Shiona Rae

Being a nanny means being ready for anything, and when you take care of three boys that "anything" usually means chaos. Take last week, for example. The boys were playing with a slingshot inside the house -which I had already talked to them about -and S shot a plastic toy barrel into the open fireplace. I went to get it out and realized that it had caught on fire (gas fireplaces always have a small flame so no matches are needed). The boys didn't believe me until it made smoke (pretty sure plastic smoke is toxic?). I told M to go grab the tongs he was playing with earlier from the kitchen, and he stood there staring in disbelief. I had to raise my voice to arouse him from his comatose state, at which he promptly ran full steam into the kitchen and returned with the tongs. I asked S, who had shot the toy, to grab a cup of water from the kitchen, and ended up having to repeat the same performance as with M. I grabbed the toy with the tongs, plunged it into the water, and th...

     Alright, so it's summer time and we're having fun! Last week was the first week of summer for the boys, but the older two were at a basketball camp for the week. That left my twin and I in charge of an 8 year old with too much energy.      Now here's the deal: my sister takes care of the boys on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday mornings. I take over from there, and I don't usually get told everything that happens. All I can tell you is what happened when I was around.      On Wednesday afternoon, everything was smooth sailing. I took the boy to the pool, we played with some water torpedoes, then we went home and kept occupied with Monopoly. Thursday was a little more interesting, in that we had a whole morning to finish Monopoly (he wiped the board with me after my considerable losses on his blue spaces), I got to take a NAP (those don't happen!) during quiet time, and when we went to the pool I was kept in the water during adult swim by ...