This was my favourite smile from last month’s shots. Not one of Jon’s frequent broad grins, but a quiet little self-satisfied smile as he crouches down on the springy see-saw; having just successfully proved that he could stand up and balance – quite nonchalantly – all by himself (as seen here).
After three weeks of builders and dust, and a bathroom in various stages of deconstruction and reconstruction (photos here), I finally feel like we’ve almost arrived!
Yes, there are quite a few things left to do – the principal one being the marble surface around the basin, and then the basin itself – but all the other important bits are there. And it’s looking a lot prettier now that the tiles are (almost) complete.
We’ve had a couple of boring setbacks. One was me ordering the wrong type of cistern (we wanted a push-button type). 
Which meant that to stay on schedule, we had to offer to have a toilet sans cistern for a fortnight — an inconvenience to be sure, but at least the bath taps were nearby. Another delay was needing to order extra tiles.
And lastly we’ve challenged the builders on the bath panel, which didn’t turn out very well.
The UK default with baths is to buy the bath with a plastic fitted panel to go with it. However I’ve never been particularly fond of that style – my preference was for the South African look which involves a panel that can be tiled…
I suspect that our builders haven’t done too many of these and they got it a bit wrong. They added some extra timber to make the bath sturdier, which then meant that the bath panel couldn’t go as far under the bath as it ought to, which then made the tiles on the panel stick out and look rather odd. There’s been some to-ing and fro-ing on that one, but they’ve now agreed to re-do it next week.
Anyway, the big event for us this weekend is Tom’s parents arriving tomorrow! So we’re very grateful that the new cistern went in yesterday, and little enough remains that the builders could take away their protective floor-coverings. Which just leaves us with the universal dusting operation, and next week’s finishing touches to look forward to. 
Jonathan (22 months) enjoying a rare opportunity to access Daddy's toolbox - and so very keen to get a slice of the toy-fixing action.
We’re really lucky here in London to have a number of parks and open spaces available. One of the more unusual ones that happens to be just a short bus-ride away from us is the Barnes Wetland Centre. (Formerly the site of the Barn Elms Reservoirs before they decided they didn’t need them any more.)
Jon and I visited it with some friends for the first time last month, and had a thoroughly good day out.
Barnes Wetland Centre as seen by satellite on Google Maps
Jon (21m) striding along in his reins and red wellies
As it happened, Jon was just getting the hang of proper “long-distance” walking when we went on this excursion, so it was his first Big walk outside. In reins, which proved very handy when he tottered straight over to the nearest pond for a closer look!
The bit that I most appreciated was after our picnic lunch when we headed over to the 3-storey octagonal hide they call the Peacock Tower. This is sited on the southern edge of the expanse of grazing marsh and lagoon to the north.
We went up to the top floor viewing area where half a dozen people were quietly bird-spotting from the many windows, and stayed for maybe half an hour.
During that time, Jon lay peacefully in his pushchair (the idea was that he would fall asleep) watching the watchers, while I leaned on a window-ledge and drank in the extraordinarily tranquil view.
A slice of green and pleasant land to soothe the soul…
Marshland to the west and three of the Highland coos that provide natural grass maintenance
