Carlo celebrated his third birthday by giggling with delight and uncomplicated pleasure at having his own special day. When we sang 'happy birthday' he would stand there trembling and grinning - so we did it again and again.

"I'm a big boy! I'm not two!" he told his brother on the phone.

He mostly kept his big sister at bay while he tore the wrapping from his presents. He would select one from the obscenely large pile, play with it and only move to the next to ease Maria's impatience. We assembled the big bus together and later the enormous pirate ship. He proudly sported his new shirts and pored over the books sent from his admirers far away - from the UK, from the US, from New Zealand.

Three years ago on a Saturday afternoon we were packing away the detritus and presents from Maria's third birthday party when Josie announced she'd been feeling contractions since she put the cheerios on to boil. I expected we had hours and hours to go; we didn't. He arrived by 8 that night. We haven't had cheerios since.

He was a hideously malformed baby with his squashed head, hook nose and blotchy skin. Now he has spent over half his life in Paris. He gets blonder every day, his eyelashes get longer and he bats them over his mischievous brown eyes. He won't eat much but starch - bread, pasta, rice couscous - broccoli and (of course) sweets. He boyishly identifies aircraft, loves diggers and bikes and stuff with wheels. He plays for ages on his own and then happily lets Maria humiliate him with dress up games. And he looks like a little man.

I put a little flash slide show up in the left-hand menu.