Kids Are the Darnedest Things

I've been around babes lately. And yes, while their faces a cherubic and their smiles melt your insides, I have decided that they are demons in disguise. Clever, brilliant, well-disguised demons, but demons nonetheless.

Take the first babe I ever claimed auntie to, Chase Alexander. Chase will be three in December. He already knows all his letters and all types of tractor equipment. He has been to more tractor pulls in his short life than I have in my long one, and no one looks cuter than him in a tobogan. He also knows how to make his self-proclaimed Aunt Amber give in to his reign of terror... by dumping every single one of his toy bins on top of himself, of course. I fall for anything willing to be that naughty.
While on a quick visit to his mom's house (my lifetime partner Heather), I had the chance to play with Chase until his naptime. Granted, playing with him sometimes makes me feel like an idiot since when I pick up a tractor and say, "Go tractor, go," he usually corrects me with, "That's a combine." Just before his nap I told Chase to pick out a book for me to read to him. I'd asked him earlier if he was in school and he'd said yes, so I asked him what he was learning, and he sighed as big a sigh as a three-year-old is capable of and answered, "God." When it was time to pick a book, Chase told me in no uncertain terms that he did not want "the one about God." I found this immensely amusing, but only because I know Heather and John are not religious zealots with the goal of brainwashing their kids. Chase is just a demon, see.

Baby Cole, Chase's 5-month-old brother who I welcomed to the world as soon as he arrived in it was also there for my visit. When I left him he was loose and smooshy, but now he's full of bouncies and smiles and happy. He even had a little angel kiss birthmark on his face, which definitely throws you off when searching for the demon that's sure to surface in time.
By far the most manipulative babe is my blood nephew Benjamin Ace. BAM has managed to get five women hanging on his every gurgle and has successfully interrupted our typically cooperative existence. He has turned my mom, his GG, into a baby hog. He pukes on us, pees on us, and poops on us, and yet we still hang around him inches from his every move and are collectively at his beck and call. He's already turned us into a cult and he can't even speak. Hopefully by the time Shannon and Charles's expectation gets here in May, I'll have found a way to conquer the demons inside. Or I'll have rationalized falling completely under their spell.