Lord Buckethead

Every now and then the Boy Wonder invents a new joke, and his pleasure in it is something special to see. If it's received well by the grown-ups, he works it up and polishes it, to see if he can make it even funnier: it was only a couple of minutes prior to this that the empty brick bucket had gone on his head for the first time, and by this stage he was already wearing it at a rakish angle. Shortly afterwards he managed to balance it so that it genuinely did look like an oversized hat, and he could grin at R from underneath it and do boy bonding over the joke. He found it slightly less funny was when he put it on at an angle that wedged it, so he couldn't get it off again, but we managed to rescue him before an international incident ensued, and he went happily back to playing.

A little later I was in the kitchen with him when he broke wind, and turned and looked at me in astonishment. I pulled a surprised face, and he laughed. He then did it again - still accidentally, but he found it even funnier this time - and within seconds he was re-enacting the camp fire scene from Blazing Saddles, and I had to open the back door to clear the miasma. With luck he'll grow out of fart jokes in a couple of decades or so, but until then I'll be recommending that his parents limit his baked bean intake.

Aside from his developing sense of humour, the things that R and I especially noticed today were a step-change in B's physical co-ordination, and an increase in wilfulness that doesn't always respond to coaxing or distraction. Also, he's started to become frustrated if you misinterpret his signals - for instance he asked for a drink this morning, but a storm of bitter tears erupted when I gave him a cup of water. It eventually transpired that he wanted to try some of the cow's milk R and I take in a flask when we visit this dairy-free household, to put in our tea and coffee, but he'd never asked for this before, so it needed an intuitive leap for me to work out the cause of the uproar and put things to rights. He needs to get some more words, and the sooner, the better.

By the way, if you're not an aficionado of British politics, the title refers to this chap.