I love Lucy

I probably shouldn't be the one to say it, but Lucy is a bit of a Daddy's girl at the moment. When I came in last night and she heard me greet Oliver, I heard her shout "Dada!" and run into the living room with arms outstretched to be picked up.

Of course, this is entirely because she loves her Daddy to bits and not at all because Daddy is daft enough to carry her around more often (and higher from the ground) than her Mummy. You can also disregard her other apparently mercenary behaviour such as reaching out to Mummy from her Daddy's arms as soon as Mummy says she is going out in the car. Deep in my heart I know that beneath that apparently mercenary exterior beats a heart of gold and she loves me all the way to the bottom of the tea bag box which she is so fond of emptying.

To be fair to Lucy, she is incredibly fair when it comes to giving out her affection. She will give one of us a kiss then lean over to give one to the other. She's a very affectionate little girl at the moment. She will come into bed with us in the morning and cuddle up to us giving us hugs.

This, sadly, is in sharp contrast to another one of her behaviours at the moment: hitting! I don't know where it has come from but she hits us. She also hits Oliver. In fact she is prone to hitting anyone she fancies. The other day she head-butted Hayley on the nose, leaving her holding her face in agony. After she has done it and has been told "we don't do that" and to "be nice", she will invariably stroke your face and perhaps offer a kiss or pat your back.

I'm hoping it's just a phase, like the phase of throwing all her food and drink on the floor which gladly seems to have passed. AFter a while she made a point of showing us that she wasn't throwing it on the floor. Hopefully she's on the way to doing the same here when she shows us she can be nice.

Either way she is still adorable and with her improved speech, interacting with her is becoming more fun each day. She has been able to say "get down" when she wants to get out of her high chair, now also augmented by "outside" when she wants to go out, "choc choc" when she wants chocolate, "bo bo" which means her water and best of all "Mummy" which she says with quite a Mancunian accent.

She may be a little hooligan at times, but she's our hooligan and we love her.