I was warned that this might happen but I refused to believe it. I’m finding G easier to deal with than R at the moment. R and I haven’t fallen out and we still have our understanding, but as a result of this she’s more adept at pushing my buttons.

I nearly got laughed out of my GPs office when I informed her at the girls’ 8 (10) week check that R hated being a baby and wanted to be doing ‘grown up’ things but several months down the line, she’s proving my point more forcefully with every passing day.

We call G the human dustbin because she’ll eat whatever you put in her mouth. R is much more choosy. Even if you manage to ‘trick’ her into eating something she’s not keen on, she’ll get her own back by spitting it out, blowing raspberries and covering us in the residue and if you give her a stern look and say ‘No’ she’ll wheel out the ‘Ruthie stare’, roll her eyes, sigh heavily and turn away.

R was driving the girls at nursery mad because she went through a phase of rejecting her afternoon meal. It turned out that she could see the older children eating more exciting grown-up food and wanted that rather than her lovingly prepared mush. Now, if the other children have cheese and crackers or sandwiches she has a plate for herself. It matters not one jot to her that she has no teeth with which to bite the crackers – she sets her gums to work grinding them up. She just hates to feel she’s missing out on anything and being treated differently.

There are so many other examples: pulling her socks off and throwing them away mere seconds after I’ve put them on; lurching for a far-away toy, falling over and looking at us like it’s our fault; chatting away and getting frustrated and annoyed with us when we can’t understand what she’s desperately trying to articulate.

Our absolute favourite R ‘thing’ is her ‘looking for her keys’ expression. Whenever she goes into a new room (even if it’s from the bathroom to the bedroom) she has to do a complete sweep to check everything out and her eyes probe absolutely everywhere. It’s like she’s lost something really valuable, is anxious to find it but can’t remember where she last had it.

All of this sounds really amusing but she can be incredibly difficult to deal with. Although G has fairly frequent tantrums, she can be distracted out of them fairly swiftly – a quick round of ‘clappy hands’ usually does the trick. When R loses it, she is virtually inconsolable until she gets what she wants.

G is more straightforward in many ways. She worked out very early on that a beaming smile disarms pretty much anyone and she can sit there looking mischievous and command a great deal of attention without a great deal of effort on her part. This makes her an extremely likeable character. She will eat and drink anything and everything, is happy as long as she has a noisy toy to play with and is happy with any sort of attention. Even though she’s more likely to wake in the night than her sister, on balance G is easier to look after.

I wonder when the next ‘switch’ will happen?