I think my young nephew is scared of me. Since he and his family arrived yesterday morning, he has not allowed me to hold or play with him without kicking and screaming like a maniac, and I am taking it personally. He let my mother hold and sleep with him last night, but the most I get is about 5 minutes before he goes crazy. Back in April when we met, he was way more affable. We spent about an hour alone together looking at the television, talking about life and all that jazz. I guess now that he's officially 1 year old, and he has gotten his first fresh haircut, he thinks he has gotten too grown for his uncle. This behavior will definitely go in his chart, and the amount of money he will be eligible to receive from me is decreasing like sand from the hourglass. He has all of today to redeem himself.

In all seriousness though, it amazes me how kids can become fixated on things. Young Nazir saw me pulling out the scrabble board from the across the room, and IMMEDIATELY, he began to plot and make his way to me. He used the edge of the couch to walk half of the way, and the he crawled the remainder of the way to me. Once he arrived at the scrabble board, he carefully examined it all while keeping a close eye on what I was doing. I can't even describe the look of determination on his face as he looked at the game piece by piece. Can you imagine your only challenge of the day being whether or not you can navigate your grubby little hands thru fascinating world of Scrabble?