DECORATING isn’t easy with a three year old about is it?

Trying to explain that his idea of ‘helping’ is actually certain to end in certain admission to A&E is not something he takes kindly to.

Even the mere suggestion that daddy might need to give him a hand with that power drill is met with a disapproving glare.

“But I can do it mummy, I’m a big boy now” This phrase is coming back to haunt me in a number of ways. I tend to trot it out when he starts to regress into baby ways such as crying, stamping his size sixes and generally refusing to tow the line. “I thought you were a big boy,” I say, “big boys put their trainers on/put their pants on the right way around/don’t spit their food out…” You get the picture.

However he tends to turn this around when he wants to do something that is clearly beyond his years. He climbed into the car on the driver’s side the other day, determined to make the trip to Tesco unaided. I was about to embark on the finer points of mirror, signal, manoeuvre in an effort to humour him but he told me he knew how to drive because he was the afore-mentioned ‘big boy’.

Sat on the kerb tossing the keys in my hand I waited for him to come to his own conclusion that failure to see over the steering wheel or reach the pedals would render it nigh on impossible to get off the drive. He relented and we compromised on the passenger seat instead.

Driving aside, there is no denying he is growing up fast however. We eventually got his room decorated in a heady mixture of Mr Men and Thomas the Tank Engine and he settled down for his first night in a proper single bed. I was transported back when we put him in the cot in his own room for the first time thinking how small and lost he looked in the big bed and if I was doing the right thing and whether I would hear him if he cried out.

I had no such doubts this time around and as I closed the door leaving him to have a natter with Mr Bump I prayed he would develop a close relationship with his new bed until at least seven o’clock in the morning.