Kids

The big news for today is that I'm an Aunt! My sister and her hubby had their first baby this morning. Everything went well and everyone is healthy and happy. I am really so happy for the both of them. They are a perfect couple and I think that they are going to make great parents. The baby is really lucky to have them as Mom and Dad.

This is going to be a new and interesting experience for me. I've never really been around kids much at all. I'm not really sure why, but it just never seemed to work out that way. When I have been around them, all they seem to do is cry. That is something that I have a hard time dealing with. If you can tell me what is actually wrong, I'm ok... if I know what the problem is, I'll fix it. But when all you get is crying, or worse, when a kid gets a little older - whining, I don't know what to do to make it stop. That gets annoying real fast. I guess I would never make a good Mom.

One incident that sticks in my mind happened years ago. Some very good friends of mine had extended an offer to join them for a little while down in Florida and stay with them in the house they had rented. How cool is that? :) I took them up on it and had a great time - except at the very beginning. They have a son, Jonathan, who was pretty small at the time - I don't know, maybe five or six. Jonathan was really a good kid. He was pretty well behaved, but he knew how to have fun. Whenever I visited, we always had a good rapport. When I got to Florida, Jonathan's parents met me and we were going to stop off to pick up an extra house key for me. I wanted to stop off at a store to pick up some munchies for the house, which worked out good, because the store was on the way to the rental office. Jonathan's parents would go get the key while I shopped. Jonathan wanted to come with me, which was fine. Until we got into the store. I have no idea what happened, but as soon as we stepped into the store, Jonathan started screaming at the top of his lungs "I - WANT - MY - MOMMY!!!" I had no clue as to what to do. Anything I said, seemed to set him off even more. And it's not like he didn't know me or anything. To this day, I still don't get it. So anyway, here I am with this little kid in a shopping cart screaming his head off that he wants his mother... for the whole solid twenty minutes that his parents were gone. I honestly thought that I was going to get arrested or something. Fortunately I didn't. That is an experience I never want to repeat.

I am not taking my nephew shopping. Ever.