Cousins

My middle sister (with whom my daughter and I are currently staying on our little vacation) read my last blog entry and couldn't help but notice that I failed to mention her extraordinarily gracious hospitality, good looks, and generalized charm and wit. I regret the oversight.

In other news, I'm enjoying having some quiet time. Today I watched two Dateline episodes in a row and got some reading done. My kid spends every waking moment with her eight-year-old cousin.  They get along pretty well. One interesting little development,though .  .  .  she's been kissing him. A lot. Now, I think it's fine, but I'm not sure at what point one should discourage such displays of affection - or at least the frequency of them. Earlier, he threw a dirty sock at her and she said, "If you do that again, I will kiss you!"

He replied, "That's not really a threat because I don't mind at all." We went to my sister's gym today and while we were waiting for my sister to check us all in, A and her cousin were sitting on a couch in the lobby. They were taking turns sitting on each other's heads and kissing each other on the cheek. Since we were just about to drop them off at the kids' play area, I thought I'd pass along some helpful advice.

"Hey, maybe take it easy on the kissing when you're in the play area, okay?"

My daughter looked at her cousin and, in a conspiratorial tone, whispered: "We'll just find a place to do it in private."

"Um, can't you two just, you know, give each other a noogie or something?"  Ai-yi-yi.

I also found out that my daughter has been telling some tall tales when I'm not around. My sister took her three kids plus my kid to a frozen yogurt place yesterday afternoon. During our visit last summer, my daughter had bragged to her cousins that she was, in fact, in possession of the new Justin Bieber movie, even though it had not been released yet. My niece and nephew decided to call her out on it yesterday, and asked if they could watch the movie next time they visit our house. My daughter quickly came up with a story explaining why they would not be able to do that.  Would you believe that we have a ninja living across the street from us and that she broke into our house and stole the DVD?  Worse yet, she forgot the case and broken in a second time to retrieve it. And here I thought our 'hood was so dull.

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