Jody has taken two minutes and then about thirty seconds respectively to get to sleep for the last two nights. Which is fantastic. I never thought I'd be the sort of mum who could let their baby 'cry it out', and in many ways I feel that isn't exactly what I've been doing - though I'm not sure why. I have certainly set an upper limit on the amount of time I am willing to leave her for (15 minutes) and I have certainly tried every other approach first. But the efficacy of this whole thing just amazes me. Jody is obviously growing in confidence and understanding every day and she herself is so tired by 7 that she desperately wants to go to sleep. It's just that if you stay with her she even more desperately wants to play. So there is no option but to allow her natural needs to prioritise themselves by leaving the room. I feel somehow triumphant!

We are going to take our snot to toddler group this morning. I met Monica in the park yesterday and she said not to worry about it - it's just a cold. And though we're both still rather bunged, I don't think I can miss a 3rd consecutive group so we're going anyway (to the chagrin of all the other mums except Monica, I'm sure).

Not much of note planned this weekend. It doesn't look like I'll be able to deal with a long run after all, though I'm determined to get out at least once to try out my new trail-runners. There's a bit of shopping to do (pertex overtrousers for the Swaledale Marathon, paint brushes for the house, tiles for the bathroom floors, curtains for the nursery), and on Monday we're going up to Cambridge to visit a couple of friends in the area including my old rowing partner Annabel whose partner of about 5 years I haven't even met yet!

We also have the long-awaited Magnolia to watch (this Blockbuster mail-in dvd club is fantastic!) And of course there's the last ever Friends tonight which is going to be interesting. And I'm sure we'll spend at least several hours helping Jody in our own version of baby walking boot camp. It's so weird that she's been able to walk for about a month but just hasn't really bothered with it. It runs contrary to everything that every mum has ever told me about walking. But then it wouldn't be the first time that Jody's been a bit contrary. Seems like she's inherited her parents' stubborn streak!

Nothing like spending money to cheer yourself up! In this case I spent more on silly thingys to put in my (nonexistent) hair than I spent on getting the stuff chopped off in the first place. And that wasn't because I got a £10 haircut at a barber's!

I also managed to buy a top to complete my first wedding outfit for this year, which is a great relief as it means that my personal shopping day might not be quite so pricey. (I said might!)

Roj is off to Frankfurt this evening for 24 hours to another conference thing. I'm going to watch our third Blockbuster dvd, From Hell, in his absence, since he doesn't seem to want to. After Jody's gone to bed, of course.

Talking of which it took her four minutes of crying to go to sleep last night. Four. Which is fantastic for me as feeling cruel for four minutes is infinitely preferable to feeling cruel for fifteen.

Good to see that Dave is finally talking about things that matter on his blog! Well - you can't have your own wedding coming up and neglect to mention it, in my opinion. Still, these blogs are personal or not by degree and one shouldn't criticise those who decide not to be, I suppose.

Need to get my trail-runners today. I am committing the ultimate runner's sin by leaving it so late but it hasn't been all my fault. I think I'm finally going to plump for the Nike ones that will make my feet too hot. The alternative is to buy a pair from America that I'm not sure will fit me which will put me right back to square one. I'll just have to hope for not too much sunshine on the day so that my feet don't fry. My cold has plateaued at the "ha - so you think you can get rid of me" stage. I'm still hoping it will have gone by the weekend but right now it's not looking all that promising. It's the same for Jody too - I didn't know a little body could harbour so much snot!

Bumped into someone in the park on Monday who might want a website built. Which is cool isn't it? In fact I wouldn't have started talking to him if it wasn't for the fact that Jody crawled into his bag (after strewing its contents around the whole park). I felt it was reasonable at this point to acknowledge the man's tolerance. So I suppose I should start paying Jody commission right?

Had a lovely afternoon yesterday at Camilla's. She made us a very yummy roast chicken lunch and amazing cheesecake and made us all feel very welcome and relaxed. She even took my mind off some of the developments of the last few days, at least for a short while.

