I put this together for my son's blog (www.worldsyoungestblogger.com).

I thought parents of other similar aged children might enjoy it.

MY PHILOSOPHY ON LIFE BY JAY, 3

• I think you should be able to have whatever you want. If you want milk or chocolate when it’s dinner time that’s okay.
• You should be able to go swimming, even when it’s winter.
• Why can’t you get a toy everytime you go the toy shop?
• Why can’t Mum and Dad just do what I say? Then everyone would be happy.
• I don’t think you should have to go to the toilet if you don’t want to.
• If you want to stay up and watch TV then why can’t you?
• Why do you have to take the videos back to the video shop when you still like them and want to play them?
• When you are tired, you should be able to stay in the car when your Mum or Dad goes into the shops.
• The Wiggles are boring.
• Spiderman and the Rogues Gallery are cool!
• My big brothers are cool!
• Sometimes Mum and Dad are cool!
• Nanna is cool! She always gives me a present.
• Poppy is cool! He has a big boat!
• I think saying “What the hell is going on?” is cool not rude!

I could never have predicted that having a child would bring me closer to my sister. But this, I have found, is one of the many wonderful yet unexpected benefits of having a baby.

It’s a chance to see a family member not just in the role of how they relate to you, as a sibling, but in how they relate to your child. My sister is a most devoted aunty and although my son is still too young to really appreciate her, I have no doubt that she will always be such a giving and fun presence throughout his life.

The day my sister was born was quite possibly the best of my life. I mean I’ve had quite a few highlights since then but back then, at the age of 8, it was about as good as it gets.

Most eight-year-old girls are pretty maternal and my Mum tells me I loved my dolls. So the delivery of a girl baby was an absolute gift.

I already had a brother 21 months younger than me who I absolutely adored and was protective of. But of course he was a boy and although I knew no different, we would have interacted differently to other siblings because of his disability.

I remember the day of my sister’s birth quite clearly. I was in third grade and my teacher was Mrs Paynter. I caught the bus home that day, looking out the window, thinking “I have sister!!!!!!”

She was named Natalie and it wasn’t a coincidence that my best friend at the time had the same name. I was allowed to choose her second name (or at least my parents let me believe that in so far as I chose something appropriate) and I chose Shane, after Shane Gould. As a swimmer myself, she was my sporting idol.

So I guess I thought I was going to have a little live doll of my own to play with, but of course Natalie had other ideas.

One strong memory from my childhood is pursuing her around the house trying to do her hair, while she would have none of it.

In her early years she was extremely shy, hanging off my mother, and not speaking to anyone much.

But she redressed this doing her high-school years when she became somewhat of a vagabond running around with questionable youths, merely tolerating her school lessons and worrying my mother.

In her twenties she became vivacious but could be excessive – she always had the best car and a cool flat.

She turned 30 this year and along with the natural maturity and stability of age I think having a nephew has contributed to her growth.

She is not only devoted to my child but is very caring to me and my husband too – the addition of a new family member has regenerated the idea of family.

I am an Aunty too but it is different for me as my four nieces live in Canada. Also, they are older and they are the children of my husband’s siblings, rather than mine.

My son has two Auntys that also live in Canada – both wonderful, strong, intelligent, caring women but of course they are a long way away.

When my sister has children I aspire to be the same kind of Aunty that she is – loving, giving but most of all, fun.

I just hope that doesn’t happen to quickly. I don’t know if we’re ready to share her with other kids just yet.

I suppose it had to happen. The other day I heard those dreaded words any left-leaning self-respecting feminist, anti-big business-type mother dreads hearing: “Can we go to Mack-donalds?!”

For the first three years of my son’s life that terrible red, white and yellow clown did not exist for my child. Okay I admit I often sheepishly drove in under those Golden Arches, mainly when my son was asleep in the back of the car, to pick up milk and bread so I didn’t have to get out of the car and wake him up (okay so there was occasional coffee and plastic cheese and alleged tomato sandwiches too). But the actual word McDonald’s never entered my son’s vocabulary. And I was proud of this.

