Why you should always write down all the silly things your children say

I wrote an article about them for the magazine that we had back then, in 1998 or 1999. Adam and bride-to-be Kate tie the knot on Thursday. It is time to savour past daftness. He’s been qualified as a doctor for the past four years; Kate is a psychiatric nurse. I am sure she needs to know exactly the boy she is marrying. So here it is: that article from all those years ago…

“We have a little red book at home. It's not quite as profound as Chairman Mao's, but it's considerably more entertaining. In it we write the pearls of wisdom which fall from the lips of Adam, our nearly-three-year-old, as he learns to master the English language. Here's a selection of the various things which we have written down and fully intend to use in evidence against him (Yep, that day has come!)

BRUTAL: (patting his grandpa's shiny pate) Where's the hair?

DISINHIBITED: (to his 81-year-old great-great-aunt) Do you want to see my willy?

IN NEED OF THERAPY: (waking up screaming in the middle of the night) A cow has gone in my mouth.

HURTFUL: (laughing hysterically) Daddy couldn't mend the hairdrier. Daddy couldn't mend the hairdrier. Daddy couldn't mend the hairdrier. Grandpa did.

ABOUT TO BE DISINHERITED: Daddy, cricket's stupid.

LOGICAL: (sitting in his toy car) Mummy, do you want to ride in my car when you grow small?

POETIC: (looking down while sitting on the potty) Look, it floats – just like a boat.

CONDESCENDING: Grandma: Look at that funny animal, Adam. Adam: It's a tapir, grandma.

SURREAL: I've got eyes in my bottom.

IMPATIENT: (at least 50 times in one afternoon) Am I three yet?

PRETENTIOUS: (singing) Old McDonald had a farm/And on that farm he had an oryx.

CONFUSED: I need to go to the vets. My ear hurts inside.

EVEN MORE CONFUSED: I can't get my trousers on. They're all in outside

WORLDLY WISE: I don't want this (toy) rabbit to be made in China. I want it to be made in South Africa.

PEDANTIC: (carefully peeling skin off jacket potato) I don't eat the skin on Tuesdays.

DISMISSIVE: Me: (pleading) Please will you get out of the bath now? Adam: No, daddy: Go to India. I want you to go to India.

SCATOLOGICAL: My pooh is going to stay in my bottom forever and ever and ever.

CANDID: Me: What does grandad call you? Adam: Cuddly boy. Me: What does daddy say? Adam: Sweety pie. Me: What does mummy say? Adam: Come on, co-operate.

VAIN: (suddenly, after a long silence) Adam a beautiful boy.

MEDITATIVE: (after hearing the nursery rhyme Baa-Baa Black Sheep) Perhaps when Adam bigger, when mummy bigger, when daddy bigger, when baby Laura bigger, we all go down the lane to see little boy.

DISORIENTATED: I'm having trouble dancing. I keep bumping into things.

Pride of place in the little red book, however, goes to the immortal line he uttered one day at the swimming pool last summer. Adam had heard Cyndi Lauper's Girls Just Want To Have Fun on the car cassette player (oops, that dates it!) and had become obsessed with it. For a whole month, wherever we went, we had to have the same song over and over again. After hearing it six times on the way to the swimming pool one Sunday, I tried to persuade him that varying his musical tastes would be a good idea. Adam was having none of it as we walked back to the car. Fearing a major strop, I capitulated. Okay, just once, I told him as I unlocked the car door. At which point, Adam turned round to the woman unlocking the car next to ours. "Lady, girls just want to have fun in my daddy's car” he announced in triumph. I shrugged, smiled and tried to look as if it might be true. For some reason, Lady drove off rather quickly.