Very much hoping that she can make it up to Abersoch in one of the weeks we go up there this year, and in the meantime am looking forward to being able to glean some advice about wedding outfits during a Selfridges personal shopper day which she has kindly agreed to accompany me on. Nothing like a bit of girly advice when it comes to buying frills!

Jody and I have now passed our cold onto Roj so we are Family Snotty Nose right now. The most annoying consequence is that I can't in conscience take Jody to toddler group so we missed Friday and again today. Hopefully we'll all be well again by this Friday because we're both quite attached to our little weekly routine.

Talking of routines, Jody is doing really well at going to sleep now. As she no longer nurses to sleep, we basically put her in bed, reassure her for a few minutes and then leave her to it (if we stay in the room she wants to play). After ten minutes of angry shouting, her crying starts to subside and within 15 minutes - 20 at the outside - she is quietly sleeping. It's quite difficult to leave her to scream - even for just ten minutes - but if we go back in to see her we basically revert to square one so there is no other option. She woke this morning at about 4am and for the first time I decided not to go and reassure her, and sure enough within ten minutes of half-hearted crying she was back to the Land of Nod. This is real progress as the sleeping on her own thing was the one thing I felt behind on. The only thing left to tackle after this is being able to go for a nap in the day if she is put in her cot, but that is still some way off. One step at a time!

The Swaledale Marathon is swift approaching. My last big training session will be this coming weekend (as this weekend was a write-off). Sven has already done 19 miles of the course and found it horribly painful, so I don't expect it to be a walk in the park. I just have to remember that the aim is simply to finish, and I should be OK. The cut-off is ten hours and I sincerely hope that it won't take me that long to get round.

This week is going to be quiet. Bits and bobs to do, but nothing of particular note. If the weather holds out, we'll be spending plenty of time in the park so that Jody practises this walking lark, and wears herself out as much as possible!

It's cold today. I'm reminded of what British summer used to be like, after a beautiful week (and more to come apparently). We've been up in the park this afternoon, trying to encourage Jody to walk (which she'll do eagerly as long as there's a finger to hold onto), and managing to spread her germs (and mine) to at least one other tot.

She's said 'daddy' twice now though. Which is big progress. So it's 'dog', 'light', 'hi', and now 'daddy'. Needless to say, she can make every sound in the world including 'ee' and 'mummm', but no 'mummeee'. Sigh. Am I wishing time away?

I've just had the haircut from hell. The stylist and myself had a bit of a miscommunication so that she mistook 'keep it long but cut away all the crap at the ends,' for 'cut it all off.' I now have the original early 80s haircut. Somewhere between Bo Duke and the girl off Dirty Dancing. Only worse.

Still. I can't complain. I have a very beautiful little baby girl who I am enormously proud of. That makes me a very lucky woman in a very unfair world. When all I have to complain about is a hideous haircut, I should consider myself blessed. And my thoughts go out to those who have a little more to worry about.

My goodness. Troy. What a load of crap!

The least wooden actor - as I said to Roj last night (inspired, obviously, by the cheesiness of the film) - was the horse.

Never have I seen a greater collection of quivering lips, glowering looks, and staged emotional breakdowns. And the score? The score was as close as it could possibly get to the Gladiator without being it. But I'm sorry Brad, with your over-Sunnin-ed shoulder-length locks. Even when you strip down to nothing time and again, give me Russell Crowe any day.

I remember giving up on the Iliad after Hector dies. I was unprepared to read a book so exclusively about war and I was unprepared for the death of the best character. In the film I was prepared, but it still left me cold because of all the melodramatic overacting. How can Brad Pitt feel he is compelling just by clenching his teeth and glowering? Never have I felt such lack of sympathy for such a good-looking and frequently-naked character!

The film was chock-full of clichés and overacting: Sean Bean with a mullet; Priam urging "May the Gods be with you," to Hector who, I thought, was going to pull his light-sabre on Achilles; the most varied mix of bad accents and bad haircuts ever; Orlando Bloom pulling out his bow and arrows (again); need I go on?

I enjoyed the popcorn though!

I used Disk Cleanup yesterday for the first time and freed up one gig of hard drive space. One gig. Unbelievable.