Even in recent times when we’d dropped in for the occasional Happy Meal (well apparently there is actually some chicken in those chicken nuggets now okay - not that i’m defensive!!!???) I had said: “Let’s go to that place with the playground.” But now my husband has polluted my son’s little mind and has cottoned onto the fact that the Happy Meal toys are a cheap day’s bribery (and you can buy them for $2 without the food, which is good for my son because he’s such a poor eater!) I suppose this whole diatribe becomes possibly laughable when I admit I have bought whole ranges of McDonald’s toys on e-bay for more than they ever cost in the store (hey - it was the Lion King - they were collector’s items…)

So what have I actually got against McDonald’s? Everything that makes them successful. I’m no Morgan Spurlock but I hate the way parents with young children happily pop along to this “family restaurant” thereby embedding some crazy diabetic, sodium-laden gene that explodes in children when they’re 13, making them obese and forever fast food addicts. Or something like that. When I was little, there was no McDonald’s. We had good wholesome fried takeaway from the local milkbar. We didn’t get any toys with it and nobody ever asked if we wanted to “supersize” (actually that is a crap American word, which I have never heard used in Australia, but you get my drift).

I hate the fact that in my area McDonald’s is about the nicest and cheapest and most kid-friendly place for me to go have a coffee. Hell it’s about the only place for me to go have a coffee. I read that during the screening of Spurlock’s Super Size Me movie the other night on free-to-air TV, McDonald’s deliberately advertised, showing their aggressive new marketing face. No longer do they slink away, wallowing in self-pity and vats of French Fries oil, later used to top up the thick shakes. No - they are out and proud. We have learnt our lesson. We now have lettuce on the premises!

For me, I’ll continue to wage my little campaign of resistance, only slinking in under those dreadful neon signs that you can see for miles, occasionally. But whether or not my son really believes that benign clown who sits in the playground, just so children can happily climb all over him, is really evil, remains to be seen. I think I’ll just take my boy to Starbucks where we can pay $5 for a milkshake!!!!!!!

Top of my list of sad products for kids this Christmas: the ‘Digi Makeover: how you can see what you can be!’ aimed at teenage girls. Apparently it is some bizarre computer program that allows you to digitally manipulate pictures of yourself on television, so that, presumably, you can look better (because God knows you need it, you pathetic, pimply, pubescent pipsqueak!)

I mean why don’t they just call it the ‘Ugly Girl Prettifier: kid yourself that someone doesn’t think you’re gross’. I discovered the Digi Makeover in the Target catalogue that landed in my letterbox today.

But make no mistake - this is no little sad secret simply harboured by that department store. A search on the internet reveals it’s available just about everywhere. Change your hairstyle, makeup, face…for only $99! What a boon to the self-esteem of every 14-year-old. I hope they have a blur function to air brush out all the acne. And a teeth whitener to remove the braces! Perhaps they could include a companion program that allows you to directly load up your ‘new’ picture onto dating sites so that 45-year-old fat, balding men can break the law by asking you out!

I mean, come on. I’ve heard of Yummy Mummies but what’s this? The cult of the Yummy Teenager. Perhaps I should start a new website www.yuckyteenager.com (I just did a search - it’s available for anyone who wants it). At least, as the mother of a three-year-old boy, I am safe in the realm of violent superheroes.

The presents waiting in my cupboard have nothing to do with appearances at all. They are all about being a macho male. A couple of Spiderman ‘battle packs’ (the Green Goblin and Doctor Octopus, no less), the Thing from the Fantastic Four (with his credo: “It’s clobberin’ time”) and some phallic water pistols. Ah, boys and their toys. Much easier. Oh and if anyone wants to know what I want for Christmas forget the Digi Makeover. I need a real one!