I have had the most wonderful experience of spending a little less than a month with my 16 month niece, my baby sisters baby….where did the time go!!!. While as any child that age is like a sponge, just absorbing everything all the time and mirroring all that is learnt at the same time, makes it very entertaining. Any person who has had the opportunity to spend any time with a child can validate that when the crying and pooping is taken out, these midget creatures are quite entertaining. Now in the case of my niece who I must admit, I really adore and love very dearly, and I have over the last several decades have spent time with little children…my baby sister, baby nephews and other assorted kids that I know something about babies ....but never have I seen a kid quite like my niece when she is cranky. I was so convinced that she was the devil child that I actually hunted her head for the 666 mark that I recalled from the movie Omen and no I did not find it thankfully. When she got cranky, she would cry at a frequency that felt like some one had poked through my eyes, crawled up in to my brains and was frying some nasty recipe. We (my mom, my sister, my wife…all my wise women) speculated about the cause in the hope that we could attack the monster hurting our little baby. We thought it could be because she was missing her dad who was on an extended oversees trip, may be she was teething, may be it was the new environment, may be….may be….but no matter what, every so often she would sink in to those moods that her mom threatening her of the quintessential lion in the basement or a few smacks on her diaper wrapped hinny would not help. When she was in a good mood, which was mostly the way she was, she was waddling around my house destroying furniture, fixtures, living those ever so cute hand prints on anything that would reflect, playing with Tupperware, paper or anything garbage happily.….learning to say new words. Thanks to her I have an expanded vocabulary that includes Mumum = Food, Ninni = Water, Babeeeee = Saritha, Nimmy = Any snack, Diapy = Diaper….and she ate non stop and pooped non stop too from amount of diapers that we saw go in to the garbage. When she liked me she would show that by crawling all over and biting my nose with her toothless mouth. What a treat to watch a 16 month old manipulate a houseful older people….from utter joy to complete despondency. She could pit us against each other and make us do what she wanted….how does a 16 month old do that? How does the mind work like that? Why can we not use her against Osama’s evil people?
Well one thing she helped me validate is that my life is so much better off without an adorable dwarf like her…I love her because of who she is and more so because I know I can hand her to mommy when I am done playing with her. Also hoping that when she is a grown woman and ready to have a baby of her own, she reads her old uncles blog and realizes what a rascal baby she was but we still loved her….and yes her baby is welcome in my house too!!!
