It's an odd word. In fact I'm not even sure if it's appropriate but Sally is pregnant, which, as noted previously, was the desired effect. It's all early days and there's some confusion about the dates, but late March or early April 2004 folks. Now the endless discussions about names start.

Sally's upset because she can't use the trampoline we got last weekend anymore. Trampolines are great fun.

We watched About Scmidt the other night and it took me a long time to realise that nothing was ever going to happen. The main character made me uncomfortable because I'm stupid like that too. In the end I didn't really see the point.

And I could have watched Terminator Two.

Which would have been good preparation for T3. I'm currently re-playing Half Life coz Half-Life 2 is due out soon. It's a little less enthralling the second time through although still good. Unfortunately I've got to Xen now and I remember it being a little boring from here on.

Still, I will persevere.

We had a bit of a fright this morning. Sally got up at about 6am (to scratch her foot, she says. Don't ask me) and shouted that she could smell something burning. I ran down and the kitchen was in a haze of smoke. Acrid, choking smoke. I couldn't believe how hard it was to breathe. We'd had a water pump installed to combat a plumbing problem recently and it seemed to have been running all night and had burned out.

The smell was phenomenal. I turned off the pump and opened every door and window in the house. I checked that Paddy's room hadn't been fumigated (Anna was away, so no worries there), it hadn't, he was still breathing.

We went back to bed and I lay there for quite a while, wondering what might have happened. The fact that I'd looked at smoke alarms in the recent past and hadn't purchased them made me feel worse.

It's all right now, if still a bit smelly, and in true stable door/horse fashion, I bought four smoke alarms and fitted then this evening.

Paddy was playing on his own the other day and I was watching him as he moved things around in a deliberate fashion with no discernable reason. He had a little pack of cards from a game where each card says something like Something you use in the bathroom or Something round. He was dealing them out to himself over and over. After a while I sat with him and read them out to him asking him to name things in the categories on the cards. It's interesting to see what he knows. He knew what round meant but not what vegetables were. When asked to name a street he said Coronation Street (Anna watches it). He also had some commentary. When asked to name something you drink he said Juice. When asked for something else he said Beer. And then: You love beer.

Well yes, I do.