NORTHERN PLANNER

 Will is nearly 6 months old now. He's just about sitting up, moving off milk and attacking real food with gusto. Perversely, he's stopping sleeping right through at night after a few months of pretty good sleep.

He's also laughing, worrying, as soon as I start talking to him he starts to laugh at me (but then again, why should he be different to anyone else?). I still talk to him all the time, it's great for his future vocabulary and from my point of view, he doesn't talk back and he can't go and do something else, no matter how boring I'm being.

I've started to write to him too. Just thoughts around what I'm feeling, what I'm doing, what we're both up to. I hope he might want to read it someday, when he's old enough. It's hard for sons to see their parents as people, one day I want him to know what I was like and what life was like was me and his Mum. When he's our age, things will no doubt we wildly different. And it will do until we can talk to each other (although he seems to enjoy spouting gibberish at the moment, maybe I just need to understand Williamese).

It's amazing watching him, he's interested in EVERYTHING. I think children are have lots to teach us, he hasn't learned to be cynical yet or ironic yet – everything he cares about is either do do with playing, feeling safe and loved and not being hungry. Not a bad way to live your life really.

Don't you think grown ups forget to play sometimes? Not everything needs a point, sometimes it's nice to do something just because it's fun.