Three years! That's how long one little bundle of energy and love and cuddles, excitement, and a few tantrums here and there that I call NephewQ has been around on this planet earth. Three whole years that have entirely changed my life. Sure, I'm not his Mom. But just being little Q-ball's auntie has made such a difference in my life, in who I am and in my understanding of what love is.

Thursday night I unloaded a big birthday present, a Zachary's deep-dish pizza pie and one birthday cake from my Jeep and walked into my sister and brother-in-law's house to be greeted by my adorable nephew, given kisses and told "'S'my burday, Tete! I furee (three)!" Then he ran gleefully over to the present. "My pesent! My pesent!" He ripped the paper off, determined to get every scrap off the box before looking to see what was actually in the box. "A car! Ooooh!"

"We'll put it together after we eat dinner!" We told him. And his sweet little voice replied, "Okay!"

It was okay for all of two minutes. Two minutes later he was shouting from the dinner table: "No dinner bites, no dinner bites!" So we let him out and he began to rip open the box and pull out the parts to the red and yellow little tyke's car.

And let me tell you, NephewQ was immediately brilliant. He's been playing a lot of the game "Bad Piggies" lately. If you don't know what that is, it's a spinoff of Angry Birds, except you have to build a vehicle in every level and make it cross a finish line. It's kind of brilliant. It's one part soap box derby, one part engineering, one part physics, one part luck, and three parts fun.

I've lost track of how many parts that is, but it's all kinds of cool, and very fun to see NephewQ put on his thinking cap and make the game work.

The car was completely in pieces, but the biggest whole piece was the car's body, which Q promptly inserted the steering wheel into and (tried to) put the wheels into the correct position. Then he got into the body and tried to drive. I stuck the odometer and gauges stickers on the dash next to the steering wheel and it immediately dismayed Q. He pointed at the stickers with a frown and pulled the steering wheel out of the dash.
"It not woorking!" 
His mom replied "It's imaginary. It's a sticker, those parts don't move."
Q, still dismayed: "It not woorking!"
Mom: "You have to use your imagination. Use your head!"
Q bends over, puts his head on the dashboard and taps it against the dash. And then we begin to laugh uncontrollably. Snort-laughing. It was that funny.

And then we gave him some birthday cake and let him watch a movie while three fully grown adults tried to figure out how to really assemble that bloody little car. (Grumble, grumble... seriously ridiculous)

And when it all came together, Q opened the car door, got into his car with a swagger, looked me in the eye and said (with the same inflection of The Terminator saying "Hasta la vista, baby!") "See ya Tete!" and he flintstoned his little feet off into the sunset. (Or toward the front door... maybe.)




This kid. This wonderful, stubborn, brainy, wiggly, amazing, thoughtful kid.

I love you, stinkerbug.