In which Tom decides that hearing is a jolly fine idea

Tom and paddling pools - they're never really going to be friends. The water is never warm enough, there's always stuff floating around in them (he's on a bit of a cleanliness kick at the moment - a future in painting is probably off the agenda) and now it involves taking his ear off too - something that, as the weekend went on, didn't seem such a good idea.

I think you can get a fairly clear impression of the sort of weekend we had by mulling over the following overused phrases:

• 'Can you hear the .... Tom?'
• 'Did he use that word before?'
• 'Pass the suncream'
• 'Your ear's fallen off again' (the neighbours must have puzzled over that one)

And what was Tom saying during this time? Well, all manner of mumbled stuff through his dummy. Oh, and 'Dummy!!', of course, when we took it off him to try and hear what he was saying.

That darn thing has just got to go. I don't know what we were thinking; our son comes round from a coma, asked for a dummy in a hoarse croak (brought on by being intubated) and we just crumbled like the weak, ineffectual parents we are. It's enough to give Gina Ford conniptions.

By Sunday the parenting and grandparenting collective were pretty convinced that Tom understood the word 'wee-wee' - having announced it after peeing in the garden and attempting to mop it up with Granny's shirt. I would've let him as a reward but the proposal was vetoed.

There were numerous other clues that Tom was enjoying the experience; musical toys got alot more attention, squeaky doors just had to be opened and closed over and over, the 'bang' that colliding toy cars made just had to be shouted to the hills. The 'eyes well up' moment came for me when we opened a farm animal book, I asked 'Where's the duck?' and Tom's finger went straight to it, accompanied by a very satisfying, very endearing and quite resounding 'Quack, quack!!'