Climbing trees and making mud pies

THROUGH the window, I can see my second-born, five in August, standing in the class of downpour that would give a monsoon rain-envy. He’s just two weeks out of hospital, hale and hearty once more, but I’m still operating on hyper-neurotic parental mode.

Yet, I say nothing as he throws aside the umbrella inviting pneumonia to do its damndest, I keep schtum as he kicks about in the rapidly-forming lagoons by the kerbside drain, no doubt crawling with some new, improved strain of typhus.

Then I spy two-year-old Daddy’s Little Girl heading out to join him in a t-shirt and sandals. Sweet Jeebus, why not tie her to the rail tracks or feed her to an unlicensed pit bull terrier altogether! But I bite hard on my tongue, only a strangulated squeal passing through grimly set lips. You see, we’re crossing things off our lists: Britain’s National Trust’s 50 Things a Child Should Do Before Turning 11¾; and a toddler’s ‘Potty List’ of 36 things to do before turning three.