your family, or: "dad, how many of these idiots am i actually related to?"

One of the things that you will discover as you grow older, pumpkin, is that you are blessed with a much larger family than most 'normal' people.

How large? Well, you have several great grandparents in various countries, sure, but that's not out of the ordinary. Where you will come out on top begins, methinks, with your grandparents. Most people will tell you that one who is born with a regular compliment of grandparents should be able to count around four of them, two for each parent.

At last count, you have seven people who will lay a full or partial claim to being your grandparent. This, by my reckoning, places you already ahead of the pack, particularly in terms of the number of gifts you are likely to receive at birthdays and christmases, but the real meat in the sandwich arrives when we start talking about aunts and uncles.

As of this weekend, from what we understand, you will have eight uncles and six aunts, but here's the kicker; two sets of your aunts have the same names. You will have two aunt Amys and two Aunt Elizabeths. This may prove difficult, especially when you start trying to work out which ones you are blood related to, and which ones just happened to be hanging around when you were born, proferring bottles of champagne and promising that they wouldn't drop you.

Here's the other fun fact for today: regardless of your gender when you arrive, you are likely to be named after one of your uncles. Which one? That's for me to know and you to find out.

Love you pumpkin