I am so proud of my girls. When Liddy first broke her collar bone her boss approached me & asked if Liddy would consider some babysitting for her over the Easter hols for some pocket money. Normally this would not be a problem. Liddy is great with kids.

'He's easy; just plonk him down with an x~box or something,' said his mum. I sort of stared at her. It would never in my life have occured to me to do that with a 4 year old but whatever. So he arrived yesterday, on very short notice. We cancelled shopping so Liddy had help.

Now normally we live with a fair bit of chaos anyway. The house is still being built & Cass & I can be relied upon to have projects in progress that you only move at your peril so my girls had no qualms about clearing the kitchen benches for a major painting session. Boy! Did it bring back some memories! They must have really enjoyed those days becuase they had just about everything we'd ever tried set up: straws to blow food dye round wet paper, poster paints to make butterflies, crayons & black paint, old toothbrushes to spatter with & a comb for dragging ...& that still leaves fingers & toes. I left them to it & took my oils into the living room. Oils are definitely not for a 4 yr old though Cass wasn't much older when I started her. Hours later there were paintings on every available space drying & Liddy was looking a bit shell~shocked. She thought the art would only last a short time but they don't do much art in pre~school anymore & Bebe had never done any of the things the girls had set up. He was like a starving man. Eventually he agreed to leave the painting for cooking but he was watching the tide like a hawk because Cass had promised him time on the waterfront once the tide dropped enough that we could actually walk along it. Liddy was looking rather pale so it was Cass doing all the actual work & Liddy just supervised.

Our waterfront is a wonderland & kids love it. The mangroves aren't so thickly clustered you can't walk between them, greys & oranges mostly with some of the yellows & my girls just steered Bebe away from those; the sap will blind you. Ragged red rocks litter the mud like a cobbled pathway & there are all sorts of things to see & hear: The fierce little brown honeyeaters declaring their territory from the treetops, crab holes where the muddies hide, little scuttling crabs, cuttle fish bones & stray feathers, turtle bones. We have seen the Osprey hunt & catch mullet too big for them to get airborn again & a shark attack a baby dugong. Cass showed Bebe how to skip stones but the dark clouds were rolling down the passage in a thick cluster driving the rain before them so we had to dash home up the land path for lunch.

Liddy had planned a video for after lunch for her badly needed quiet time but videos Bebe can have any time & he wasn't impressed so I asked Cass to find the lego for him; something else he doesn't get to play with much. She found her magnetics for him too & was happily playing with him long after Liddy & I had flagged. Nope, Bebe didn't want to go home though I apologised to his mother for the state he was in ~ & Cass had washed him too. He looked like he'd tried to eat the paint. There was paint down his arms & legs, red dirt everywhere & mud between his toes. In his hands he clutched his new 'book'. Cass had stapled all his paintings together & made a cover that said: Bebe's Book. His mother looked stunned.

Now I admit there is nothing unusual about the babysitting as such but I was so proud Cass put aside her usual squabbles with her sister to give her as much help as she could, willingly & cheerfully, & Liddy not only appreciated it but showed her appreciation by sharing her pay. Some days I think we must have got something right.