Postman

For reasons I can't now remember, everyone went out this morning, leaving me looking after Grandson Two. "It'll be fine!" I said. "Just go!" - while privately wondering if I'd invited disaster to come calling, because unlike the Boy Wonder at the same age, the Baby Brother hasn't been extensively grandparented by R and me, and doesn't actually know us all that well.

But in the event it was fine, and the fact that the BB was howling the place down when his parents walked back in was purely down to the fact that the rampagious game we'd been playing of chasing each other round the kitchen table on our hands and knees had exhausted his reserves of energy. I have the receipts (photos) to prove that he'd spent much of the morning giving me his charming toothy, nose-wrinkling smile, and this reappeared just as soon as he'd been refuelled with a couple of large lunches.

He's currently at the stage where the most interesting thing about gifts is the packaging in which they're delivered: give him a box with a toy in it, and he'll spend ten minutes happily taking the toy out and then putting it back in again. Even better is a toy that comes to pieces, because then there will be multiple elements that can be individually posted into the box and then retrieved. This always puts me in mind of the poignant  A. A. Milne story about Eeyore's birthday: "It goes in and out like anything!"