The Games I Play with my Niece

Who knew that I could fall in love with someone so small?  Today’s blog revolves around my niece.   This tiny girl has so much spunk and pizzazz without even being able to formulate sentences yet.  The innocence of a child is, I suppose, the most endearing quality of every child.  The insane frustration that builds up inside me when Kaylee wakes up at 7am melts away when she crawls up beside me in bed, all bright eyed and bushy tailed, and begins talking in baby gibberish.  Sweeter words have never been spoken.

Making up songs and dances and prancing around the living room like a crazy person is actually kind of fun. I love being able to solve the world’s problems for her by simply retrieving her favorite toy that’s perched too high or refilling her juice bottle.  I feel like Superwoman, but at the same time I worry for the future about the things I won’t be able to fix, like a personal setback or a broken heart.

I wish there was a way for me to bubble wrap her, to make sure she’s always safe and sound, as impractical and unhealthy as that is.  As my grandmother once said, “I didn’t know how to be a parent; children don’t come with a handbook”.  It is nature or nuture that is mostly responsible for churning out a good child?  What am I doing wrong, what am I doing right?    

God plays this crafty trick on women.  One day you’re worrying about your weekend plans, your hair appointment and your shopping excursion, and BAM out of nowhere you start thinking, almost wanting a baby.  It’s like God created a schedule for women.  From your first menstrual cycle, to your biological alarm clock setting off, to menopause, God has predetermined women’s lives and even our thought processes.  Not so for men.  Why? The injustice of it all.  How will being a mother affect my plans of world domination?  Seriously.

Veering back, having a niece has brought out qualities in me that I did not know I had.  The patience I have developed when I find my niece drawing on my bedroom wall with my favorite eyeliner, or dumping the dog’s water bowl again, has surprised me.  Don’t get any ideas; right now I am completely content with just being an aunt.  That 24/7 job is still on the backburner for me.  I like having a baby sometimes and then being able to give her back.  I still use way too many wipes when she has a diaper-full of number 2 and I have not quite mastered the art yet of whipping up food in 5 minutes flat for baby.

In less than 2 years of her existence I have consistently learned every day from her, how to love more, how to be more patient, and unfortunately how to worry more.        

I guess my point is that while children are still young, and while kissing their boo-boos will make them feel better again, relish the time you have with them, because today’s problems will not be tomorrow’s.  In years to come when you’re worrying about college tuition, the tough looking guy that seems to be hanging around with her an awful lot, and the nose ring she has been hinting at getting, you’ll look nostalgically back at the time when all that would suffice was a lollipop and a kiss. 

"Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all.  Thousands of little kids, and nobody's around - nobody big, I mean - except me.  And I'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff.  What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff - I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them.  That's all I do all day.  I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all.  I know it's crazy, but that's the only thing I'd really like to be."  ~J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye