In February I lost the 0.4kg I gained in January, resulting in 95.7kg yesterday. Basically that's no movement at all from end-Nov to end-Feb. I am still not exercising as much as I would like, or getting as much sleep as I would like, and I'm going to focus on improving those habits. Ideally I should be able to tick each day "walked/cycled for at least 1 hour" and "slept more than 6 hours".

The walking/cycling target is not really that onerous as I notch up 2x5min cycling and 2x10min walking just going to work and picking up Charles from the childminder. Walking to the library and back is about 45 minutes. Walking into town is about 30 minutes each way.

Review in a month.

We bought Charles a potty last weekend, as it felt the right time to start.
( Cut for those without a fascination for toilet matters )

In other Charles notes, he loves his wellies. He will seek them out first thing in the morning and take them on and off, and stomp about in them, and ask to go outside and stomp about some more. I think the real delight for him is being so fully in control - there's no other item of clothing he can take on and off all by himself yet. He has recently got very keen on pushing his toy buggy around a lot, and also the truck-of-blocks that he got at Christmas and was posted to us from France. I have started venturing on actual walks with him, using the toy buggy to keep him focused on moving. On Thursday he made it about 2/3 of the way to the Gallery before I had to give in and carry him, and today he managed nearly all the way to the Post Office (but I had to carry him most of the way back). It's very slow progress, but I remind myself that I am not just going for a walk or running an errand, I am teaching him how to do these things. (Thank you Naomi Stadlen for articulating this.)

Swimming lessons are going really well. He gets a huge grin on his face when I lift him into the water and he's really getting the idea of kicking and thrashing his arms about to give a direction. We use long tubular floats to hold them in roughly a swimming position, and I can feel a directional pressure from his kicking so try to respond to it. His favourite thing of all though is to climb out onto the side and jump back in, and we sneak as many chances to do this as possible during the class (he will attempt to kick towards the side to do this every chance he gets). He's also started to enjoy the limited amount of submerging we do, and no longer comes up spluttering. It's so rewarding taking him; it's on Friday afternoons by which time I'm really tired from the week and it's a tight timetable, so every week I'm slightly tempted to skip it, but as soon as we get in the pool I'm reminded why I bother.

I must organise regular family swims somehow.