Karen and I stayed up until midnight (at home) to see in the New Year - I would have slept, but didn't feel tired - and Bella also woke up a few times feelling thirsty, so this gave me a chance to wish her happy new year as well (I don't think she fully understood what I meant, but was too tired to disagree).

In the morning Bella wanted to watch KTV, and I taught her how to flick through the channels with the remote - she duly spent the next hour practising this. When she couldn't find anything to watch on TV, I put the movie Peter Pan on my laptop. Bella then alternated between watching TV & Peter Pan when there was nothing interesting on TV.

Bella impressed Karen and I later in the day, when she used the word "visible" in a sentence for the first time - something to the effect of "glass is sometimes visible".

It had been raining since about 5am, and I took Quinn outside to the rocking chair -he enjoys it there, and lay on my shoulder staring at the rain, before falling asleep. We've started using towelling nappies on Quinn, rather than the disposables, and they are MASSIVE. There is some technique involved in applying towelling nappies - first folding it, putting a liner inside, using a plastic piece to pull it together and then placing the plastic cover over, and then they have to be cleaned afterwards (of course this is old hat for the previous generation - my Mom almost exclusively used towelling nappies - disposables for her generation were only used in the case of an emergency). Quinn's developed a bit of a rash, which I suspect is due to exposure to uric acid, so I'm trying to change the nappies as often as possible, and also wash him after each change and apply a special cream which Karen got from the Howard Centre pharmacy.

Quinn has over the last couple of weeks, started smiling and cooing - it's SO cute, and I love interacting with him.

Peter, Candice, AJ, Sylvah and Verity arrived at about 1030am, and Bella (who was lying naked on the couch) heard the doorbell, and went to her room saying she didn't want them to see her cookie or her bum (which was the first time that I'd heard her get self-conscious about nudity). Here's Candice holding Sylvah and Quinn, with Peter holding Verity Nova Violet. Verity is a real Daddy's girl, she loves to get held by Pete.

And here's Pete holding Quinn. I helped Pete put an ad on Gumtree for renting his 9 Langley Way house, and within an hour somebody had phoned, who was interested in renting it, as well as 2 people emailing (I had no idea that gumtree was so effective). Pete's quite the Cape Town legal businessman, and was off to a meeting later that afternoon with a client.

We all went to the Bayside spur, which has a much-improved kiddies playground compared to the last time I'd been there. Pete was chatting to his client at a seperate table...here's Candice with Verity, Sylvah and AJ.

Closeup of AJ.

Mom and Eric joined us at the spur, and here's a photo of Mom holding Quinn.

Verity at the spur playground. The kids wore myself and Eric out with a game of hide and seek - they liked it so much that they wanted to play again and again and again....

The Spur had a little jumping castle - here's Bella and Sylvah in it.