So I invited them to sit on my desk and help me work out which pens in my desk drawer worked and which didn’t. And it all went very well. Reuben had a pile of pens and a pad of scrap paper to scribble on, and Joshua had the same.

I was helping Reuben sort out a few pens when I picked up a biro-wannabe, not a proper Bic, but a cheap imitation.

“Oh!” I exclaimed, “I hate these pens with a passion!”

Reuben tested it, it worked and so he added it to the pile of tested-and-working pens.

“I’ve got one of these,” said Joshua looking back at his pile of pens. “I’ve got a passion pen… and another… and here’s another passion pen. I’ve got lots of passion pens.”

I didn’t have the heart to throw them out after that.

Daddy: Right, let’s get you out of your cot.

Joshua: (Holds up dressing gown) This my rope.

Daddy: Your rope? Great.

Daddy lifts Joshua out of his cot. Joshua wanders through to the landing and speaks with Mummy. He’s holding his dressing gown and a dog cuddle toy.

Joshua: (Holds up dressing gown to show to Mummy) This my rope.

Mummy: Your rope?

Joshua: Yes. (Holds up Copper, the dog from Disney’s The Fox & the Hound). This not my tractor.

Mummy: (Laughs) It’s not your tractor. Ok, what is it?

Joshua: (Looks at Mummy like she’s mad) It Copper!

Mummy: Of course!

There’s never a dull moment in our house!

Yesterday Jane took the boys into St Andrews to buy them proper bike helmets, which cost almost as much as the bikes themselves.

Reuben and Joshua love bike helmets; they’ve worn Jane and my helmets at home for the last few months. Often fighting over them. They love their own helmets now too. Reuben has a blue one with pirates on it, Joshua has a red one with dinosaurs on it.

I was sitting with Reuben last night, knowing that their new bikes would hopefully arrive the following day. We’d kept it secret from them that we’d ordered them. This was our conversation:

Daddy: Do you like your new bike helmet, Reuben?

Reuben: My like it. My like my new bike helmet.

Daddy: Good. Now you’ve got a bike helmet what do you think you might need next?

Reuben: Mmmm… [obviously thinking]. A drill!

Daddy: A drill?!

Reuben: Yes. My like a drill.

Daddy: Right… okay. Well, I didn’t give away too much information in that conversation then, did I?

Amazon UK has just sent me an email wondering if I might be interested in the following bizarre collection of books:

• Collectible Spoons of the 3rd Reich
• Bombproof Your Horse: Teach Your Horse to be Confident, Obedient and Safe No Matter What You Encounter
• A General History of the Pyrates
• Bicarbonate of Soda: Hundred (sic) of Everyday Uses: Cleaning, Laundry, Personal Care, Food

Wonderfully bizarre!

I saw an advert for Pantene that told me that their shampoo gives you “colour protection”. I’m going to be honest here. I have no idea what colour protection is in shampoo.

Are there some people whose hair turns monochrome unless they wash it in special shampoo?

When you ask people what might be the downside of having children they might say sleep depravation or a diminished social life.

But it’s not! It’s waking up in the morning with children’s TV theme tunes going around your head.

I woke up this morning with the Something Special theme tune from CBeebies in my head. I stumbled, bleary-eyed to the bathroom at 05:30 while in my head I found myself cheerily singing “Hello, hello, how are you? Hello, hello, it’s good to see you you….” Arrrrggghhhh!

They don’t tell you about that in the books.

Post Express Delivery. Package is available for pickup. NR 67433

Hello.

Post notification No.17134

The company could not deliver your package to your address. Your package has been returned to the Post Express office. The reason of the return is “Incorrect delivery address of the package”

Please attention!

Attached to the letter mailing label contains the details of the package delivery. Please print out the invoice copy attached and collect the package at our office

Thank you for attention.
Post Express Service.

Now, I am waiting for a parcel to be delivered. It should contain a wall clock for the bathroom as we had a nice one with a bird on it that is now on the wall in Reuben and Joshua’s bedroom. So, I have to be honest and say that I was tempted to open it.

But then I read the email again and these were the things that concerned me:

1. “Hello.” Not “Hello Gareth”, just “Hello”.
2. Who are “Post Express”? Never heard of them.
3. The reason of the return is “Incorrect delivery address of the package”, but seemingly they managed to guess my correct email address, despite my delivery address being freely available in the BT Phone Book but my email address not…?!
4. “Please attention!” — that certainly grabbed my attention. Not the most professional use of the English language I’ve ever received.
5. “Attach to…” — oh, look! an attachment. A zip attachment, which if I were to open I’m pretty certain Symantec Norton AntiVirus 2011 would inform me contains a virus, or trojan, or other such malware software.

I just deleted the email.

It wasn’t that I had a particularly negative view of the medical profession: my mum was a nursing sister who worked in the hospital next door. Neither did I associate “The Hell Centre” with any fire-and-brimstone images that I might have had of hell.

It was just that I had mis-heard the pronunciation of “health centre”—the ‘th’ sound had run into the ‘s’ of ‘centre’: hell thcentre—and so I just accepted that that was what it was called, in the same way that I had accepted that an apple was an apple and a cat was a cat.

I sometimes wish I could still accept things that easily without questioning them.  I wonder why that is…

Up until now the boys have slept in zip-up sleeping bags, and pulled blankets over themselves if cold. But now they have ‘big boy’ duvets and pillows.

They raced upstairs to show me, threw themselves into their cots and race under the duvet. What genuine smiles!

This morning I went in to see them around 07:15. They were standing in their cots holding a cuddly snowman and cuddly Santa over the edges of their cot.

“Diving!” they said before dropping the toys only the floor.

I picked them up.

“AGAIN!”

I picked them up. Again.

“Joshua, show me how you get under your duvet.”

Joshua dropped to his knees and shuffled under his duvet, pulling it tightly around his head.

“Do you like your new duvet?” I asked him.

“New duvet make my happy.” he said.

And you know, that made me happy too.

I mean, you get pork chops and apple sauce. You get pork and apple sausages.

But you never get apple pie and ice cream with bacon pieces in it. Or apple crumble and custard with ham slices.

Now, where’s the Masterchef 2012 application form? I think I need to redress the balance.