Two years ago today we brought our cats Hope & Faith home from the rescue centre they were born in. Here they are doing what cats do best...

Back in 1990, I was enjoying life as a 9 year-old when youngest brother Alex arrived. At school we were asked to take part in 'show and tell' and bring something from home to talk about. I chose to take 10 month old Alex!

Below is what I wrote to read out to the class. I found this on a dot-matrix printed sheet of paper in a box in my parents attic recently and it includes an insight into my future about having to "occupy myself more on my computer" - look how that turned out!

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What It's Like To Have A Baby In The House.

My baby brother is called Alex. He is 10 months old and has 7 teeth. He is very naughty. Sometimes it is a disaster having Alex in the house. It means more work stoping him from doing things like getting in my room and pulling everything off the shelves, building things to stop him from getting into the cupboards and saying NO! to him although he does not unserstand it. Also telling him what he can and cannot eat and drink, especially the dog food.

When Alex first started crawling he crawled into the kitchen and went up to the dog food. He thought it looked nice and decided to see what it tasted like. So he hit the dish, it flew over and landed on the floor. He picked up a lump of the squidgy meat and put it in his mouth and all of a sudden my Mom, my brother and I heard a giggle from the kitchen, so my Mom told me to go into the kitchen and find out what Alex was doing. When I got there I saw him earing the dog food (what a mess!! I said to him) and told my Mom about it.

We have had to build stair gates to stop him from going up the stairs because he might fall. We encourage him to support Aston Villa and to play football with us in the lounge (but Mom gets mad then we do this). He was also the youngest of us to go to Villa Park. (He has not been to a professional match yet though).

Now that we have Alex everything is split into threee as we have someone else apart from Me and Nick and we have to look after him while Mom gets tea ready. I also have to occupy myself a lot more on my computer. Alex only likes family with the exception of my friends Justin and David.

Alex has loads of favourite foods like yogart, ice cream, chocolate cake, mince meat, mashed potato, carrots and chips. We had a great problem getting Alex to eat anything so he had to eat baby rice and jars of baby food and chocolate cake. So bit by bit we tried to make him eat it and eventually he did. So he now eats whatever we eat. But not the same sweets, he has things like White Buttons and Milky Ways. He likes to eat with us.

Although it is fun having him it is tiring.

James Clarke, aged 9.

We might be working in different cities, but we can still have breakfast together!

What a discovery!