I Am The Coolest Aunt Ever

Great things have come out of my parents getting grandchildren through my oldest brother. First off, my typical Jewish mother no longer asks when I’m planning to pop out kids. My large Jewish family has stopped asking when I’m going to get married at every family event. I have an adorable niece and nephew whom I play with and lavish with love and bubbles. I get to be “cool Aunt Jyssica.”

My 4-year-old niece loves to see me and knows I’ll roll around on the floor to play with her. I bring her bubbles, which are cheap and apparently the coolest thing since dinosaurs, and she knows I have a ladybug earring that I wear in my right ear. She loves this ladybug. Every time I visit, she climbs up me like I’m a wobbly talking tree and yells “CAN I SEE YOUR LADYBUG?!” (directly INTO my ear) and then yanks my ear to her and says hello to him. Also, she named the ladybug George.  Which didn’t make any sense to me, either, until I realized she names everything George, after the curious monkey.

Side note, I almost traumatized my niece beyond all recognition at my sisters baby shower for her second kid, when I bought a Curious George pinata. We made sure the kid was safely inside when the adults were hitting George with a wooden baseball bat (It was a big hit. Pinatas should be at every baby shower. 8 month pregnant women, blindfolded with a bat, hitting a tree, are hilarious.).

My nephew is only 1 and a half, and he’s one handsome rugrat (despite my brother’s ugly mug, haha) and has the sweetest laugh and smile. He is also a climber. I never realized how impressive chairs are. He will walk up to a chair—any chair at all—and climb onto it. Once there, he’ll grin and look so incredibly proud of himself. Then he climbs down and wanders over to the next chair. He has welcomed himself to the world of walking and climbing with many tumbles, stumbles, trips, and falls. And bruises. Well, that’s all of us…

We are not a coordinated family. Trust me. Within 4 months of moving to NYC, I fell in a crosswalk and ended up needing a wristguard and a sling. My mom once sprained BOTH ankles so badly that the doctor actually said it would have been better if she’d broken them.  My brother, who the father of these 2 adorable children and both my biggest protector, as well as one of the most annoying people in the whole world, once skateboarded his way to a broken arm so severe that he needed surgery, a cast from shoulder to fingertips, and it STILL looks weird in comparison to his other arm.

Me, I’ve broken many bones. Some more than once. And I don’t always remember how each of them happened.  

The best thing ever is that no one in the family is as concerned about my love life, or lack of one, since there are kids to focus on! These 2 kids, the beginning of the newest generation of Scotts, are already carrying on our awkward tradition of being accident-prone. It’s not a good or braggable tradition, but a tradition nonetheless. Some families have names or jobs they pass on, some have weird habits or traits. We have a distinct lack of coordination.

My nephew jumped out of his high chair recently. He stood up and launched himself off of a high chair onto tile floors. This action resulted immediately in almost giving my brother his first heart attack, added to the gray already in his hair, and a trip to the hospital to make sure nothing in the kid's head was shaken loose. Luckily, along with little to no coordination, the Scotts also pass along a hard head from generation to generation. The boy is perfectly fine.

My sister-in-law is actually completely awesome. I'm not sure how, but she is the biggest dork I know and fits perfectly in my dorky family, even though she is a Catholic mexican. She's hilarious, though. My mom thinks she's a sweet angel (who delivered grandkids to her), but the rest of us know she is just as mischievious and silly and dorky as the rest of us, and has consequently passed that onto my niece and nephew!

I’m pretty sure if I were to hatch a kid, my family would visit me more. This is just an unrelated thought. Not that that is happening any time soon. I don’t even have a dog right now. And everyone knows that dogs are like starter kids! But being an aunt is good training, too, and one of the coolest, most satisfying roles I’ve ever had.