August 1998.

Matthew is now 17 months old. This month he has started to string together two words into useful sentances. The first time I heard him do this was when a slightly older friend of his said "bye-bye Matthew", and he responded, as if he had always done it, with "bye-bye Jake". This was also the first time I had ever noticed him refer to a child by name! He seems to have really got to grips with the idea of belonging this month since other two-word sentances include "daddy's car" and "mummy's drink".

His passions at pressent are motorbikes and teletubbies! I'm not too fond of him watching TV, but he seems to have picked up the teletubbies culture from his nursery friends. When we were flicking through a catalogue the other day he noticed some pictures of them and started saying "tubbies tubbies", he knows which ones are "Laa-Laa" and "Po" too... I was amazed at how he could know all this because he had never seen them on TV. I let him watch it as a special treat though, and he was over the moon. I'm not too sure I approve, but if he's happy I can't complain - and he seems to have learned about names from the teletubbies. He has also started to notice colours which he didn't before: all yellow things are "laa-laa" for now!

We took Matthew camping for the first time this weekend. It was great fun and we will definitely be going again! He didn't mind the tent at all, and loved running around the campsite, and eating his beans at the pick-nick table. It took him a while to get used to the idea of wellies though. He stood rooted in concrete for nearly an hour before we finally got him to walk in them!... but in the end he couln't resist the urge to join in a football game. As I said, his other great passion is motobikes. Whenever we passed then on the road he would say "bike", and when we stopped at the services he was so chuffed to see a whole pack of bikers, we had to stop and chat for a while.... I nearly lost him too, when he turned round to follow the man in leathers and helmet going the other way!

His vocabulary has improved fantasticlly over the month, and he must have at least a hundred words that he can use consistently. About 80% of them are proper English, although some are pronounced a little out, for example breakfast is "brick-tis". The remainder are baby words. He also includes around fifteen verbs in this, and so we can now have proper conversations.