Three Beautiful Things

1. A friend once said "Babies are great time wasters" and it is so true: I will happily lose hours playing on the bed with Bettany, singing songs with her, finding faces and finger games to make her laugh and just enjoying the last days of her baby-soft skin and her downy hair. 2. As soon as the cleaner is out of the bathroom I race upstairs holding Bettany at arm's length. I have to let her go for a moment so I can put the changing mat down and get the nappy ready. When her feet touch the floor she gives a surprised squeak -- it is still wet and rather slidey. 3. I have a pleasant task to do while Bettany naps: it's checking details and making some plans for the holiday we have booked.

1. While Bettany naps after lunch, to cuddle up with Alec on the sofa. He loves it when I baby him a bit, and he is rather fond of being lavished with sympathy and invents all sorts of small woes to get it. He makes his bubbing face, a sort of pouty ooo-face, but doesn't push the matter when I decline. His requests seem to arise from habit rather than by any desire to nurse. 2. A large toddler protests by whining and struggling. His nanny says (with infinite patience) "Come on, you're tired, aren't you. I can't get anything right today, can I?" I am so, so glad to see that the professionals have those days too. 3. Alec gets stuck in the mud puddle at the end of the park. When I offer to pull him out he shakes his head: "I want Someone Else to rescue me!" I can only imagine he means the little girl with bobbed hair balancing on the log. She looks bemused. I scarper -- there are few creatures more unappealing than a man whose mother runs love erran...

1. At the end of the downpour the people caught in the playground emerge. Three teenage girls who were sheltering under the climbing frame shake their hair and come back to the swings. A large boy comes out of the little house and his mother who was left outside with an umbrella leads him away towards Grove Hill Road. The dogwalkers caught under the turkey oak have moved on by the time we start our third circuit. The sun comes out and Bettany finally falls silent. She is asleep when we get home. 2. I did say he could go outside, but now there is a thunder storm. He is ready to go, dressed as his latest hero, the zoologist Nigel Marven, with his backpack and wellies, Nick's sunhat and a pair of my old sunglasses. There is even a time portal set up across the back door. He is so furious that tears are rolling down his face. "But I LIKE thunderstorms!" I address him as Nigel and remind him that zoologists never, ever go out when there's lightning and then he calms down...

1. The Ocado man doesn't know it but he has just been greeted with Bettany's first recognisable "'Allo!" 2. The flicker-flacker ripples in a sunny puddle and in a drain drowned in clear water are bright green liverworts and ferns. 3. I have new boots so I copy Alec by stamping through puddles and chasing the bouncy ball.

1. Alec slowly and deliberately reads out the digits on the alarm clock (I can't see it without my glasses and I'm trying to teach him not to disturb me before 6am). 2. My cross and perturbed goddaughter cheers up a tiny bit when I put her on my knee and do 'A Farmer Went Riding' for her. Bettany stands beside me looking serious. 3. To roll string into a ball.

1. It's amazing how helpful people are when we travel: an elderly lady with two bags of shopping steps out to flag down our bus because a delivery van is in the way, and when we get off a man stops working on his tablet and brings the backpack off the bus for us. Then on the pavement a lady holds Bettany while I re-organise all the bags. 2. Grandpa has been smiling all day when he thinks about Alec using the hose to fill his own boots with water. In the evening I tell Nick and he enjoys the story too. Grandpa says Alec is the watery equivalent of a pyromaniac (he says aquamaniac, but I think it ought to be hydromaniac). 3. A bowl of plum crumble (hot) with malt ice cream.

1. The diminutive pansies growing in the cracks in the steps up to the front door at nursery. I wonder if they grew from seedbombs planted by guerilla gardeners ? 2. By the time I get the message about Bettany's temperature she has been dosed, it has gone down and they report that she is back to her old self. 3. A child on each side of the pushchair -- one is planning to work on a women-only building site with Bettany for seven years before becoming a princess like Rapunzel; the other is telling me he will have a Boat and a Crew and Dive in the World's Deadliest Oceans.