First snog!

This picture appeared in all of the gossip press and all over Uh-Oh, Not-OK! and Tatter magazines and websites within hours of it being taken.

Let me explain.

I took Mum and Dad along to see all of my friends from NCT this afternoon. It was great - Dexter's mum works at a educational charity centre and there was a load of fun playgroup stuff, and.... toys! Here's a picture of my butch pals Dexter (left) and Rafi (right). Rafi appears somewhat bemused by Dexter's confident swagger:

Here's a picture of the lovely Evie, who can enunciate the word "doggie" all too enviously:

Here's Maddie (right) feeding grapes to Chloe (left):

And this is the mystery lady herself, vivacious Isla, on the trampoline:

Isla and I had a great time in the ball pool. It mainly consisted of me floating and finding two balls of the same colour and presenting them to Daddy, saying "Dall!" "Dour!" "Doar!" Isla decided that the best fun was had by throwing the balls out of the ball pool, and one donked me on the forehead very hard, which dazed me for a few seconds.


When it was time to come out of the ball pool, Isla's dad said, "Give Joel a kiss!" and Dad said, "Joel, give Isla a kiss!" So we did, because we're young and obedient in that way, and haven't worked out the ick factor of the opposite sex because we have trouble identifying who's a girl, who's a boy and what's a toy. Isla's also great at puckering up: I think her mum taught her.

The grown-ups' main achievement of the day was getting all of us eighteen-month-olds all together on the same bench at the same time in a row, to take our first group photo. Dexter sort of wandered off, but nevertheless the effect was basically there:

Yep, all in all a rather good day.