It was a long day. We made an agreement on the train there not to snap at each other. We knew we’d be exhausted by the train home. That’s best, we find. If we know it’ll happen, we can prepare for it. And when you start the day at 5 am, with a little one, preparation really is key. All bags (well, the changing bag and my handbag) were packed and ready by the door the night before.

The Natural History Museum is probably M’s favourite place. It has dinosaurs, you see. And since Tiny was but hope, he has rediscovered his childhood love of them. Tiny has a herd. Last year, we went to see Dippy the Diplodocus in his Return-to-London exhibition. Dippy has since moved on to Coventry (poor Dippy!). I’d seen him before, but M, unaccountably, hadn’t.

This year, there was an even bigger dinosaur to see, necessitating another trip to London and the Natural History Museum. Oh no.

The titanosaur, Patagotitan mayorum. Heavier than Dippy, longer than Hope the Blue Whale (who took Dippy’s place in the entrance hall), it is one of the largest creatures currently known to have lived. And it grew that big on a leafy diet. Who knew leaves were so good for body-building?

And yet, it started life as a hatchling tiny enough to fit into a football, with a 1 in a hundred chance of surviving to adulthood. Sauropods, it turns out, are pretty rubbish parents. Not a parental bone in their massive bodies. To be fair, it’s usually quite a long way down from their heads to the nest of eggs, and they do need clown-feet to support such massive bodies. When the eggs are only football-sized, it’s probably very easy to carelessly trample them underfoot.

And that’s before you get to the dangers that await the tiny hatchlings. Although the adults don’t really have predators – I lost every encounter as each of the various attackers (there were interactive bits throughout the exhibition) –  the hatchlings have quite a lot of growing to do to reach a safe size.

Have to say, I thought the titanosaur has quite a happy sort of expression on its skull. Probably it knew that, though predators might try to take it down (this one has had a bite taken from its tail), they won’t succeed. Stomp stomp stomp. Or thwack from the massive tail.

Tiny, naturally, slept all the way around the exhibition. Just as well tickets for the under-4s are free.

And then there was a dash back to Paddington in the hopes of not having to wait around for a train too late in the day. It’s three and a half hours or so, assuming no late-running services, and we’d been awake since 5. And, amazingly, still hadn’t snapped at each other. Just grumbled at the station-board, which had our train as “Preparing” up until about a minute before the scheduled departure, so we had another mad dash to find seats, with everyone else who’d been waiting for that train. By which time Tiny was well and truly grumping and in need of a feed and a sleep. But M and I managed not to snap or snarl, despite our own exhaustion.