With boys, you always know where you stand. Right in the path of a hurricane.

Grandmas can shed the yoke of responsibility, relax and enjoy their grandchildren in a way that was not possible when they were raising their own children. And they can glow in the realisation that here is their seed of life that will harvest generations to come.

Good kids are like sunsets. We take them for granted.

I remember thinking how often we look, but never see ... we listen, but never hear ... we exist, but never feel. We take our relationships for granted. A house is only a place. It has no life of its own. It needs human voices, activity and laughter to come alive.

Some emotions don't make a lot of noise. It's hard to hear pride. Caring is real faint - like a heartbeat. And pure love - why, some days it's so quiet, you don't even know it's there.

Let us hope manufacturers can come up with a diaper that is environmentally sound. To go back to cloth would send us back to the day when breathing and raising a baby at the same time were incompatible.

Let me put it this way. According to my girth, I should be a ninety-foot redwood.