Orange flowers, over the garden wall and the mops.

1. After breakfast, we sit in the garden -- I do some watering and sow a few pots of lettuce. I give Alec some nasturtiums to play with, and I'm taken by the way the orange flowers match the orange bears on his sleep suit.

2. Our neighbour peeps through the gate at Alec. We gossip -- "Was that Grayson Perry in your garden the other week?" And she had Coming Round the Mountain stuck in her head after overhearing me singing it to Alec in the garden. "Don't apologise -- you've got a nice voice, and I heard you singing, and heard your baby laughing and I felt like I was intruding. Don't apologise, these houses are so close together, we all hear each other." We really do -- I quite like it, though. You never feel alone if you can hear other people chuntering on with their lives.

2c. Ailsa plays Alec's favourite bouncing game, "This is the way the lady rides" -- she has some other verses that we didn't know, though. Alec looks bemused and pleased -- I know this bouncing talking thing, but it's not Mummy, and it's not the same riders.

3. We are struck with indecision in front of a display of mops. We need something to keep our floor clean, but what? There is so much choice. Another shopper comes up beside us and says: "I use that one." She has a speech impediment, and doesn't reply when I ask her about it. It occurs to me that she might have impaired hearing. I think she is very brave to help out strangers in a shop. "It's really good, that one. But the one you're holding is better value."  I turn to face her and try to speak more clearly when I thank her for her advice.

3. We clean up all the reduced chocolate we can find in town -- factory seconds, broken bars all get dropped into our shopping bag.

Bump, coming in and shouting at old ladies.

1a. This is a morning when I really need my mum. I call, and she comes.

1. To meet Katie-who-I-used-to-live-with and see her looking even more bumpy, and to feel so happy I can't stop smiling at her. Of course I've always been happy for friends who are pregnant with a much-wanted child -- but since Alec was born, it makes me feel... buoyant. I must be remembering how happy I was, and I suppose that their choice is affirming my choice, too.

2. Copy and pictures that I had given up for lost come in like stray sheep scampering to catch up with the flock. And Martin offers me half his bacon sandwich so I don't feel jealous (I had porridge for breakfast, so I'm immune to bacon).

3. My mother says she and Alec have been sitting on the bench at the bottom of the road. "He wasn't wearing his hoodie, but he was shouting at old ladies. They loved him."

The bath, sharpening and adrenalin.

1. Alec is as unsettled as I am after a difficult night. I wish we could go swimming -- a train ride, a change of scene, cool water, a bit of floating and perhaps tea with Godfather Tim would do us both the world of good. But it's not possible today. I run a bath and we splash around together. Alec is more secure at sitting up since we last  did this, and it makes life so much easier.

2. To sharpen the carving knife on the steel -- screswish, screswish.

3. Alec is calling from his cot for someone to reassure him. He doesn't understand that the commotion that woke him was me falling downstairs, and that the person he wants most is being comforted by the only other person who would do. I sit on the sofa with Nick, and I want to go to Alec, but I'm too shaken. Then the adrenalin rush clears my head and I can go him.

Cunning devil, family and favour.

1. It's been a horrible morning. I put Alec in his highchair to give him some lunch and he starts grizzling -- events have upset him, too. "Alec, give me a break," I tell him, and put my head on the tray. He shuts his mouth, smiles and makes a grab for my glasses, which makes me laugh.

2. My aunt and cousins come round and are kind.

3. When I come to thank Wynn Anne for her favicon, I tell her that this is one of those times when things are terrible, but something lovely pings out of this blog. I know she herself made the icon as a kind gesture to a near stranger, but what I mean is, she did me a kindness in response 3BT. It's one of those times when I'm very glad I keep it up.

Flirt, ladybird and nasturtium.

Wynn Anne very sweetly made me a favicon for 3BT -- it should be appearing soon, and it will help those people (like me) who have lots of tabs open on their computer.

1. Alec in a room full of women. He looks left, smiles, hides his face in my chest, looks right, smiles and hides his face again. At his six-week check the GP said he was a flirt, and I'm starting to fear she might have been right.

2. On our black iron railings is a ladybird -- glossy as the black snooker ball, but bearing two scarlet rings.

3. A nasturtium seed I saved from last year's crop fell between the paving, germinated and grew. I've been trying hard not to squash its succulent peppery stems -- but it's right next to my tool crate, so it gets moved and pushed around. It went on growing, and it put out a bud. The bud has opened into an extraordinary velvet red-red-red -- I'm so surprised that I call out to Nick, and he leaves the washing up to see. It doesn't look like the picture on the packet at all.

Colour combination, the squeeze and distress call.

1. I have a funny craving at the moment -- it's for a colour combination. Alec is wearing a lot of blue and orange, and I've been putting orange nasturtiums in blue glasses on the table.

2. Granny Nane and Alec are burning off some energy on the bed. Once I get to a safe place with dinner, I go upstairs to join them. Alec smiles when he sees me. I pick him up and he puts his arms out and gives me a squeeze.

3. I post a frustrated status on Facebook. One friend provides practical help, and another provides sympathy for the real cause of the problem. Ask and you shall receive, indeed.

Stitches, weeding and the good point.

1. On the Oxfam stall, I am leafing through a book about 19th century embroidery techniques, and thinking "I bet I could do that, too" about some cutwork on muslin, when Nick asks if I would like it. I think for a moment and realise that I would, very much.

2. The man at the bottom of the terrace is weeding his garden path. The damp red bricks smell of turned earth.

3. I ask Nick what he liked about today: "When I bought you a book and you kissed me."