I am struck, watching my two small children grow up in Berlin, how different their childhood is from mine in England’s industrial north in the 1980s. We are very integrated here – most of our friends are German. the nursery the children go to is German, and the places we frequent are almost completely German. Instinctively, my children say ‘guck guck’ instead of ‘peepo’ and ‘Aua!’ instead of ‘ouch!’. They drink fruit tea with their afternoon snack and heavy dark bread is nothing unusual. Yes, for now, it would seem that my children are German, with only a streak of English.

I don’t really mind this, though I sometimes feel nostalgic for the things they cannot know: the jangling bells of the ice-cream van on a long summer’s evening; the feeling of a school uniform tie tight around a buttoned up shirt neck; grubbing around the back garden in a private kingdom. They will be city children, who remember going to public spaces to play out their fantasy games (parks and playgrounds), who slouch around grandiose nineteenth century city school buildings in jeans and the latest trainers, and only think of ice-cream as being from the organic ice-cream parlour across the road – if we stay here, that is.

It is inevitable that childhoods change over the generations. My parents experienced the tail-end of rationing, and most girls they knew became teachers, secretaries or nurses. When I was five, they bought a chunky desktop computer; its green and black screen still vivid in my memory. I was scolded for telephoning for hours, wires twisting around doors and handsets secreted into corners. Most girls I know became lawyers, business women and journalists. Now in this modern digital age, smart phones and tablets are ubiquitous. I don’t suppose my children will read many paperback novels. What they will have access to in fifteen years time is unimaginable, such is the current pace of technological change.

But bringing up my children as an expat, especially in an environment where they mostly speak a language that is not my own, adds another layer of difference, and at times, a sense of remoteness. As they absorb words and cultural norms that I have only learned and distantly experienced as an adult, I find myself consciously emphasising the aspects of our lives that make them English – perhaps in a way that I wouldn’t were we living in England: I insist we open our Christmas presents on the morning of 25th December, at birthdays it is always a sponge cake, and I parade in my old London-faithful wardrobe at the playground. If and when we move back to the UK, I can imagine my German husband will feel more precious about being German again. Christmas will shift to the 24th, and fruit tea will be back on the table. Until then, it is I who can understand in the tiniest of ways how migrant communities become so deeply entrenched in the traditions of the homeland – because it stops home and your children from feeling so far away.

They catch you unaware, those knee-knocking, heart-stopping, tear-inducing moments of absolute parental adoration. Chance would have it that these swoops of love, at once all consuming and utterly debilitating, mostly occur when you’re supposed to be doing something sensible – making a sandwich, buying a stamp or laying down the law about how many biscuits small children are allowed to eat in one sitting, perhaps. Chance would also have, it seems, that these come when the object of your affection is invariably doing something he or she should not – oh, I don’t know, eating peanut butter by the spoonful, running a little hand along the back of a mud-encrusted car, stealing another child’s plastic scooter at the playground, or something; you get the gist.

So it was today that we were marching (sensibly) hand in hand, in new wellington boots (them not me), to the local shops. Rain had fallen incessantly all morning, and this was our ten minute, pocket of blue sky dash for the sake of fresh air, sanity and a new writing pad. Now, wearing wellington boots instills a certain sense of pride in any two year old, and that they were new added to the sense of exuberance at suddenly and unexpectedly being outdoors. Possibly, this was at the root of it all.

Ever the indulgent mother, I encouraged them to test their boots (one red pair, one blue pair), pointing out the smaller puddles and encouraging them to run through. A few splashes were within the realms of acceptability, I thought, in my sensible Saturday morning way. More fool me: every puddle became a target – the bigger the better, of course. Before I knew it, two little hands slipped away from my grasp and both pairs of boots were charging off to the newly formed lake lapping gently over half the pavement. “Don’t! Don’t jump up and down in there!,” I called after them, “It’s too big … .” Too late. It was then, as the water dripped over the tops of boots, tights and trousers quickly darkening with mud, and the prospect that we could get anything sensible done washing away with the old leaves down the drain, that I had to stop, catch my breath and marvel at the wondrous, hilarious, soaking wet children, I could call my own. I forgot my writing pad and shivered with pleasure, as their shouts of laughter echoed around the houses and their boots pounded the pavement, water leaping around them.

It’s probably not the done thing to tell people how enraptured you are with your children, but I suppose every now and again is forgivable. The new boots must have gone to my head too.