In much more exciting news, Jody went to sleep of her own accord last night. She went to bed as usual but woke 10 minutes later (which is quite normal recently, what with her cold and the two new teeth she has coming through). Roj went downstairs to try and coax her back to the Land of Nod (with a little help from Calgel), but left her to it after about 15 minutes as she wasn't having any of it and seemingly just wanted to play.

Under usual circumstances ten minutes later and we would have heard angry shouting from the nursery, "Come and get me daddy, you don't expect me to go to sleep on my own do you?" But that's exactly what happened. Not a peep all night. The first time ever. Woohoo.

The other good news is the results of the valuation we had done yesterday on the flat. It seems that it has nearly doubled in value in the 5 years since we bought it. We are gobsmacked. We knew Marylebone High Street was pushing up prices in the area, but had no idea that things had escalated quite so much. Thank goodness we're on the right side of it, is all I can say.

Went for a run this morning and am still suffering. My pulse was through the roof so I just have to hope that I'm not catching Jody's cold. Only 4 hills this time. I'm still loosely intending to do a 3.5hr run this Saturday, so I don't want to wear myself out.

And last but not least, it's our wedding anniversary today. 4 fantastic years. Roj and I were just discussing how much has happened in that time. From 3 years in New York to an 11-month baby and everything inbetween. Every single moment has been amazing. I am unbelievably lucky and unbelievably happy to be married to this man.

And to celebrate? Roj and I have booked a babysitter tonight (second time ever) and we're off for a romantic, extravagant night at ... the cinema! What better way to celebrate the 4 best years of our lives than to watch Brad Pitt being Greekly heroic over popcorn and m&m's!!

Jody was funny on Monday. She exhibited her usual lack of shyness by toddling up to a man in the park and pestering him until he let her drink iced tea from his can. Lots of it. She then proceeded to climb up onto his lap and steal his pens. Luckily the man was a good sport all round, even with plenty of iced tea spillage on his trousers. When can you start teaching the 'don't speak to strangers' rule?

Unfortunately she's got the beginnings of another cold now. Which evidenced itself in another apalling night yesterday. Asleep for 30 minutes, then up til 10:30, then up again at 1am for an hour, and again at 5:30 (though she eventually got herself back to sleep that time). Which makes for a very exhausted mummy.

However the weather is gorgeous again, so I have no compunction about sitting in the park for most of the afternoon. Sitting not really being the term, as it will mostly involve chasing and providing single-finger support for walking practise (Jody loves to walk around, but still not independently).

First I have to entertain the fellas from Druce who are coming over to give us an estimate on the flat. Lovely.

And I need to find some people to competently cut my hair on Saturday, since it is indistinguishable from a haystack, what with all the hormonal turbulence it has experienced in the last year or so. And I need to do a little shopping for summer clothes as I am sick to death of my current wardrobe. And I need to confirm Jody's place in nursery for July, and do several other million miscellaneous jobs from the list.

But first I'd better go and see why Jody's crying!

Just back from toddler group and Jody is asleep downstairs after five minutes of frantic crying in her buggy. Don't know how long it'll last though, as 12:30 is typically lunchtime.

The race on Saturday was interesting. We expected to complete the course in 4 hours (the cutoff was 5), since historically we have come in the top 1/3 in the US races we've done. But this time we made it in exactly five hours. In fact 5 hours, 1 minute and 40 seconds. We even won the prize for being the closest team to the cutoff time, we were that close!

It was quite a hard 5 hours too. 45 minutes of running, 3 hours of cycling, then 1:15 of running. 19 checkpoints, 5 special tests (rope walks etc.) We came 14th out of 63, as one of only 14 teams to complete the course, and the top handful of teams were the sponsored lot of British racers who do the international circuit, which made it a lot better for us to bear the 1:50hr differential between our finishing times.

The weather was excellent, and my only real complaints were that Roj and Will couldn't quite swallow their old rivalry and so I was left playing catchup a bit (particularly in the first running section), and that altogether it was a bitter reminder of how fit I used to be.

Still. Not too many better ways to spend a sunny Saturday, and it was certainly nice to have my parents babysit Jody, and see Will, Pippa and Rosie for a while.

