Buckingham Palace

I'm not very popular with Melissa at the moment. Why? Because in last week's column I wrote, prematurely as it turns out, that James was now sleeping through the night.

Since the article appeared in the Leader, James has woken in the middle of the night every day. It turns out this is my fault for tempting fate.

To be fair to James, I think this is down to the fact that he has had a bit of a cold which has made him a bit grumpy. I don't know if this is a proper cold or the result of his first set of injections but he's not been himself at all.

At least Harry was about to lift the mood. The other day, Harry was downstairs while Melissa, James and myself were upstairs.

I shouted down to Harry to make sure he was ok. “I'm fine dad,” came the reply. “I'm just watching this programme about Buckingham Palace.” I immediately went down to find out what he was really doing. He was sat on the sofa, arms folded, watching BBC Breakfast which was broadcasting from Buckingham Palace. Harry certainly has the ability to surprise.

Mind you, he's not exactly an angel all of the time. The other day, he managed to destroy a new shirt when he decided to experiment with his scissors while doing some cutting out at the kitchen table.

And that's not the only problem we've had with clothing in recent days. In preparation for school, we've been teaching how to dress himself and, obviously, get undressed. This had been going quite well until last week when Harry decided to strip in the front room before clambering up on to the windowsill – stark naked – waving at passers by.