Getting creative in the garden during the summer has proved essential to keeping Jack entertained.

With me still at work, I’m only involved in the pre-bedtime, evening play, when Jack’s mum has exhausted herself during the day.

Our best purchases by far have been Jack’s water play table and paddling pool.

There are two main uses for the table: playing with it and cleaning/refilling it. Both of these Jack tends to enjoy equally well, the latter appealing to his slight obsessive tendency to insist that the sand and water parts are kept as separate as possible.

With the pool, we have endless fun. On Monday, for example, we spent about half an hour just dipping our toes in the cold water when I got home, seeing who was brave enough to leave theirs in the longest without twitching.

Jack also enjoys being ‘dipped’ into the pool – usually upside down – or just squatting in it in his sun protection flotation suit to cool down when the sun is proving particularly hot.

Typical indoor activities also have a renewed attraction when opportunities to do them outside present themselves.

On Thursday, my work email was inundated with pictures of Jack’s brave attempts to replicate his favourite game and TV characters in PlayDoh, sent via my wife.

Far and away his greatest triumph was a full set of Angry Birds and pigs which he used to toss around the garden and knock over towers of bricks.

This surprised me most of all because he’d got bored of this game indoors months ago. Seemingly, the opportunity to make his own figures AND put them to use outside was too much to resist.

So much fun was had, in fact, that we lost half the Angry Birds over the garden fence. Queue a sheepish dad knocking on the neighbours door in the evening, asking politely if we could have them back.