Auntie Day All Day

Last night I got a spontaneous urge to go see my sister. Which is strange 'cause I don't do spontaneous well. Every second of my day is planned out & I like it that way. But sometimes a girl needs her sister.

And to be honest she's not technically my sister. Technically she's my sister in-law. But I don't let little technicalities get in the way. She waited a long, long time for her brother to marry so she could have a sister like me & I waited a long, long time for her. Yeah, I totally know that's how she thinks of me.

While I was at Sister's I figured I'd take my 4 year old niece home with me. I'm not sure there's any girl out there that is as happy as I am to be an aunt. It's so different from friends' kids & obviously different from my own. It's hard to describe how much I love & adore this little girl.

I told Niece to make a silly face. How awesome is it that without ever seeing my blog or my ''mhmm" face, she made the exact same face as I have on here? She's a genius!

How could you not love this child?

Not sure of how the night would go, if she'd really be okay with sleeping at Auntie Eddi's house once it was time to actually, you know, sleep, or if a call to Mama would be order, I stole away with my precious little girly.

Like Sister said, I'm raising 6 kids. I'm not new to this whole gig. I know when a child needs reassurance & when they need Mama & not Auntie. And Niece worships me. What could go wrong?

She is a lot like my oldest & my youngest. In many ways. One of them is that we discovered she can talk for 45 minutes straight while only needing to take 2 breaths. Total. For 45 minutes. I know this because that's how long it takes me to get from Sister's house to my house.

A bit of our conversation:

Niece: "Don't ever go there."

Me: "To that McDonald's?"

Niece: "Yeah. It'll give you heartburn."

Me: "Oh, I don't like heartburn."

Niece: "No, it hurts like hell."

Me: "That's a grown-up word, don't say that."

Niece: "Then it hurts a whoooole lot."

Then:

Niece: "My Daddy had to take our cats to the shelter. You & I need to go get them tomorrow, we need to dress as fairies so no one recognizes us, we will wear fairy clothes, fairy wings, fairy makeup, fairy glitter, and we will go to the shelter at 5:00 at night because that's when the shelter workers go to their homes to their beds and the shelter will be empty, we will go in with the keys that you have on your key chain that you're driving with and we will be very quiet and we will find which cage they are in and we will take them in our own cage and we will take them to Daddy's house and we will be very quiet and trap them with bricks or something and when Daddy goes to work we will let them out and when Daddy comes home to sleep we will trap them so they don't wake him up...[breath]...And Daddy will never know and I will have my cats back!" Big smile.

Even though my head was spinning with all of the information that just came out of such a small body in such a small breath, I didn't have the heart to say anything but, "Okay." How could I possibly say no to such a detailed plan? Besides, I'd love to dress as a fairy!

On the way home, Niece said she wanted to surprise hubby. She adores her Uncle (who doesn't adore my man??) & came up with an elaborate plan, "We will go in the house and go in the living room and you will tell him to stay in another room and then I will hide behind the couch and then you will call him in the living room and I will jump out and say 'surprise!' and he will be so surprised and he will be a goof head!"

No one was home when we got home so we went in & Niece hid behind a door. When hubby walked in, I took him in the bedroom & said, "I have a surprise for you." Okay, maybe just maybe I should have worded that differently, because he got a very happy grin on his face & skipped through the door.

Yeah, poor boy was thinking that was the best way he'd ever been welcomed home. Until he went to shut the door & out popped a 4 year old. The look on his face was awesome! Pure shock. Then, "You brought another one home?!"

Dear, when you have 6 of 'em floatin' around, what's 1 more? Of course when she flew at him & asked him if he was surprised & excited, he very honestly said he was & bounced her around on the bed making her laugh hysterically like a good Uncle.

We have already begun our big plan for the day: coloring, dress up, babies, the park, ice cream, How To Train Your Dragon (because according to Sister, Hubby, and Niece, I am the last planet on earth to not have seen it), and chasing the pets. What better way to celebrate the end of the semester?

"It's Auntie's hair in the morning." That's one for the fridge!