It's 6.30 in the morning, and I've just snuck in here to the computer room to try to grab a few moments of solitude before the onslaught of breakfast-bags-teeth-lunch-notebooks begins. No such luck, however, as Lauren has sniffed me out and is now sitting at the computer next to this one (Peter's proud of his two-computer home network) and is asking for help typing everyone's name in the family. Letter by letter. Only she needs to be told letter by letter. And then where each letter is on the keyboard.

What comes first in Robyn?
R
oh
Where's R?

What comes after R?
o
ok
Where's o?

Look mom!
What comes after o?

...
...

Luckily for her she's incredibly cute.

The reason I'm up and showered and dressed this early is that I couldn't get back to sleep after Daniel woke at 4.30.

Now one of the cool things about having a boy, for me, is the opportunity to test out, first hand, the whole nature vs nurture debate. Just how different will my son be from my daughters? (Despite the little point that my daughters are about as different as you can get.) So far, one Very Significant Difference I have discovered about boys is that they Drench Their Beds. Repeatedly, night after night, I find myself blearily changing Daniel's clothes from top to toe, and quite often his cot too. The mosquitos are baying for blood again, otherwise I'd just leave him in our bed for the rest of the night, but the only place he's safe is in his mosquito-net, and he reacts so badly to mosquito bites people actually mention it in passing, making me feel like a bit of a child-abuser!

Maybe those people who used to make those different boy and girl nappies had a point. He weighs about 10.5 but neither the 9-14kg size or the maxi size, 12-25kg, are a match for this boy.

On the topic of nappies, a friend mentioned recently someone on her internet list, or antenatal group, or somewhere. dressed their babies, from birth, in underwear rather than nappies, because nappies are So Unnatural. Now I'm sure her intentions are noble, and I can understand an environmental preference for cloth rather than disposables, but underwear from birth? The mind boggles. How can this possibly be done?