Honorary Aunt

Yep, that's me!  Well, it could be.
Give the diet time to work, people!

I love being an aunt! It's like being a grandparent, only younger.  You get to play on the floor, distribute candy indiscriminantly, and have a legitimate excuse for watching cartoons.  Best of all, when somebody gets cranky, starts crying, and/or throws up... oops, time to go back to mommy and daddy.  Just kidding!  I am a full-service aunt. I can and have dealt with all three of those scenarios on my own.

I take being an aunt very seriously.  I have coloring books, trucks, trains, bubble wands, airplanes (Can you tell I have a nephew?) and other toy paraphenalia stored in a toy chest in my living room.  Until the squirt was successfully potty trained, I had a supply of diapers, wipes, diaper rash cream, and pull-ups stored under my coffee table.  I even have a car seat secured in the back of my car for emergency pick-ups or when Squirt and I want to go somewhere when I'm babysitting.


Squirt, my adorable four year old nephew, has the ability to make my day with only a smile and to wreck my day with a quivering lip and a tear.  Sorry, Squirt, I love you too much not to teach you how to share your toys with other kids.  Those crocodile tears are like a knife in my heart, but I'm still gonna make you give the toy back and apologize. Squirt even gave me a special name, Nan Naine.  You see when he was first learning to talk he couldn't say Aunt Lainey, but he tried anyway and Nan Naine is what came out.  It's probably petty, but I also like that he created a special name for me when he was a year old because his other aunt remained nameless until he was two and a half.  Thank you, I am the favorite aunt!

Squirt is not the only kid to call me Nan Naine, he's just the only one I'm related to biologically.  For you see, just as my father created honorary aunts and uncles for me when I was squirt, some of my friends have made me an honorary aunt.  When my college roommate told me she was pregnant, the first thing she told me was, "You're going to be an aunt!"  I'm Nan Naine to her two boys.  This week, I received the honorary title from a few of my favorite little people and it brightened my day.

Not that kind of dancing with Baby

The other night, while coming home after an exceedingly long and exhausting day at work, I parked my car in my assigned parking space (which happens to be two houses down from mine, in front of my friends', the Double J's, townhouse) and was greeted by a scene of domestic tranquilty.  The Double J's had their curtains open and I could see them dancing together in the middle of their kitchen.  The scene was especially sweet (toothache sweet, not Dude Where's My Car? sweet) because they were holding their little man, 18 month old JJ, between them. 


As I sat in my car warring between two strong reactions to this tableau (Oh, isn't that sweet? and What's wrong with me?  Why don't I have that?), little JJ looked out the window, saw me, and waved his little hand furiously in greeting.  The Double J's stopped dancing and JJ's daddy brought him outside to say hello to me.  We stood on the stoop chatting about how big JJ was getting and his recent birthday.  While the adults chatted, JJ gave me high fives and blew me kisses.  This kid is really too cute for words, both because of his always sunny personality and his chubby, cherubic cheeks.  When it was time for daddy to take JJ inside, he turned towards JJ and said, "Wave bye-bye to Aunt Lainey, JJ."  Sweet!  They made me an honorary aunt.

A sunny personality and chubby, cherubic cheeks.  What's not to love?

My second honorary title of the week came not from the parents, but from the child.  In the last few months, I've spent a lot of time hanging out at the home of my friends, The Mynds.  At their home, I am known to the kids (Teen Wolf, Shaggy, and Princess Sassy Pants) as Miss Insert Last Name Here.  Dude, it's my anonymous blog.  I like you guys, but I'm not telling you my last name.  That's how stalkers are born. 

The reason for this very formal form of address is not because they are at all formal in how they address adults in the house, but because I was Shaggy's fifth grade social studies teacher.  Did I mention that I'm a teacher?   I've tried to get Teen Wolf and Shaggy to call me Lainey, but they just won't do it. They can see me outside of school, but I will always be Miss Insert Last Name Here to them.

Anywho, I might someday be Princess Sassy Pants' teacher.  Fearing that it would be hard for Princess Sassy Pants to switch back and forth between Lainey and Miss Insert Last Name Here from home to school, we just stick with the latter.  Or at least we did until this week when Princess Sassy Pants referred to me as Aunt Insert Last Name Here.  Aww, she made me her honorary aunt!  It's not exactly Aunt Lainey or Nan Naine, but it's just as wonderful because she created the title herself. 

And now I have a neice to go with all my nephews, honorary and otherwise.  
Time to buy Barbies and dress-up clothes.  Awesome!