lounge floor and she scuttled up to the great aunt, seized both of her slippers and made off with them.

As for Noo-Noo - I left them alone together for five minutes and he taught her to stand! Honestly! Putting fascinating objects on the stairs just out of reach. By the time we got back to London I suggested that we lowered the cot in case she tried to stand in it and fell out. The cot was duly reassembled and the babe put inside, and the first thing she did was to stand up holding onto the side of the cot. The second thing she did was to point to one of her toys on the other side of the room - a cuddly spider - and squeak loudly. (This is another new thing. The pointy finger has arrived, and all manner of things get pointed to and squeaked at. Sometimes she just points, upwards, at nothing in particular but with great emphasis, and Gandad shouts 'Out!'. It's a cricket joke.) So I brought her the spider, she seized it with both hands, fell down violently, bounced, and whacked her head on the bars behind her. I braced myself in the pause that followed but all she did was pick up the spider and go 'Aahhhhh.'

This time it was babymother's family's turn to share a week's holiday with us...

Setting was beautiful, weather merciful and I got to go sailing - fantastic. The babe followed her tradition of spending the holiday teething, but not too traumatically.

The babe is a little bruiser. She is afraid of nothing. She was very excited about the ginger cousin's dog Bea, who tried to defend herself from the babe's clutches by barking, but to no avail. Bea ended up curled in a cringing ball on my cousin's lap while babe shrieked excitedly and yanked her tail. Babe also responds to being bashed on the head, loud noises and having toes trodden on with the same unconcerned silence. (I did hear her yelling as if in severe pain the other day - when I whipped around to see what was killing her I found her tugging on a favourite piece of fabric which had got caught under a chair leg. Pure frustration.)

So she got her fill of watery and sandy pursuits - the latter consists of releasing handfuls of sand from above her head onto the beach / towel / hair / back of cardigan / nappy etc. And we had a relaxing time and caught up with rellies. And sleep - well, we weren't expecting much of that anyway.

...but this is what happens when babyfather pays more attention to the camera than his bathing duties.

Our holiday chalet wasn't equipped with a bath but babygreataunt lent us just the thing.

The babe is astonishing us daily. She is transforming at a dizzying rate from pleasant household pet to interactive (if small) human being.

It all started with the saluting, as mentioned in my previous entry 9 million years ago. After teaching her to wave by doing it at the mirror, she now waves without fail - every time she sees a mirror.

Then there was the train journey up to Ganny and Gandad's on Thursday. She accepted our attempts to soothe her off to sleep with good humour, but when she got bored, she would catch Ganny's eye, remove her dummy and fling it across the carriage with a great toothy grin as Ganny bounded after it. With me she took the novel tack of taking out the dummy and putting it in my mouth.

Then there's cuddles. Once she'd got going with the white rabbit, nothing escapes her clutches. I have seen her cuddling blankets, pillows, a vest, and even a piece of paper. She always leans her head on thing in question, holding it to her cheek, and goes Aaaaaaaaaaaaa. But when she does it to you it's utterly irresistable. Now we can say 'Cuddle Gandad!' and provided she's in the right mood she'll put her head on his chest and we'll all say Aaaaaaaaaa together.

Spoonfeeding is not played by the same rules anymore; in fact they change every meal time. Today at lunch I had the blissful experience of watching her eat an entire meal with her own fingers - no intervention necessary. Yesterday she fed herself three mouthfuls of semolina WITH A SPOON. I didn't care being covered head to foot in the stuff myself - I was euphoric. Tonight, however, the spoon and the semolina hit the deck and she would only accept peas, which she had to eat directly from my hand.

Mobility has gone up a gear. I put her down on the floor of Ganny's kitchen and she immediately scuttles under the table, where she has set up camp with one of my trainers, and peeks out cheekily from under the tablecloth. Unfortunately her new love of being under things has led to having to retrieve her, screaming, from under the drinks cabinet and the piano stool when she misjudged the head clearance.

Babe has a big white rabbit soft toy, about the same size as her, which she started cuddling about a month ago. She wraps her little arms around it, leans her head on top of it and grins broadly. Then a couple of days ago she was sitting on my lap when she put her head sideways on my chest and squeezed me with her arms in exactly the same way she does to the rabbit. Awwwww. First babe cuddle.

Another first this week: we've been trying to teach her to wave hello and goodbye for AGES. We'll look her in the eye and wave frantically, repeating 'hello' like idiots, which is exactly what she seems to consider us as she makes no response whatsoever. But yesterday after watching us do this for about five minutes she lifted one hand in a solemn salute. Then she did it to me later when I waved to her in the mirror. Still later she attracted the attention of a woman across the street by shouting at her through our upstairs window (ANYTHING for attention) and when the woman graciously turned and waved, the babe saluted back. Unfortunately there was a short delay and she saluted after the woman had gone into her house, but never mind. I saw it.