The Youngest One

Hi Everyone,

So far I have talked about both Josh and Jake, but today I want to talk a little bit about the newest member of my family, Mia.

Mia, being both the youngest and female is already learning how to get her own way, not just with my wife and myself, but also with her 2 older brothers.

The other day my wife took them shopping to our local Tesco’s, what we didn’t realise was that the seats where you put the children are really close together. This gave Mia the chance to hold onto Jake for the majority of the time; however the problem here is that Jake has fairly long hair, so Mia decided that the hair would be the easiest part of Jake to hold onto.

Against anyone else, Jake would have made a fuss and told the person holding his hair No!! Which to be fair, you wouldn’t blame him for, but because it was Mia doing it, he didn’t mind and let her hold his hair all the way around the shops with only the occasionally whimper! My wife had to keep pulling Mia off him.

Another time, my wife, Jake, Mia and I were all in bed together having a lazy Saturday morning. Jake was happily sitting in bed watching his cartoons whilst drinking his milk, when Mia decided to jump him and try to steal his beaker. I would prise Mia off of him only for her to have another attempt a couple of minutes later.

Also, nobody makes Mia laugh like Jake does, everyone else can get a small laugh out of her, but when Jake starts dancing for her, she is literally in fits of laughter! These are the moments when I stop and think to myself how lucky I am to have such a great family and how much I love them!

Already we know who’s going to be boss in my house and somehow I don’t think it will be me; but providing I’m always shown love and respect, I don’t mind!

Thanks for reading

Darren

Daddy's in charge, almost!

Hi All,

I had an interesting weekend this weekend.

It’s started off as a normal Sunday morning, with me getting Jake up at about 8 and taking him downstairs to have his cheerio’s whilst Louise got Mia fed and dressed.

Not long after this Louise told me she was popping out for a couple of hours after lunch, so I was to look after Jake and Mia by myself. No problem I told myself, they are my children; they will do what their Daddy tells them.

It all started off well, Mia was downstairs playing on her mat and I went upstairs to get Jake up from his nap. After this I got Jake some raisins and sat them both on my knee to read a story to them, thinking this is really nice!

Suddenly Mia has an explosion in her nappy and from there it all started to go downhill!!

I went upstairs to get a nappy for Mia and when I came down, Jake had climbed onto the ottoman and I caught him throwing his building blocks out of the side window. Naturally I got him down and told him off and got him to say sorry.

I then went to change Mia and found that she had gone through to her sleep suit (I won’t spell it out to you), so I had to pop upstairs yet again to get her a change of clothes. When I came down, I caught Jake climbing onto the ottoman again, so I said “Jake” and he quickly jumped down saying “oh, sorry!”

After changing Mia, I put her back on her mat and left them in the living room whilst I went and unloaded the dishwasher. I then popped out the front door to pick up the blocks. I bent down to pick up the blocks when suddenly this little hand poked through the side window and he dropped another block, this time onto me!!

I then had to put Jake into his naughty spot for 2 minutes!

After I made him apologise and as I’d managed to finish doing the jobs I’d been left with, I sat down on the rug to play with them both and really enjoyed watching Jake make Mia laugh.

Louise then came home and found us on the rug playing and asked how it went, naturally I said “it was a breeze!” But one thing I will add is that I have a new found respect for what she does for me and the children!

Thanks

Darren

Sandwichgate

Hi Everyone,

Recently I’ve been trying to think of some of the funny things my children have done over time…

One that sticks out for me happened when Josh was 10 years old.

For years he had been taking sandwiches to school and eating all of them; then over the period of a week he decided that he didn’t want to eat all of his sandwiches, he would take a bite out of each side and then leave the rest in his lunch box.

When we questioned him about it, he said that he didn’t eat his entire sandwich because his friends don’t and he wanted as much time as possible playing football. This of course is not good enough!

Eventually we got to Thursday evening and this issue was still going on, so we told him that if he doesn’t eat his entire sandwich, he will be in big trouble!

Friday came and when my Wife looked into his lunch box she saw that he had eaten his entire sandwich, as such we rewarded him by letting him stay up late and watch a film of his choosing!!

A couple of days later I was in Josh’s room helping to clean it when I had to call Louise in. When she came in I asked her “why is this here?” and showed her bits of a sandwich that were hidden on Josh’s windowsill.

Louise then asked Josh about it, who for about 20 minutes denied all knowledge of putting the sandwich on his windowsill and at one point he had even managed to convince Louise that I had put it there!!

It turned out that Josh’s home coming on Saturday coincided with a mail delivery and Josh quickly ran up the stairs, put the sandwich on his windowsill with the intention of throwing it away later……………..but forgot about it!!

Thanks

Darren

Birthday Fun

Hi Everyone,

It was my lovely wife’s birthday on Saturday, which led to a very enjoyable weekend.

Saturday morning, I got Jake up and he drew circles in Louise’s card, then bursting into our bedroom he says “Mumma, happy birthday Mumma!” and with a big smile on his face, hands Louise his and Mia’s card. I then gave him his present to give to Louise, which he gave to her and then proceeded to open it himself!! He spent the whole day randomly saying happy birthday to Louise.

Josh then came into the room to give Louise her present from him and he also got his entire class to sign a home made card to give to her, which was very sweet of him!

Unfortunately, Jake had a cold all weekend, but unlike most people, he won’t let that get him down. Firstly he wanted to go to football with Josh (they won 4 – 1 this week), but couldn’t because of his illness; Then he decided that we were all going to go up the Zoo to see the Monkey in the tree (which we have now promised him next weekend!). Eventually he settled for watching Disney’s Jungle Book instead, even getting up and gave Mia a little dance when King Louie started singing king of the swingers!!

One of the cutest things I’ve ever seen is when Jake and Mia interact with each other, Jake will sing and dance for Mia and Mia will just sit there laughing her little head off!!

On the Sunday, we travelled to Louise’s Dad’s house. Louise’s sister and family were there as well. They arranged a lovely lunch for us, which we all thoroughly enjoyed. Jake spent the whole way there telling me “Dadda, Grandad Jim, cake!”

Watching children interact with each other is a wonderful thing; Jake took a real liking to one of his cousins, and spent the entire time following him around and telling him about everything, which included juice, cake, wall, spider and many other things….

Mia however, had there other cousin really wanting to look after her, she was giving lots of cuddles and when she went off to play, would be back 10 minutes later to make sure that she was ok.

Then there was Josh, as he is by far the oldest, all of the children just adore him, the only problem here for Josh is that he will suddenly be bundled by all of the children and because he doesn’t want to risk hurting any of them he’s normally on his back with all the children on top of him waiting for one of the adults to rescue him!

Overall a very splendid weekend!

Thanks for reading

Darren