Over the weekend my daughter managed to trip over some nearby air, fall onto her shoulder and whack her head on the hard ground. I moved towards her on full Mummy alert, ready with cuddles and soothing words. 

I had entirely forgotten that ever since she was a toddler, her standard injury procedure has been to run. More accurately, sprint. As far away as possible in as short as possible a time, preferably with arms flailing and screaming loud enough for even the kindest neighbour to consider picking up the phone to call social services. 

However, being stuck at home made this latest attack on Usain Bolt’s record somewhat trickier for her, so she was forced to settle for running round in circles in a small room (I should add that no similar adjustment was made to the noise levels). 

Unfortunately our 12 week old puppy immediately deemed this to be the Best Game Ever. I spent the next ten minutes frantically trying to grab an over-excited Labrador who had succeeded in morphing into what I can only describe as a buttered snake, whilst attempting to simultaneously offer calm and nurse-like reassurances to the wild bull masquerading as my child.

Exhaustion finally kicked in, at least for the humans involved, and we were able to proceed to injury stage 2, consisting of clutching the afflicted area whilst bravely agreeing that yes, chocolate might help. 

In fairness to her, she actually still can’t raise her arm past shoulder level without a lot of pain. Although if they offered qualifications in milking it, we’d be proudly cheering her on as she accepted her postgraduate certificate. 

Three times I had to remind her that she didn’t need help to brush her teeth, straighten her duvet or bring her plate out to the kitchen because thanks to the wonder of nature, she HAS ANOTHER ARM. 

At least we had Mothers’ Day to make things special for a while. Important pronouncements were made at the start of the day to inform me that for the entire day, there would be absolutely no sibling arguing so that I could have ‘a day off’ from dealing with it. 

This immediately led to an argument about which one of them normally causes me the most amount of stress, which I resolved in the traditional manner of a) assuring them it was both equally and b) threatening to go and have Mothers’ Day somewhere on my own. 

Luckily (and disturbingly) it didn’t occur to either of them that this would have been impossible and we were able to start again. 

They were both very sweet and gave me some very thoughtful gifts. My teenager sewed me a special ‘stress worm’ made out of a sock. She said I should squeeze it whenever I feel things are getting too much. It’s been 24 hours and I think I’m wearing a hole in it. 

They made beautiful cards and wrote me poems and songs and I felt extremely lucky. And that’s despite the description that I was ‘a diamond in the rough’ and my personal favourite, ‘prettier than a sheep’. My husband said comfortingly that maybe she thinks sheep are really attractive. This is now on my worry list. That, and the fact that he asked me at 10:30am if I wanted a glass of wine.

Naturally I was horrified, said no immediately and vehemently. And then went to get the gin. 

Bring on Bedtime!