Though loving parents, these last two nights we have successfully experienced a wonderful phenomenon called ‘bedtime’. After nights of walking around our flat as gloom gathered outside and the clock ticked around to eleven, or worse, midnight, wakeful babies on our shoulders, we decided to introduce a much earlier bedtime for our twins. We shifted their final feed by a few hours and firmly put then down in their cot. though waiting until they were suitably sleepy of course. And, incredibly enough, it has worked, so far at least. This evening we both ate with two hands (rather than with at least one baby in our arms) and without rocking a small baby chair with our feet. Now we sit on the settee absorbed in our laptop windows to the outside world. Even more exciting is the prospect of our early night still to come – it is the small but significant achievements in life after all.