Babies. Mine and other people's.

Our son phoned us yesterday morning to announce that, overnight, he’d delivered his first two babies. He’s been hoping to do this for a while, but had up till then been elbowed aside by eager midwifery students - he’s rather gentlemanly and not particularly pushy. He was all excited on the phone – he’d been up for 24 hours but was still running on adrenalin. Both babies were called Ruby and both of their surnames begin with R – clearly a pattern here.

It seems no time since he was a baby himself with two protective big sisters. See above. How does time pass so fast? (and other clichéd questions).

It was my mother’s 85th birthday on Wednesday. When my dad was 85, we commissioned a cake plate commemorating the day, with his quirky sayings inscribed on it. I then made a cake for the plate and Daughter 1 made a model of him, sitting in his armchair and reading “The Spectator”, out of icing, which we put on top of the cake. As I sat by my father’s bedside for four long days in March, I wondered how we could mark my mother’s 85th.

Then I had an idea. When Daughter 1 got married, a colleague who has a sideline as a photographer took the photos and they were lovely. He’s a really nice person and lives just round the corner from us. I thought it would be good to get some photos of the five grandchildren – our three and my brother’s two. The only available time was the evening of my dad’s funeral, since my brother’s family had to get back down south the next day. Miraculously, the photographer had just decided to set up a studio in his house. So in 15 minutes that evening, the young ones changed into less funereal clothes and popped round to get their photos taken: some of all five, some of our three and some of my brother’s two. I then made up a birthday album of these for my mum, with one in a big frame. She was thrilled. I thought I’d better not blog my niece and nephew, but here are our three.

They've grown up a bit. But they're still my babies.