Liam is 9 months and has 4 teeth. They have gown out of correct order, and it just looks so cute when he smiles. He looks like a drunken sailor with his teeth smashed out.

Over the space of a month, Liam’s development has EXPLODED and progressed at lightning speed.

It’s so scary. It’s like watching all the home video of our FIRST child – in fast forward! Eating solids! Picking up food! Crawling! Cruising!

Argh! Someone slow it down! It’s going too fast!

Liam used to crawl like a slow creeping lizard. He would pause and carefully examine the seam of the curtain, or the edge of a cardboard box.

Now he’s bolting around the house on all fours, like a little BULLDOG, getting into the toilet, the bathroom and all the rooms of our house. He even goes out the front door if we leave it unlatched!

But the weirdest thing is – he can now stand up by himself for 15 seconds, straight off the floor, without holding onto anything. He just goes from his “doing-a-poo” squat to standing straight up.

I’m completely horrified. He looks much too young to be balancing. It looks demonic – as if his head might spin around and around and he’ll say “I’m watching yoooouuu” in a deepy, raspy voice.

Fortunately, all he does is realise that he doesn’t know what to do next, so he just smiles stupidly, and then sits back down on his big nappy-bum. Then he runs away on all fours like a never-ending wind-up toy that just keeps going and going and going and going.

A few weeks ago, Liam first pulled himself up onto some furniture. What happened to the quiet, placid baby I had a month ago??

He used to be happy to be plonked into a room full of baby toys, but now he just wants to be where his older brothers are. And he’s not happy to just sit and watch. He wants to join in. He’ll get right into the action, grabbing his brother’s toys or messing up their pencils. Or he will scramble over to the TV, grab the Wii Remote Controller, and wave it around at the screen – obviously copying his big brothers!

It’s made me a little sad to see Liam bypass all the BABY BOY TOYS (think Thomas the Tank Engine) and go straight for the Teenager Mutant Ninja Turtle toys.

Under the worrying influence of older brothers, my last, iddy-biddy baby is growing up so much faster than the other two!!