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.