I had to help look after my nephew again this weekend. Luckily I had my husband to help me out this time. It’s a fair amount of work to look after 3 kids. Especially to have a 10 months old and my own 3 months old that requires almost the same amount of attention.

The 3 year old is perfectly fine as he is more than capable of entertaining himself and can play with the 10 months old while I am busy with Chloe. The only hard part is my nephew, Jordan is a crawler but hates to be left alone. He needs to be picked up constantly and whinge everytime I am out of his sight. And I need to watch where he is as he could possibly crawl into any black hole in my house.

That aside, he is a happy little baby and JD loves having his cousin around.

I have helped looked after my nephew a fair bit now since Chloe came along. I kept trying to take a picture of 3 of them, but always have one of them sleeping or crying or something else.

Finally, we have a lovely little photo of 3 of them. Except Chloe does not seem to be too happy sitting among the boys.

JD is now officially in the Big Kidz club. Well, I think so anyway.

We have lots of kids on the street we live in. At the last count, Chloe has added to the 25 kids already living on the street. Now that’s a lot of kids for a nice little cul-de-sac of just about 8 houses!

When the kids are back from school, we usually see them riding bikes, scooters, roller skates, kicking footie, girls playing tea party in the front yard, dads and moms chatting to one another.

It’s a really nice street.

Before we had kids, we were probably the only young couple household with no kids. We were hardly at home, either at work, or out with friends.

These days you would find me sitting at the front steps with 2 kids, enjoying the evening breeze while watching JD riding his bike in the driveway. Lately, he started to notice other kids and each day I see him stepping a step further from me wanting to join in the fun with the others.

From the sideline, I encouraged him to make friends and introduced himself.

And it took him less than a few seconds to make friends and before I know, he was running around with other kids, kicking a footy!

But I must say, funny as it may sound, JD would be the kind of future party host you would love! Not long after he started making friends, he rushed into the house to get a picnic rug out so that all his friends can sit down on the grass. Next he went through the fridge and took out a few mandarins so that his friends could have something to eat. Then he ran back into the house again to bring out his toys for showing off but also for his friends to play.

It was quite cute. And all the kids are so lovely because they are all much older but don’t mind his kiddiness at all!

Well, despite my lack of sleep, we are all still a happy bunch.

I put JD and Chloe on the couch this afternoon after their naps.

And they were happy. Really happy.

I was playing with the camera today and trying to figure out what all the different functions were. Anyway, caught Chloe doing her morning aerobics while mucking around on the camera. See her floral leotard, wahahaha!

Some lovely shots taken on a beautiful Friday morning to bring smiles to your face as she has to me everyday.

JD has a special thing with food! He loves to eat and love to be involved in the kitchen!

Sometimes it drives me nuts when I am trying to prepare a quick meal and he insists on helping me.

A couple weekends ago, we decided to make taco which was just ideal for JD to participate.Here’s how you make taco according to JD.

First you put some lettuce in the taco shell

Next you put some tomatoes

Then the beef

Sprinkle some cheese

Tada! The finished product

The proud chef

On a good day, I would be able to snap some lovely photos of Chloe without JD sticking his head in front of the camera or wanting to have a go at taking the photos.

But on a even better day, I could at least get them both to look at the camera, well kind of!

I got Steve the carwash man to come over and give my car a good wash n vacumm today. Since Chloe came along, I have just been way too busy to even wash my car. So after a while, I have bird shits on my windscreen, biscuit crumbs on the floor, spilled coffee on my handbrake, sand in the boot and just way too dirty and messy. Truth is most of the time I am either just too busy or too tired to even bother about washing the car.

Why is he my 30 mins “babisitter”? Because in that half hour, JD had fun chatting to Steve, telling him about the rain last night, playing with his dog - Sam, helping him to wash the car, jumping around in the puddle of water, helping Steve to fetch water for his dog to drink and all the while I sat on the front steps with Chloe drinking my cup of coffee!

I got my car wash, JD had someone to entertain him for a while, and I had a bit of rest. It was money well spent, hee hee!

Mondays, Fridays and weekends are the busiest for me. JD stays home with me every Mon, Fri and on the weekend, I have another big kid in the house as well.

Being Friday today, I have to think of a list, actually LOTS of activities to keep my 3 yo occupied. I have been cutting down his time in front of the black box over the last number of weeks and making a conscious effort to do things together with him. The weather looks a bit overcast this morning, so we have to shelf our plans of going to the park.

Instead, this was our day moment by moment.

5.45am - Chloe wakes for her morning feed. Put her back to sleep in cot whilst I showered, washed my hair.

6.30am - Had my raisin toast and black tea for breakfast, watched the morning news, check out on the internet for Play Dough Recipe. Chatted to hubby n saw him off to work.

