Surprise post by Aunt Amanda!

When Summer started this blog she listed me as a contributor, and I promptly repaid her kindness by posting when she was 6 months pregnant with Kaitlin...and haven't really posted since then. But now I have produced a baby cousin for Kaitlin & Claire who is lucky enough to share a nanny with these two little ladies, and suddenly Aunt Amanda has a more plentiful supply of KRK & CB stories of her own. Two such stories were supplied to me today when I went to pick Jack up from Miss Johanna...

Today is Ash Wednesday. Being the Catholic girl that I am, I dutifully attended mass and this year, as every year, the priest blessed me with a ridiculously abundant amount of ashes. So once again, I got to walk around all day with a huge smudge of holy ashes on my forehead. Cut to the end of the day. As all of you mommies know, mommy brain can make you forget all kinds of things such as huge black smudges on your forehead. But when you are an observant 3-year-old, this is not a likely oversight. My kind-hearted goddaughter Kaitlin didn't say anything about it for a good 20 minutes, but then she came to sit by me while I was feeding Jack and very sweetly gave me a 5-minute talk on how I could avoid getting "black" on my head in the future. Below are her major talking points.

• She sometimes gets black on her feet, but it always goes away. Apparently this happens because God blows the black off her feet and/or she goes outside and the wind blows it off her feet. She then demonstrated to me how hard one has to blow in order to get all of the black off of one's feet. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't confused by this part of her talk.
• She doesn't put black on her eyes, which is why she never gets black on her forehead. I can only assume here that she believes that it was my mascara that I managed to get all over my forehead.
• When informed that Jack also had ashes on his head this morning but had already rubbed them off, she responded, "Yeah, he didn't want them." Then she looked at me like I was crazy for thinking anyone would actually desire to have "black" on their head.

Rest assured that I explained the ashes to her a couple of times, but clearly I didn't know what I was talking about. Thank the Lord that I am godmother to someone as wise as Kaitlin to help me avoid getting black on my head. It'll be interesting to see how this plays out next year.

Moving on to my story about Claire Bear. For those of you who don't know me, my son Jack is 3-months-old. I don't believe any baby in the world has ever been more loved by his cousins than Jack is loved by Kaitlin and Claire. It's pretty much the cutest thing ever. Unfortunately for Jack, he is still a little too young to reap the benefits of such devotion. After a couple of hours, he basically just wants them out of his face ASAP. By the time I picked him up this afternoon, he was in just such a state. After feeding him with help from K and CB, I was putting him in his car seat so we could get ready to go. Both girls were crowding around me trying to help buckle him in (usually a one-person job, but I just go with it...) when Jack decided he had HAD IT. He kind of exploded a little, and I very patiently told the girls that Jack really needed some space right now, so we need to just back up a little. That's when Claire looked up at me with the sweetest little face and said, "I'n jus hewping!" (I'm just helping). I wanted to die! Looking at her then with those big brown eyes and her spunky little ponytail flying every which way, I might have let her "help" by poking my kid's eyes out (which is sometimes on her to-do list). Needless to say once Jack had calmed down, CB did a great job of buckling him into his car seat, despite Kaitlin's protests that she was the only one who could do it right.

I love my sweet nieces so much and couldn't be happier that my son is blessed with such loving cousins! I know he'll appreciate it once he's a little older :).