Pepe Boy learns to walk and general mummy babbling.

Our little cutie is eleven months and has started walking. It's such a beautiful stage to observe. He's a determined little guy but once he was confident with standing it took off from there. One little step a day for three days lead to 3 steps to nine steps. The past three days he's been getting up all on his own from crawling and just walking up to 20 steps now. So so cute and such a joy to see.

At his playgroups there are babies his age and older that can't pull themselves up yet. The moms look concerned for their own when they see my pepe boy doing his thing but all babies are different, some develop faster in certain areas than others. I do play a lot with my baby on the floor and do activities that strengthen his little body. We celebrate his little feats and maybe that helps him develop as he does. For example I've always liked to play throw and catch soft balls with my babies and that's one game they learned early and fast and enjoy a lot. And when I help baby catch the ball we clap and praise him for doing so to which he looks proud and smiles and claps. And no I don't push them to do things too early neither. I like them to do it at their own pace.

It brings me to Master 5's reading efforts. I'm quite relaxed and think he has plenty of time next year in grade 1 to learn to read until we had a reading 'talk' at school last month and I realised I really needed to be proactive to help my son with his reading. We always read together(us parents reading him stories) but I don't push him to actually read so now I'm really helping him with phonics to connect the letters, their sounds to make the words. I started over a week ago and within a few days he read me back a short sentence from a new book we were reading. Amazing how being proactive, patient and just giving your child time can really help with their progress. I've also had to talk him into allowing me to help him with his reading and not reject saying he already did it at school. He loves it when he manages to decipher the sentences about him I leave on his white board and I let him see me do the victory dance when I hear him read it out loud. Our healthier routine has really helped also with his enjoyment at school and being well-rested. However my poor big bubs is sick again for the last few days. I had to take him to the doctor today and once he had the prescribed medicine and more rest he was much better a few hours later. We have tickets to the opera house to watch Chi of Shaolin tomorrow so we'll see how he feels in the morning if I should take him or not. Good night.