The thrilling conclusion to the epic "Hung out at my parents' house Saturday" saga

As I wrote about yesterday, my son loves seeing his extended family, and, after what I'm sure seemed to him like millenia, he got to do just that this past Saturday.

We headed over around noon.  He was dancing in his carseat for the short ride over to Poppa & Mimi's house.

When we pulled up, he tried to race ahead of us up their porch steps, yelling for his grandparents the whole time.  We were just ringing the doorbell and he was already standing on the doorsill.  When his Mimi answered the door, you would have thought it was his birthday and he'd just been told we were celebrating Christmas early by taking him to Disney World.

Of course, he loved on Mimi for about 15 seconds before he was demanding his Poppa.

You ever had a new puppy?  You know how the puppy acts every time you get home, whether you've been at work all day or just ran down to the gas station for five minutes?  That's how my son is with his grandparents.  He sees them almost every other day, and he's just as excited to see them every time.

But that's nothing compared to how he is about his older cousin.

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The enemy of my enemy is my cousin.

This past weekend, as I've mentioned, my parents watched my son for me. Well, they also had my middle sister's two kids, my 3-month-old nephew, and my 2 1/2 year-old niece.

Given as my son is 18-months-old, he is just the perfect age to infuriate my niece. He is neither young enough to be a cute little baby, nor old enough to play at her level. He is also impossible to boss around (which is, sadly, one of the favorite hobbies of 2 1/2 year-olds).

So my parents (their grandparents) spent a good deal of the weekend intervening when my niece find my son irksome. (One oft-used phrase was, "He has parents; you don't need to tell him what to do.")

There is also an element of jealousy too, obviously. My niece was the oldest cousin, and until my son was born a year later, was the sole grandchild. This led too a great surplus of attention. She also has never been in formal childcare, so interaction with other kids has been low. When you add her newborn little brother into the mix, you create the perfect storm for rivalry.

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