Wednesday 21st of July 1999
Your father and I are still together, and I just read the bit above to him, we’re friends again but for how long? R. took you to have a hearing test yesterday (all 7 month old babies have it done) and everything was fine. In the meantime I was at the dentist having my teeth cleaned, with no pain relief of any kind, but it wasn’t too bad. I have to go back in a month. I also got given another credit card (I only applied for fun as I wanted the free mobile phone, I didn’t think I would get it!). I got a 1,800 limit (very dangerous), the free mobile phone, which will be here in about 1 month… I couldn’t believe it.
I also started my driving lessons again on Monday (I took a break) with BSM. The instructor, Gerrard, is lovely, very gentle and patient, nothing like Roger the brute. My driving was bad for the first hour and then it all came back, after he gave me a few tips (things Roger never told me about). So the extra money is worth it and I will pass this time, no doubt about it.
I haven’t written for a while because I was very busy. First of all I have completely redesigned my web site and it’s gorgeous now! But it took 2 weeks. Last Saturday, R. went to the computer fair in Stratford and bought me 64Mbytes of RAM for £38.00, a very good bargain (when you read this computers will probably have 64Gigabytes of RAM! So this will all sound very archaic to you). Now I have 80 Megabytes of RAM (as I used some of my old memory). But to get the computer working again was a bit of a nightmare. I spent the weekend fiddling with the motherboard, voltage settings, reformatting the hard disk and installing all the software again. As I am now an expert on backing up data, no data was lost. R. helped with the voltages and putting the memory in the right slot, as he is getting very good at computer hardware (and I have learned a lot too). We don’t get out much… In the meanwhile, Francis, downstairs, is setting up a server! He’s got about 3 computers working, one of them is so top of the range is not even in the market yet, and has TWO processors (are you still awake?)
The reason I’ve been dying to write is because you’re growing up so fast I’m losing track of things. When you came back from your hearing test and I got back from the dentist, your father and I were having a coffee in the bedroom and you were playing on the floor as usual. Then you took your first crawling steps! They were very clumsy but you did it twice! I was screaming with excitement, I was so happy! You haven’t done it since, but you have definitely crawled for the first time, on the 20th of July 1999.
Another thing you are doing a lot and has caused your head to bang on the floor a few times, is getting up! If you’re anywhere near the bed (which is low on the floor) you just drag yourself up, facing the mattress, and you just love it! Sometimes you lose your balance and twice I was too far (i.e. on the computer) and you just fell backwards, banging your head on the floor and crying your eyes out. So now we have to be 1000 times more careful as you can get up anytime anywhere very quickly. I also think you’ve started the separation anxiety phase, as you seem to demand being picked up a lot more often than before. For about a month you were quite content left on the floor playing while I was on the computer. Now, if you know someone is around you start crying. But if we leave you in the cot and leave the room, you are quite happy…