It never seizes to amaze me how difficult it is. Every time I spend some time with my niece and my nephew, I’m clearly reminded to be more grateful to my parents. In the last couple of weeks, I’ve had to be with them for more than an hour stretch (that’s usually how long it takes for me to realise it takes more than just love to be good parents) and I’m usually quite tired after that.

At 5 and 2, these munchkins have an ability to either drive you ever so slightly insane or melt your heart so you’ll let them do anything. Usually the latter follows the former quite quickly or parents wouldn’t be parents :p and aunts like me wouldn’t crave time with them so much.

Like last weekend when the both of them were calling out for attention at the same time, both wanting me to check out what they were doing, might I add AT THE VERY SAME TIME. My nephew showing me his prowess on the Playstation and my niece prancing around in a tutu I bought her. Then suddenly my niece quietly comes next to me, puts her arm around me and watches her brother intently thrashing some monster on TV. It was quiet for all about … … 6 and a half minutes and that was what I needed for the rest of the 233 and a half noisy minutes 🙂

Spending time with them also helped me understand those parents I usually give an evil eye to … you know the kind that let their kids scream at the top of their voices and they act completely oblivious to them.  I use to think, “How in the world can they just stand there and not do anything?”  Now I know, they’ve completely zoned out … if not, they’d be insane by now :p