7.00am - JD wakes up, bright eyed and bushy tailed. Picks a pair of blue cargo shorts to wear, some cat t-shirt as he calls them, and put on a pair of Bob the Builder jocks. He had his Cheerios for breakfast and then entertained himself with his car set, some marble toys, bouncing balls and etc.

8.00am - Got JD to do some home made playdough by mixing flour, salt, water and some food colourings. It was lots of fun and we made a purple, red and green ones. We sat down, making noodles and vegies out of playdough. JD insisted he had to cook the noodle and we took out his kitchen set too.

JD making red playdough

9.00am - Chloe wakes up. Picked her up, gave her a feed, sang to her, changed her nappy, put her on the rocker to have a look around whilst her brother tickled her feet.

9.30am - Packed 2 kids in the pram and off for our morning walk. Bought bread and some other groceries along the way. JD felt really happy that Chloe could come in the pram together with him and happily munched on some sultanas whilst I pushed a 16.5kg toddler, an almost 6 kg baby plus a 10kg pram along! It was good workout nonetheless.

10.00am - Prepare morning tea. Today he had watermelon, crackers and yoghurt. JD stole half of my yoghurt when I wasn’t looking. Time for Chloe to sleep again.

10.30am - Story time with JD and he picked a dinosour book today. We did counting and colours recognition as well.

11.00am - Time for play in the backyard. We kicked ball, blow bubbles, spotting ants, snails, some water play, sitting down on the garden bench listening to birds chirping, car noises and talking about whatever that came to our minds.

12.00pm - Time to make lunch. Make ham and cheese toastie for JD whilst I finished up last night’s stir fry. JD talked to me about the sun coming out, birds in the garden, asking where his Aunty Wendy had gone. I popped my head out from the kitchen and saw him sitting like a “towkay” and deep in thought too. Noticed that he was clever enough to put another chair to rest his leg on.

We did puzzles, teach JD to play snake n ladders, and I had bit of break whilst he rummaged through some toys in the play room.

1 pm - Chloe woke up from her nap, all happy and smiley. Sat her up at the rocker in the kitchen whilst she watches us busy. Got JD to help me make some chocolate cup cake for afternoon tea . He had fun. He loves cooking and loves the little blue apron given to him by his wai po. Some sales person came to the door, followed by more sales calls from some phone companies, termite control, financial planning…looks like 1pm is a good time to catch people at home.

Happiest in the kitchen

2.00pm - Send both kids to nap. Both kids went to sleep by themselves and Chloe also went to sleep without a peep.

2.30pm - Did a quick sweep up in the house, folded some laundry, washed some dishes, packed away toys, search the internet for some pork chop recipes.

3.15pm - Chloe crying in her room, picked her up, put her in the sling whilst I checked my emails, read, prepared dinner, had a cuppa and ate a cup cake too. Honestly, I really should not be eating the cake as I am trying to lose some weight. But hey, it was all too tempting.

Can you resist these?

5.00pm - Both kids woke up from nap at the same time. JD was all happy and ran out of the room looking for me. He had a cup cake and we went across the road chatting to neighbour while he played with the other kids on the street.

6.00pm - Bathed both kids. Sitting on the steps waiting for daddy to come home. Waited too long, and JD came to help me washed the vegies for dinner.

7.00pm - Daddy came home. He entertained the kids while I prepared dinner. Tonight we had pan fried pork chop with a white musroom sauce.

7.30pm - Family time. Lots of laughters, chasing around in the house, daddy playing hide n seek with JD, Chloe sitting at her rocker taking in all the excitements.

8.00pm - Put Chloe to bed.

8.30pm - Bed time stories with JD. He picks “Little Hippos’s New Home” and “A Dragon at the Doorstep” tonight.

9.00pm - I lay in bed, reading “Raising Boys” by Steve Biddulph at the moment .

Some thoughts as I lay in bed - The best times JD learnt was when we do things together. At this age when his attention span is still short, I have found he learns the most about colours, numbers, new words, new things when we have our nice little conversations while cooking, gardening, hanging up the laundry, and etc. And it’s so much more fun because I always pick up some funny little remarks made by him.

I hope we keep our little conversations going for the years to come. Because according to the book I am reading boys often don’t talk about their worries, schools, friendship rivalry, love life like we girls do. “Boys tend to open up more when they are talking to someone working alongside them. Boys like to be engaged in some useful activity whilst talking. Apparently this gives them time to search for the right words, and none of that embarassing eyeball-to-eyeball stuff that women like to engage in” - quotes from Steve Biddulph.

And if I want to be close to my son, share his worries and joys even in the years to come, we have to do things together!

A few weeks ago, making use of the warm weather, we packed the family to Point Walter. JD tried to master the art of surfing, and to my amazement, this little fella kinda knew what to do. I think he got the idea from watching Hi5 Surfing Safari!

The rest of the time, I sat on the grass with Chloe sound asleep in my arm while I occupied myself playing with some twigs and dried leaves! Haha, talk about being purposeful!