early nights and ravenous hordes

Your mum's asleep.

She's going to bed earlier and earlier these days, her body's taken up with the business of fashioning you arms and legs, fingers and toes, eyes, noses (only one, please) and ears. She eats four or five meals a day, comes home, watches TV for about an hour and crashes.

I look over at her constantly to make sure she's ok, that she's comfortable, that she's awake.

It's her 31st birthday on Tuesday, an event that will likely almost be lost in the gathering behemoth that is your Aunt Liz's (my sister, not the puppydropper) 21st birthday party. I think we should give her one to remember, so I've made a booking at vue de monde, which is a french restaurant in Carlton. She won't be able to drink any wine, and we'll have to go home early so that she can go to bed, but I told them that she's pregnant and they're ready for the ravenous horde that your mum makes up all by herself.

I'm not sure what I'm going to get her for her birthday. She says she wants a watch, but here's a tip for you pumpkin, if you're a boy (if you're a girl you'll already know this): When a woman says she wants something, that means that that particular item should be included in the range of gifts that you provide.

Take my word for it. Never buy a woman just one present. Four or five is much, much safer.

We're going out to breakfast tomorrow with J and R, who are having their baby very soon. They got pregnant on their honeymoon in the Maldives, in January this year. Their baby will likely be one of your very earliest playmates, and I hope that you will become good friends.

Your mum says we have to go to Garth's Place, on High Street. She had breakfast there last week, and they had cherry pancakes. By the time your uncle Harry and I had finished looking at our breakfasts she had polished them off.

Your mum likes pancakes, pumpkin. Cherry pancakes doubly so.