So I still don’t have a toddler – Coco might have got her first tooth at four months, been sitting up at six and cruising for well, ages but she will not be hurried into walking. She’ll do a few seconds standing but blink and you’ve missed it so it’s looking like she is going to take after her father on this one who walked at 18 months and not her mother who walked on her first birthday.

So this is the year for not only walking (eventually I hope) but also talking (we are getting a lot of 'ma ma ma mas' and 'da da da das'), self feeding (note to self - I must have more patience when stewed apple is thrown all over my walls and omelette lands on the dog’s back) and getting dressed, my Gina Ford The Contended Toddler Years book tells me which brings me on to the subject of this post... the next book to buy now that I’ve reached the end of my What to Expect in the First Year and Gina’s Contended Little Baby Book.

Whilst I’m not as much of a Gina disciple as some, I am most definitely an advocate of her easy to follow routines (like my mother I rarely experiment in the kitchen always preferring to follow a recipe) and found her Contended Baby and Weaning routines incredibly useful. A year on from a steep learning curve and Coco went to her Granny for 24 hours last week and for the first time was left without a list of instructions (just a two hour sleep after lunch is pretty easy for most people to remember) but whilst I’m more relaxed now she is a year into life, I was keen to have some kind of guide to follow / refer to for the time ahead.

Gina’s Contended Toddler Years has plenty of info on all the above but if you aren’t a fan of hers then the following are apparently very useful too:

- Jo Frost's Confident Toddler Care (the best selling nanny covers it all)

- What to Expect: the Toddler Years (their what to expect in the first year is a bit of a tome but it covered everything and I hear this is great)

- Secrets Of The Baby Whisperer For Toddlers (the follow on from another bestselling author)