In my humble opinion both my sons are gorgeous (apart from when they were first born). But do you know when they’re at their cutest? When they’re crying.

Now don’t get me wrong. I don’t make my children cry just so I can bask in their teary-eyed beauty. That’s just cruel.

Santa isn’t real.

It’s just I can’t help but notice that when they’re upset they look pretty sweet. Their cheeks go all taut as little tears roll down them, mouth open wide, doing that thing where they don’t breathe for ages and you begin to get a bit worried. I don’t know: this all sounds rather sordid. Perhaps it’s because it’s one of the few times they actually want to cuddle me.

But, when I’m fed up of the wailing, I employ a novel way to stop my eldest son from crying: I simply pop my finger in his mouth. It makes him laugh, and helps him to forget what he was crying about in the first place.

I tried to tweet this a while ago, and thought I would use the voice function on my phone to type it. It mistook the word ‘mouth’ for the word ‘bum’. In essence, I nearly tweeted that I stop my child from crying by putting my finger in his bum – which would probably work, but is also highly illegal.