in the footsteps of a 3-year old

I had promised to baby sit my god-daughter’s brother, or rather, my cousin’s first child this weekend and was pleased to leave work on Friday, but also a little bit worried - how would this quality time with my favourite 3-year old go?

Well, good. It all went good. Except for a short moment of tears on Friday evening after 'mamma' when falling asleep, he was as close to an angel any mischievous 3-year old with a sparkle in his eye could be. And it was all very lovely, and exhausting. At the end of it all, N and I quickly fell asleep in a sofa each - how do parents do it? Do they eat special super vitamins? And we only took care of one, easygoing, albeit full of energy, kid. How about if you have 2? Or 3? or..... And if the kid won't stop crying/screaming/make tantrums? hmmmm perhaps I need a few more years of me-time before engaging in anything so tiresome, albeit lovely and fantastic ;)

So in short what did we do?

Friday night (only a few hours of disposal):

• play doh ice-cream making with a new machine - resulting in concentration, happy smiles, and small pieces of play-doh all over the (newly vacuumed) floor


• 30-40 minutes of monster chasing - A's and mine all time favourite, albeit not the neighbour's - hence the reason we ended it all
  
• a bit of movie in bed (yes, my brain had a close-down and i suggested this stupid idea, making me have to then ask A. 4 times to stop watching the movie....)

Saturday (a full full day):

• 9.00 I wake up, thinking to myself that we were very lucky that A didn't wake up earlier. 2 second later i heard his voice asking for 'mamma' - luckily though I was accepted as a substitute since mummy was 'working' ;)


• breakfast - 3 petit suisses (on the shopping list directly), some juice and a little bit of bread - although mostly the buttery part


• drawing with the new colour pencils and the winnie the pooh book (the favourite of the moment, almost completely replacing McQueen)


• A and I leave for a walk, N takes off to get a haircut (good excuse for getting away from us for a while - understandable though ;)


• Swans (mums and dads) and other birds (small/kids) are swarming around some kids giving them old bread - luckily for us, some nice parents gave A some bread to through to the birds - happiness!
  
• Boats, boat accessories, boat equipment, jeeps (pulling out boats of the water) and anything else to do with boats, getting them out of the water and cool cars. The walk down by the lake takes very long when you stop every 5 meters to check something out for 5-10 minutes per item ;)
  
• Another boat - the 'mouette' this time (the kind of bus-boat that brings you over the lake) since it would have taken us hours to walk the whole way. Plus I figured that boat-loving A, who has already been on both motor and sailing boat, would love it... stupid little me... well, first he did - loved the idea of it, loved the yellow boat that was approaching. But then when we were to go on it, it was 'i don't want to go on the boat', 'i don't want the yellow boat', etc. And what did mean me do? Give in? I thought about it for a second, but figured it was probably something that would pass, so I carried a not-so-happy A onto the boat while talking reassuringly to him about the slowness and safety of the boat, about all the other kids on board, and about me holding him very tight in my arms. And it worked. He stopped making angry noises almost directly, and, half-way over, to comment on things we saw. And then we had to stay and watch all the yellow boats arrive and depart from the stop in Paquis for approx. 20 minutes until I said enough - might have been standing there still otherwise ;)
  
• Ahhhh - the joy of watching everything carefully - the next big thing was one of these hooks that pulls the boats out of water - or 'a broken bike' if A was to decide. We climbed up and had a close-up look. Wow!
  
  
• Bains-des-paquis - we saw the bridge/tunnel leading there from the hooky thingy so had to go there. Throwing rocks into the water is very amusing when you're 3, and not so bad when you're 10 times older either - hence we stayed a long time and got to see some 'mums and dads' and 'kids' again - up on land this time.


• Sushi for lunch - well for N and me, and pasta that A's mummy had prepared for A. He licked a bit on a cucumber sushi and said irk or rather the Swedish version: blä


• Gare de routière and a long pitch stop to look at the big buses. So cool ;)


• Manor 3rd floor - toy heaven, and at the moment, christmas decoration heaven. So cute with lots of moving animals, and all these fairies in the sky :) Spent quite some time in there, watching all moving animals, plus different stuffed ones (winnie the pooh and company was a favourite of course, although A wanted to know where Rabbit was), lego and other such toys, a huge red electrical car (still not sure how i managed to get A away from there in just 2 minutes, call me Marry Poppins ;) and then the aquariums with lots of colourful fish - great for any kid! And surprise - not one whine for gifts. A mentioned a few times that he wanted something, but when I said he should ask for it for Christmas, he accepted it without any fuss.


• Bus home since A was sooo tired I carried him from Manor to the bus stop. Strawberry ice-cream stop on the way (or red ice-cream stop) - it was Saturday after all. Movie for a bit of a rest and then...
  
• Pizza! Home-made one. A loves to bake, so this was perfect. I cut the ingredients (got the boring part) while A and N rolled out the dough and decorated the pizzas. Miam. Really nice and yummy, although A preferred to stuff himself with cherry tomatoes ;)
  
• A short story in a mixture of French and Swedish (the book was in French, but all comments made in Swedish since A refuses to speak French with me. Swedish is my language, just as it is his mum's language. French was N's language, just as it is his dad's language. These things are very important and he will often translate between mummy and daddy, but at least N and I escaped that), in bed and then sleep directly. Wow, we must have exhausted him :)

Sunday:

• Oh joy - another late morning. 9h30 this time before we heard any noise. Lucky us :)
  breakfast, followed by more ice-cream making (a tip, remember to put all the play doh back in the jars or it will dry!!!!, plus remember to clean out the entire play doh in the machine before it dries and sticks there!) and a bit of a run around the house while waiting for N in the shower
  
• back to the swans again - this time with our own old bread! these swans seemed very hungry as they came out of the water and tried to feed directly from our hands - a little bit to close up for my taste... but all went well.
  
• boats of course since down by the lake, but more fun (at least for N and I) - the cool swings made out of bike and car tires down at 'baby plage'. We all had our go and were all amused. Great fun!!!

• back home through a park full of red, yellow, orange, green, purple, pink, brown and any shade of these you could imagine. running through leaves, leaf rain, picking the most beautiful ones as a bouquet for mummy.....



• lunch and McQueen for A and N, while I read my book. At the moment N touched something and made the dvd-player jump to another movie, the doorbell rang and our babysitting weekend was over! and so were we - over and out in fact ;)