You're 17 months old

You run now, real little-boy-running, rushing to get to the other end of the room or to reach the next distraction. You are totally obsessed with tractors. It's your only real word and you use it - all the time. Still no sign of the only word I'm longing to hear - 'mummy'. I'm called 'dada' like everything else, but I get special smiles to make up for it, and sometimes arms flung around my neck with such furious passion it kind of makes up for it.

You laugh often, and smile even more. When stopped at traffic lights I turn to look at you and you catch my eye and just grin at me. It makes my day - every time. Your laugh is deep, a chuckle not a giggle - and as I write this I can hear peals of it from upstairs as daddy chases you up and down the landing before your bath. He holds the towel across the landing, matador-style, as you charge the length of the landing into it, to be wrapped up and scooped on top of daddy for a cuddle.. laughing hysterically all the while.

Things you do that amaze me:

• Feed yourself, really well, with a spoon or fork - only occasionally getting distracted and flinging your tea across the kitchen
• Drink from a straw! Why this amazes me I don't know, but it does... it seems so grown-up
• Pretend - holding a dolls cup under the plastic tap of a play kitchen and then pretending to drink from it, holding your biscuit to your favourite toy farmer's mouth and making eating noises with your tongue
• Amuse yourself for ages with a tupperware container and some water
• Chatter to yourself before you fall asleep
• Try on my shoes
• Understand almost everything I say (this one is also slightly scary...!)

I still look at you in astonishment, marvelling at how we made something so truly perfect. I want to kiss you all the time, and generally do, painfully aware that the time you'll let me do this will be short, and the time you'll push me off and tell me to stop being embarrasing will come around all too quickly. I love the weight of you in my arms, even though the space for you on my lap is getting smaller and smaller as your little brother or sister grows bigger. I imagine what it will be like to hold the two of you, my children. A strange thought. Somehow more grown-up than having one child - to have 'children'... imagine.