After a lot of annoyances with the rubber mulch that we'd decided on previously for our garden: Abi nearly choking on a piece of mulch; Cats using it as a litter tray; and it loosing it's colour; we decided we'd try a lawn instead. So last Friday I spent my lunch break laying a new lawn in our back garden.

I worked from home for the day so that I could be here for the delivery and to make it easier to get the turf down quickly. By 9 o'clock, the turf had arrived from Denmead Turf and I'd moved it all through to the back garden ready to start so at lunchtime I decided it was worth making a start at laying it and see how it went. The turf went down easily, I really enjoyed it and it was amazing the difference it makes (photos to follow)! Then we had to water it in and make sure it had plenty of water while it settled, which initially we did with a hose, but then decided it was worth getting a sprinkler to give it a better more even covering.

Abi seems to doing so much more everyday at the moment, it's been wonderful watching her developments and seeing her different adventures. The other morning she cleaned her teeth with me after having her face washed. She's so sweet with her little toothbrush - not that there's any teeth there to clean yet. Yesterday and today she's taken to reaching up to the edge of the desk or the table on tip toes and almost hanging off it with her little fingers. Yet another set of things that need to be moved out of reach!

Today I went with her and Laura to Baby Gym, and it was really nice to see the sort of things they have there and how Abi plays with everything. Today they had feathers out and initally Abi was happy playing with the 3 that we had near her - but then she saw the box that they came from and crawled over to play with it. She emptied all the feathers out of the box onto the mat and then played with the box :). She also liked playing with the balls and rings that they had and she climbed up a 5 step staircase and went forwards (almost head over heels) down the slope the other side. It's also nice to see her interact with other kids. At one point after all the toys had been put away her and the other girl that was there seemed to be looking at each other and started crawling towards each other, only to go straight past each other to their parents. It was all lots of fun!

Abi

Abi has reached a stage where she's very mobile and getting more adventurous by the day which is lots of fun. She can now crawl really well and will explore the room we're in and venture into the rooms on either side on her own. She's also been sleeping much better - last night she slept through till 5.10, had some milk and is back asleep now. I guess all the activity is tiring her out. She's recently started to laugh in her sleep as well, which is really cute. She also now seems to eat almost as much as us for some meals!

Work

I'm currently helping out with some Linux support alongside my normal work developing, maintaining and supporting HostDB. This has mainly involved installs, upgrades and Linux admin tasks. Soon I'm going to be getting involved in some portal development which I'm looking forward to learning.

Photography

With the money I got for my birthday, I bought myself a new camera - the Panasonic Lumix FZ7, so I've been taking lots of random photos. Lots of these are of Abi, but there's also general randomness as I explore its features - some of which are on flickr (also in my timeline).

Marketing

Laura and I have been marketing her parents Cornish holiday cottage, through the web. Firstly we built the website, and then we've been exploring advertising it in different ways. So far ebay seems to be by far the best at bringing us enquiries / bookings. It's been really interesting to do and Google Analytics has been great for seeing what is happening with the site. I might right a bit more about our findings later on.

Development

For a while I've been thinking about developing a web application for storing and sharing bible study notes. The intention is that it will use the ESV API and have some or all of the following features:

• Easy to read interface

• Remember where you've got to for next time

• Store notes relating to verses, chapters etc.

• Share notes with friends

Currently I've been playing with a prototype as a facebook platform application, as that will provide the login and networking functions for me. If you have any ideas or want to join in - let me know! So far it only does the first two of the list above, but want to try it, it's at http://apps.facebook.com/bible_esv/

Abi seems to have a fascination with feet, and yesterday she decided to go after mine - finding them hilarious when she caught them :)

Over Easter, we put the finishing touches to our Garden changes so we can at last use the garden again! We'd decided that we wanted to find a replacement for the paving that we'd feel happy with Abi playing on, and inevitably falling over on. We considered a few options, but the one we liked best and decided on in the end was rubber mulch.

Firstly we had to remove the paving slabs, which came up much more easily than expected, although it was still a big job as they were fairly heavy. Once we'd done that, we had to put in an edging to hold the mulch in place - for this we decided on log roll edging. We ordered the edging but then when it arrived it took us a while to get round to fitting it, but once we got round to it, it went in well - hard work as you have to hammer each one in so that it goes down to give us the depth we needed (the logs were 6 inches high and the mulch was only due to be 2 inches deep).

The mulch was delivered to side of the kerb on the Thursday before Easter, and I had to carry each of the 20kg bags all through the house to store them ready to lay it. The next stage was to lay weed block which I initially thought was going to be easy - just a case of cutting the right length strips and putting it there - but when the wind picked up, I realised that we needed quite a few weights to hold it down (good job we hadn't got rid of the paving slabs!)

After I'd initially put down the weed block (with Abi in the sling), I enlisted some help to tape it together and prepare it to put the mulch down. Abi really loved the gaffa tape that we'd used to join the sheets as it was so shiny and was disappointed when we covered them up with mulch. Once she sat on it though, she seemed to find it interesting and fun to play with.

Unfortunately, the colour started to come off the mulch, so we're waiting for the company to come and replace it for us - but otherwise its great!

Abi Getting Up on Vimeo

I just noticed that this would be my 300th blog post so I decided to do something a bit different. Firstly, I'd get my wife to write this post. Secondly anyone who comments on this post within the next week will win a prize - the better the comment, the better the prize ;)

My blog started back on June 2003 with this insightful post. Since then I have explored life living in a foreign land, have pondered upon new advances in technological masterpieces such as Firefox and revealed my thoughts on life as a daddykins.

So please comment so that I feel that all this has not been in vain.

My humble thanks

Ps the prizes will be really really good

Abi's now been on solids for over a month, and it's been great fun feeding her them. Now that she's 6 months, she can have pretty much anything, although we're still being careful and introducing things individually. She's so far had lots of purees - both vegetables - butternut squash, carrot, parsnip, potato, sweet potato, broccoli and courgette - mixed in various interesting combinations and also lots of fruit - she particularly seems to like banana and apple (not together - don't think we've tried that yet!). This week she tried natural yoghurt for the first time - which she loved - really odd as we thought it would be a bit too sour for her. It's been messy though - particularly with her raspberries and self-feeding!

We've also tried some more solid foods, some with more success than others - she likes broccoli florets, if she gets them the right way round, and gums them into smitherines.

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any ideas what she means?