hospital. Becca always comes home from a Kids Club meeting with a huge smile on her face.

There are two other members of our household. One is Misty, our hamster. The other is Aunt Cecelia. She moved in to watch Squirt and to give us a hand when Mama went back to work. Becca and 1 used to call her Aunt Dictator. That was right after she moved in, when she didn't really understand my family. She was so strict and mean. But now she is much nicer, and we all get along pretty well. The one thing 1 don't like about Aunt Cecelia is that she still seems to think she's my babysitter. And I'm already a baby-sitter! Before Aunt Cecelia came, 1 was always taking care of Becca and Squirt. Now 1 don't have the chance very often. Which is a shame because 1 love to baby-sit and (sorry for bragging) I'm really good at it. I'm good enough to be part of a business called the Baby-sitters Club.

Today, though, I was sitting. It was a weekday afternoon. Mama and Daddy were at work. And Aunt Cecelia had made plans with some friends. So I was in charge of Squirt. And as soon as Becca returned from her Kids Club meeting I would be in charge of her, too.

Squirt had stopped singing "Whing, whing." In fact, he held his arms toward me.

That meant he wanted to get out of the swing. I lifted him up and set him on the ground near our swing set.

"Come on, Squirt. Walk to me!" My brother is beginning to toddle around. It's a good thing he wears about nineteen diapers. They provide a nice cushion for when he suddenly sits on his bottom, which happens about every ten wobbly steps he takes.

"Da!" cried Squirt, and hurtled himself into my arms.

I heard a clank in our garage then and realized that Becca had come home from school. (The clank was the sound of the kickstand on her bicycle hitting the cement floor.) A few moments later, she rounded the corner into our backyard.