I have two nephews and one niece. I love them all beyond words but they are by no means perfect. Almost, but not quite. 
Of course, my sisters like to say that anything less than perfect that shows up in their characters is because of me, their Aunt Sandi.
Here are a few things that I do take partial credit for. They are all very stubborn, HMM, let’s rephrase that to “determined.” I’ll take some of the blame for that. They’ve all seen me hold on to something WAY longer than I should have, which has not always been a good thing.
Two of the three have turned into book lovers. We have one who loves to read, one who listens to books and one who prefers other things besides books. I can’t take all the credit for that – our mom and dad were both readers and my sisters and I all love to read. But, I did buy them an awful lot of books when they were little, so I’ll take SOME credit for that.
Both of our boys like a good argument. Ken will take the opposite side just to annoy you, and even argue against something he believes, just for a good “discussion.” Josh will tell you if you’re wrong, give you his reasons and he’s done. He doesn’t enjoy the argument as much as Ken, but sometimes he argues just to be ornery. (This may be from me, sad to day.)
They are all brilliant – and I’m not just saying that because I’m their aunt. They are all gifted and talented in many different ways. They are all MUCH better at Math than their Aunt Sandi, our Josh especially has an incredible gift for math.
But today, I spent most of the day with our Josh and I watched him. I have had a leaky bathroom faucet for a while and he kept changing the washer inside. He’s been pondering the whole thing, I think and so today, he decided we needed to change the whole mess. I don’t know the correct words for things, but whatever the washer goes up against was broken and the washers just kept getting chewed up. So about 4:30 today, he started working on my faucets. We made two trips to Lowe’s and one to Harbor Freight. He says the first trip to Lowe’s doesn’t really count, because it wasn’t really what we needed, but I count it!
We turned off the water to our house several times, cut PVC pipe, assembled, un-assembled, re-assembled, turned on the water, had a small leak, turned off the water, un-assembled, re-assembled and repeated. About 9:00 he pronounced it DONE.
This is what amazes me -- he just keeps trying over and over and over. And he never gets upset. I get irritated and start yelling at stuff. Yes, I yell at inanimate objects. He stays calm and just carries on. I kept thinking he reminded me of someone – but I couldn’t figure out who. It certainly isn’t me!! My reaction to stress is anger – and I’m certainly not proud of that. But he is just amazingly calm.
Then, it hit me. He reminds me of my daddy. My daddy didn’t get upset about stuff. He got excited about good things and he’d act silly sometimes, but he didn’t get angry or upset in stressful situations – he just stayed calm, quiet and tried again. I know that I’ve passed on some things to Ken, Josh and Makiah, but it makes me happy to see their Grandpa in them too!
