Obviously children are a blessing, a constant joy, and the only thing that makes life worth living, but frankly a weekend with our kids is enough to make the colour drain from your face...

The sign suggests washing your hands after handling animals, so I was never far from water yesterday. It's probably just his age, but Toby's like an unbroken horse at the moment. Getting him into the car is a bit like trying to force a feral cat into a basket. Only more dangerous. By the end of yesterday afternoon, I'd been kicked in the head, Lisa had been bitten, and we both had mud on our clothes.

Fortunately, Toby rarely gets mud on his clothes. But that's only because he refuses to wear them. Now that the weather's turned genuinely cold, he's decided he no longer needs a coat, and he'll fight anyone who says otherwise. I ended up walking him to the shops yesterday in a t-shirt, stopping every twenty yards for another futile argument about appropriate dress codes. In the end, I decided that social services would be easier to reason with, and let him get on with it. Let's face it, people rarely die of exposure on their way to Lidl. Unless it's the one in Orkney.

As the photo above demonstrates, we did manage to get a coat on him at one point, when we dropped in to Mile Oak Farm on our way to the hairdressers, but by the time we reached the salon, he'd chucked the offending garment on the floor and was running amok between the sinks and the Christmas tree, attempting to bring an entire business to its knees.

Personally I was my knees by the end of it, but that was nothing compared to our trip to Marks & Spencers afterwards. The less said about that, the better. Suffice it to say that the time he spent causing mayhem in the fresh food aisle was dwarfed considerably by the amount of time he spent screaming about getting back in the car. I genuinely thought we'd never get home. On the plus side, we can rest assured that he'll never be abducted. Anyone who can bundle him into a car in less than half an hour deserves to get away with it.

As if Toby wasn't hard enough for us to handle, things are even tougher at the moment, as Lisa's lost the use of one arm. She slipped over on Thursday whilst waving to passers-by, and has somehow sprained her right arm. She can't raise it past chest height, so her waving days are over, and she's struggling to get dressed in the morning. I feel like I'm caring for an elderly relative. Which, in many ways, I am.

But on the subject of people getting older, today is a very momentous day, as Amelie has just lost her first tooth...

She's been throwing a wobbly for quite a few weeks now, and this morning, one of her bottom front teeth was finally forced out by a much wider tooth, which appears to be coming in at a far jauntier angle, and will no doubt need the kind of expensive orthodontic work her father can't afford. I might have to keep the Tooth Fairy's cash as a deposit.

The event seems to have confused Toby, who's now wondering why his bottom teeth aren't falling out...

But in a lot of ways I wish they were. It might make his biting less painful.