Happy New Year 2010

Happy New Year everyone and may 2010 be a year that brings you success and happiness.

For us, 1 January 2010 marks just around 7 weeks before the arrival of our first baby. How fantastic is that for a 50 year old bloke? I know some of you guys are thinking. 'What bad planning - that's in the middle of the Six Nations Rugby tournament' or 'How cool - England might have won a series in South Africa before it'. But the excitement is growing in our household about just the one thing.

However, yesterday I was left feeling slightly inadequate. We had lunch with two friends who are expecting twins - this is great news but we also have another pair of friends who are expecting twins and to boot my wife's brother and his wife have twins who are now one. What happened to us? We only have a single mite on the way and somehow in the general scheme of things that seems to be a low number.

At my age, catching up on the family front is a game that has to be played at high speed - twins would have helped enormously and got us ahead of the game. On paper that is. I also saw at Christmas just what a handful keeping track of two babies were rather than one and it's double the worry as well as the fun.

We talked about this last night, and you know what? We would not swap our impending addition to the family for anything. This baby has been a long time in the making and we have had to work incredibly hard to get it and endure many disappointments and heartaches. We may well want to have an instant new family but I think we will enjoy having them in single file just as much.

So we sipped a small glass of champagne to our fast-arriving, daunting new experience. 2010 will be a very special year for us and we cannot wait for our new arrival. I think it cannot wait either as it turned somersaults at the sound of the fireworks at midnight and kept my wife up once again.

One minor problem - we still haven't got anywhere beyond the name Edward if it is a boy. I have read two books on the subject of names back to front and still we are no closer. Help!