There are nights - nights after nights after nights - where, frankly, dinnertime is not so much fun.

Not for us, with endless rounds of please use your knife and fork and no singing at the table and please don't interrupt and stop eating like a pig and I'm talking to papa, just wait a minute and stop mucking around and well go get a cloth and wipe it up and inside voices and eat what you want but stop whingeing about what you don't like and hurry up and eat, it's getting late and no there's no dessert if you don't finish and on and on it goes.

Not for you, with all the above and then also that's one... that's two... and on the bad nights that's three, go sit on the stairs and on the worst that's three, dinner's over, straight to bed.

But then there are nights like tonight, where it's just lovely. Where we have a conversation, an interesting one, between all of us - all listening, all contributing, no loud random interjections or demands, no singing on top of someone's talking. And dinner is eaten with cutlery, by everyone, without half of it ending on the floor. Where there are no threats, and every request is polite and thanked.

Nights where I wish you two would always be like this... not just this polite and pleasant, but quite literally this same age, with this same curiosity, same innocence, same generous cuddles, same unquestioned desire to be with us. Forever.