My eldest boy, Parker, is growing in leaps and bounds. He is ten, and my mother in law hates how responsible he is. Last week his responsibility sure came in handy when Me and The husband were down with the flu. I honestly don’t know how we would have managed without him, me and Hubs were both too ill to deal with ourselves, much less the children!

And it’s not like I’ve made Parker go out and get a job so that he can help pay the car insurance, or something. I just expect him, and the rest of the boys, to help out around the house. From things like making sure they put their own dishes in the dishwasher, to helping with making school lunches. Parker makes breakfast nearly every morning – simple bowls of cereal, but it is a big help.

In eight years it is quite possible that he will be off living on his own, and when that happens, he is going to be glad that he has learned so much at home.

I will miss him though…

Well.

The baby is good.

LOL.

No really, the baby is so amazingly good. I’ve had three of my own, and babysat another one from the age of 1-5 and without a single doubt in my mind this is the BEST baby I have ever watched. BY FAR.

She rarely cries, she very rarely gets into things, she goes down for a three hour nap every afternoon and eats anything I give her. She occupies herself with few toys and likes to clap for us anytime ANYTHING happens. It’s like having my own personal cheering section! I get up from my chair to grab coffee? She claps. I roll a smoke? she claps. I give her a goldfish cracker? she claps. It’s great.

Her older sister, 4, is a different story, but I remind myself daily that it is not her fault she acts the way she does. From birth to the age of three, her parents were…a bit lax, to say the least. She has zero respect for adults, other people, or belongings and is very defiant. She is also amazingly cute, and is trying very hard to be “good”. She often tells me, out of the blue “Aunty, I love you SO much” and is always the first to hug or kiss if she thinks someone has been hurt.

Old habits die hard, even for a child as young as she, and I am a very patient person. I can see she is trying, I can see that she not only KNOWS when she has done wrong before I say, she is hurt, her own feelings are hurt by her actions. Her mom and dad are working together, as a team, and with all of them trying I have no doubt that K will be  fine.

But it is trying somedays )

The worst part of the whole babysitting thing is the early mornings. Unfortunately, J does not have her drivers license, and i live in a completely different town than she does, so she relies on her mother to drive her and the girls out to my house and then drive her to work, and again in reverse in the evenings.

It’s a great natural sleep aid though, I am falling asleep as soon as I hit my pillow. And OMG the dreams I am having are great! Seriously. they are the kind of dreams that upon awaking you are desperate to fall back asleep in hopes that the dream will continue!

I am very much enjoying having the girls here, and the extra money is great too! We have been putting a full half of the money away, and then splitting the other half into personal fun money. It’s not a whole lot of money, but it is allowing Me and Hubby to buy things for ourselves that ordinarily we wouldn’t have spent household money on.