Every now and then, I hear an excited shout from elsewhere in the house which causes me to drop whatever I am doing and come running. It is the sort of call that any caring parent would answer immediately, because it is the one which accompanies a ‘first’ by one of our boys.

Two within the space of 24 hours – one each for Isaac and Toby – is pretty exceptional. So last Tuesday was a pretty exceptional day.

The crawler

Toby, now nine-and-a-half months,  has been commando crawling – dragging himself forward on his arms – for a few weeks already, but last week he started crawling on all fours for the first time, setting off across our upstairs landing at an impressive rate of knots. He then zipped across our living room floor in pursuit of a toy car which Zac had just confiscated from him with the confidence of a youngster who had been doing it for months, not hours. For his part, Zac has naturally taken to supporting his brother, crawling across the floor alongside him in encouragement.

It’s time to start child-proofing and protecting sharp corners in the house again …

The scrawler

As for Zac himself, he has been able to recognise a handful of written words for a couple of months now. He immediately recognises the words ‘Mummy’, ‘Daddy’, ‘Isaac’ or ‘Toby’ if we write them on his blackboard, and when he creates doodles on the art app I recently downloaded onto my iPad for him, I have taken to signing them ‘Pisaaco’ on his behalf.

Anyway, I was working at home on Tuesday morning when Heather called for me to come downstairs. She indicated a large piece of paper she had spread out on the living room floor on which Zac had been busily doing his best Jackson Pollock impression, then pointed at the bottom of the page where, in a shaky but recognisable hand, our boy had written the letters ‘i-s-a-a-c-o’ followed by a ‘4’, all by himself. (I’m assuming ‘isaaco4’ relates to his adopted user name on online art forums or something.)

Isaac isn’t three until next month. Simultaneously, he frightens me and makes me unbelievably proud. But it’s lovely to see him take as much pride in his ‘firsts’ as we do.