the well-intentioned sucker punch

I love Sunday morning for all the right reasons:  worship, sermon, fellowship, etc.  But I'll admit that I also get a big kick out of getting to show my kid off every Sunday.

My son may be barely 2, but he's charming and outgoing.  Everyone seems to know this kid, even if they don't know me or my husband.  He's just that type of toddler.

So it was no surprise when we were walking in this past Sunday that everyone was greeting him and giving him high-fives.  One very nice woman who was greeting stopped me to tell me how sweet and adorable my son is.  I thanked her, and was about to move on my way when she hit me with, "Isn't it time for another one?"

Bam.  The well-intentioned sucker punch.

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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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I never run out of excuses to use a "Modern Family" promo photo.

I write about my son's extended family a lot because they're a very big part of his life.

Maybe too big.

It honestly is starting to seem like my son is getting, perhaps, a little spoiled on getting to see his grandparents and aunts and cousins so often.

He's developed an expectation that he can just see or talk to his extended family whenever he wants.  Sometimes, when we're driving home from preschool, he'll start demanding, "Poppa.  Mimi."  When I don't acquiesce and turn off on the road in our subdivision that leads to their house, and he realizes we're really going home, he'll start to cry.

The other day he picked up my phone and started repeating his older cousin's name, holding the phone up to his hear and then out to me, making it clear he wanted to talk to her.  I texted my sister and she said it was fine, so I let him call his cousin.

A phone conversation between a not-quite-three-year-old and a not-quite-two-year-old is about as dumb and pointless as you'd imagine.  Remember when you got your first middle school boyfriend or girlfriend, how stupid those phone calls were?  This was almost that bad.

It really is great that everyone is so close, and it's so sweet how much he loves them, and I am really so thankful for all of it.  But nothing excuses the way he acted this past Saturday.

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Never work with kids or animals...

One of the things I absolutely love about my family is that my son has three cousins, all of whom live very close and whom he gets to see quite often.  They're also all very close in age, all under three.  I'm the oldest of three sisters, with only four years age difference between myself and the youngest, and we all had babies around the same time.  (It makes for interesting family get-togethers.)  For the sake of simplicity, here's how the babies and ages breakdown:

Cousin A - daughter of 2nd sister, just shy of 3 years-old
C - My (1st sister) son, about to turn 20 months
Cousin L - daughter of 3rd sister, 10 months
Baby I - son of 2nd sister, 4 months

Now, ever since Cousin A, the oldest was born, my parents have very generously taken the babies for portraits every 4 months, just adding babies as they come, basically.  Everyone gets individual portraits, but there's also always at least an attempt at a group shot.  Last time, because Baby I wasn't here yet, it was the older three cousins, and it actually worked out okay.

This past Saturday, we tried to take one with all four.

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