I'm not saying my children are miserable, but sometimes it's easier to persuade a tadpole to smile for a photo than Amelie...

That's Wriggly the froglet in our old Sea Monkey tank on top of the car. I decided the easiest way to transport him back to the park was via roof rack.

The photo I published yesterday was actually taken on Thursday evening, and I now strongly suspect that Amelie was injecting the thing with growth hormones, because by yesterday lunchtime it looked like this...

How anyone can grow two limbs in less than forty-eight hours is beyond me. I've heard of someone giving you a hand, but this is ridiculous. Amelie was keen to keep Wriggly for another day, on the grounds that tomorrow never comes, but on that evidence, time was clearly of the essence, so I insisted we head straight back to the park yesterday afternoon.

Getting the kids ready to go out is always a speedy and stress-free experience, so having supervised Toby cleaning his teeth while Amelie rolled around on the floor under a cardboard box...

... I soon had them running down the hallway with a live amphibian in a tank. The journey to Queen's Park took about three minutes, during which Amelie managed to hold the tank in the back of the car and spill about half the water. She blamed most of that on my driving.

As for the moment of release, that was a beautiful and touching moment of genuine emotion, the likes of which we haven't seen since 'Man From Atlantis', as the special bond of love between a girl and her frog was heart-wrenchingly broken...


So with our spirits high, and the very real possibility that Wriggly was eaten by a seagull within thirty seconds of release, we headed for the children's playground for some rest and relaxation...

Sometimes I wish we lived nearer to the seaside. Those kids love a bit of sand. Of course, if you're going to kneel in a sandpit, the one thing you want in your hand is a precariously placed Mickey Mouse choc-ice on a stick...

I didn't actually realise until I got home that I'd managed to film the moment when Toby deliberately stuck his ice cream into the sand as though it was a bowl of chocolate sprinkles. It's at 1:41 in this delightful montage of mania, swinging and extreme ultra-violence...


I'd just like to state for the record that Amelie's blue lips are due to a bubblegum ice lolly, and not because I punched her in the mouth.