And recuperation continued in grand style yesterday at a lovely barbeque in West London with Rosie and Simon and guests. Jody - the only baby there - was very well behaved throughout, although she thoroughly wore herself out so that today started out rather tetchy. She's back to sleeping through the night though, after a week of total disruption, so no complaints from me.

So my last long run in preparation for the Swaledale Marathon will be this weekend, when I'll attempt to keep going for somewhere between 3 and 4 hours (pales in comparison to my brother who is, this weekend, intending to complete the whole course). I'm also planning on a trip up to visit Camilla at some point - perhaps for a nice relaxing Sunday lunch.

Meanwhile I do hope this weather continues. Jody and I will be found in the park all week if so.

Jody's only just gone to sleep. Three hours late. This means that I can now eat dinner and have my usual couple of hours to relax and unwind (caring for a baby might be fun, but it's pretty full-on). That means I either go to bed on a full stomach or stay up til midnight, neither of which I'm inclined to do. Or starve, of course.

I have to confess that I really did lose my temper tonight. I didn't aim it at Jody, although she was the cause of it. I was rather disappointed that Rose couldn't come over (poor thing got ill at the last moment) and this is the second day I've had Jody to myself all day. Plus I never quite got round to the nap I wanted this morning. So tired and slightly antsy, I was truly desperate for my little evening break, which involves making myself a cup of coffee, eating something unhealthy, and watching whichever channel is showing the most rubbish. Standing swaying a wriggling screaming tot to and fro while singing Row Row Row Your Boat for the four hundredth time was a little more than I could handle. So I left her to it for ten minutes (screaming) while I came upstairs to compose myself. And returned guiltily to find her absolutely desperate to see me.

The day had been quite run-of-the-mill before this little drama. Jody did nap for a couple of hours this morning enabling me to do some work on a little project for a family friend. And then we went to Sainsbury's, coping with the usual challenging logistics of getting ten tons of shopping up the stairs with the baby then reparking the car. Shamefully it took me 3 attempts to park this afternoon, good as I usually am at parallel parking. Small space, impatient traffic and a glowering workman looking on to check his little tin can wasn't about to get scratched by the incompetent housewife. I was such a cliché.

I tried to give Jody dinner before her bath tonight, in an attempt to curb this waking half an hour after bedtime thing. It didn't work. She woke up 15 minutes after bedtime and proceeded to play, scream, play, scream, wriggle until 10:30. And the rest is history.

On a brighter note, Happy Birthday Mum!

Running was good again this morning. 9 reps of Primrose Hill (in 1:30). For the first time I feel quite strong. I know that's only relatively speaking - my training this year has been very pathetic in comparison to years gone by - but there's always a sort of threshold that I have to pass about 6 weeks into training where things suddenly start to feel easier, natural. And today was it. Which is a good thing considering that our little adventure race is this Saturday.

Jody has been most disrupted these last few days. She has been unwilling to sleep at her usual morning nap time, which means she gradually gets more and more antsy throughout the day culminating in (on Saturday anyway) a full-on screaming session. She then falls asleep over dinner, gets put to bed, and half an hour later starts screaming bloody murder again (and refusing to sleep for an hour or two). There are two theories: Either the lack of adequate daytime sleep makes her so restless and hyper that sleeping proves difficult, or (our preferred) the amount of bath water she swallows, followed closely by dinner and then her milky nightcap makes her stomach ache so much that it wakes her up (with plenty of acrid burping). Tonight therefore, she is having no access to her bath sponge (which she sucks all the water out of) and I will try my damndest to get her napping during the day.

Her walking efforts continue but only slowly. She is independently taking a handful of steps now and again, and seems much more stable standing, but crawling is still the preferred mode of transport. The most delightful development of the last few weeks is her willingness to poke out her tongue with whatever she has put in her mouth to chew so that I can take it from her without broddling around in her mouth with my finger. Wonderful! She is also enjoying immitation. Blow a raspberry at her and she blows one back. Say 'guh' and she 'guh's' back. She waves goodbye too, and we think she says 'hi' and 'bye', although the relevance of the situations she chooses makes it a little ambiguous.

