Five months old, started on solids, sleeping in her big cot, hair still as mad as ever...

And this smile:

We do this every now and again for our tea, and it's dead tasty I tell thee.

Get some spuds and peel them. Cut into strips vaguely resembling what you might get in a chipper. Dry them off and lay them in a single layer in a roasting dish. Glug some olive oil, salt and pepper on them and chuck into a hot oven for 20 minutes or so.

In the meantime, take a fillet of monkfish and cut it into chunks. In a bowl, mix together about 200 grams of flour and a half a can of Smithwicks or any other ale or lager (not stout). It should have a good runny consistency, if not add more beer. Heat up a deep pan of cooking oil. Immerse the monkfish in the beer batter, and when the oil is hot enough, drop the battered chunks of fish in using a slotted spoon. Fry until the batter is golden brown.

Serve with the oven-roasted chips and some tartare sauce. To be really posh, accompany with chilled fino or manzanilla sherry or even better, a glass of Champagne.

Being the besotted first-time parents that we are, my wife and I dressed the wee one up in a little Christmas outfit, took a blast of photos of her, and then used one of them to make a Christmas card. (Whether we will keep this level of activity up for any further offspring is a subject of debate among my siblings. My elder sister, herself a mother of three, drew my attention to a poem by Ogden Nash: First Child…Second Child.)

Anyway, this is from that photoshoot, when Aoife decided that sucking her thumb was more rewarding than having her photo taken.

We bought a new pram for Aoife a couple of weeks ago. The one we had been using was a hand-me-down, and while it was perfect for the first few months, it soon became apparent that it was not going to be suitable for the vagaries of an Irish winter.

So we got one of these lads. It wasn't cheap, but it transforms into a pushchair, so it will be useful up till she's three or so.

There is an incredible amount of engineering in one of these things. They have to match several criteria, such as being easy to fold up, being compact when folded, adaptable, sturdy, having an integrated iPod dock so that baby can sleep to the dulcet tones of her favourite music (OK, I made that one up.)

I put the thing together last week, and have to make sure that I don't lose the manual, cos I'll need it when we need to change it from a pram into a pushchair,

But this photo is too cute to let pass…