Need to go and pick up my Polar heart rate monitor today from the post office (it's taken four weeks to get that fixed), and maybe pop down to Run and Become for some trail-runners (after finding out - 6 weeks after ordering them - that Nike don't do the ones I wanted in my size). Need to do plenty of other errands during the week so am desperately hoping that I can get Jody sleeping just a little bit. Roj is away on a conference near Paris until Thursday night so am taking advantage by having some girly time with Rose tomorrow night, which will be fab. Also looking forward to a bbq on Sunday with Rosie, Simon & co. Hope the weather holds out for that.

Yesterday I had to reboot halfway through my post. Annoyingly.

I did another long run on Thursday. 16 miles and two reps of the Long Mynd. Should have taken me about 2:50 but due to a vicious stitch in the last quarter, necessitating several minutes of walking and sitting, I came in at just over 3. What amazed me most was that it was easier than the London run I did last Saturday, even in the light of doing the London run last Saturday. Something about the variety of terrain and incline just made it easier on the joints and less mentally and physically demanding, despite a whole heap of gain. Which makes the Swaledale Marathon thing suddenly seem quite attractive.

Got stuck in an M40 tailback on the return trip on Thursday mind you. Fortunately discovered that Jody will happily sleep in the car if the radio isn't on, so out of the 4.5 hours it took us to get back, she was only awake for 0.5, despite an arrival time way past her bedtime (let alone bath and dinner).

Kate and Sophie came round yesterday with Jack and Florence. Lovely to see them both but the entire nearly-three hours was focused mainly on damage-limitation. Took a nice walk up to Paddington Park though, for some fresh air, but we think next time we meet will probably be in the evening when the bairns are asleep.

Roj is currently setting up our new dvd system (with mixed success) so we can finally watch Jody's Cult Classics for Kids - and numerous other movies. It's quite exciting for someone who hasn't been to the cinema (barring the couple of Reel Mom's showings in NYC) for nearly a year! Any recommendations for a good mail-in dvd-rental place would be appreciated.

And I suppose we'll be getting round to some sanding later in the day or this place will never get painted. Not really looking forward to the mess that will entail but painting should be fun, even with baby handprints all over the place!

Only a week til our little adventure race up on Cannock Chase. About 100 teams entered apparently. Not really looking forward to it yet (Will - our 3rd - is too fit!), but I'm sure once I'm on my bike things will be different.

Ah well. The domain name that I've been hoping to get (for my nonexistent freelance business) has been snaffled up by someone else in the last two days. I guess there was only a slim chance anyway. Sigh.

On the bright side, I had a good run on Saturday. The 16 miles was more like 18, as I ran to and from the start from home. It was a little lonely running along the Thames at 6:30am, but great to see all the places I haven't, particularly the Globe Theatre (which I must look inside one day). I felt fine for most of the run (although I stopped a couple of times to stretch and map-read etc.) although the last three miles were predictably a little painful on the old hamstrings. Considering the vacuum that has been my training schedule the last few weeks though, I was pretty damn impressed with myself. Not least because by 9:20am I was back home and ready to get on with the day.

Next big run will be the Long Mynd 16-miler that Roj did over Easter, which I'm planning to do this Thursday morning. See how I hold up to the bumpy stuff (none of this pancake flat London for me). I'm just disappointed that my pulse meter isn't back yet (the Polar repair centre is suffering a 'two week backlog'), and neither are my trail-runners yet available. Gah.

Meanwhile I have finally managed to locate my debt, so pending a phonecall tomorrow, my credit report should be all fine and dandy. Just another reminder to be more careful about my finances.

And the biggest news of the weekend is that yesterday Jody took her first independent steps so she is officially toddling! We've spent a little time recently encouraging her in the right direction, but this weekend is the first that she's shown any interest. So yesterday in Paddington Park's playground she just stood up from the end of the slide and took two or three steps towards me (with my camera). No coercion involved. So off to John Lewis tomorrow to get her first pair of proper shoes! Woohoo!