Becoming A Uncle

This week I have had a couple of conversations where the topic of being a Aunt or Uncle has come up and then I visited with Janice today and it got me reflecting on that.

When Jennifer and I got married I immediately became a uncle. Jennifer being the baby of the family already had a bunch of nieces and nephews. Me being the oldest of my family did not have any siblings with children yet, so this was a new experience for me.

Now the interesting part of it was some of my "new" nieces and nephews were only a couple of years younger than Jennifer and I. Now this was not completely foreign to me. We had gone to school with several kids where one kid was the aunt and one was the nephew or vice versa and they were in the same class.

However for me this "new" title took a little getting used to at first. Jennifer and I loved being Aunt and Uncle. Now certainly the relationship we had with the older nieces and nephews was different from the younger nieces and nephews, but we loved them all the same. Jennifer viewed the older nieces and nephews more like siblings.

As I have mentioned before Jennifer loved babies. She loved to hold them and coo at them. However she drew the line at diaper changing. She wanted no part of that. She had a saying she was the Aunt they could come to for bail money, she was not the Aunt to come to for diaper changing.

We had fun torturing Janice and Ken when the Gray kids were young trying to find toys that were annoying but did not require batteries. We actually had a UPS driver divert his route to deliver one of those toys, because it was driving him nuts riding in his truck. Janice literally begged us not to give the kids "Sand Art" one Christmas. It was tempting, but we did not want to cross that line, so we held off.

She really loved when the nieces and nephews got a little older and especially into their teenage years. We both loved following these kids growing into adulthood and when they started having kids of their own. Then when the nieces and nephews started having kids we got promoted to that title "Great" Aunt and Uncle. I will be honest that we felt we were already a great Aunt and Uncle before we officially got that title. At times it makes me feel old, but is still pretty damn cool.

Anyway we have been blessed with good nieces and nephews. They have all turned out or are turning out to be pretty damn good and we were blessed to be part of their lives and I certainly intend to continue to be.

Anyway it is always good to follow how they are doing and things that is going on in their lives. We have had fun times with many of them. We went to many games and tournaments, we even went to Disney World with the Grays a couple of times. We laughed many times when Kate said I was her funny uncle Joe. We just had to make sure people knew it was funny ( as in Ha Ha) and not something else.

Then we started getting nephews on my side of the family. We had many fun times with them and had many laughs about Heath telling Jennifer to "stay and not to touch his stuff"while he took me back to his play room to show me something when he was 2 years old. He was dead serious about that.

Anyway, it is fun being a Uncle and I look forward to continue to be and can't wait to be a Great, Great Uncle. That could happen before too long. We got a couple that are getting to that Marrying age. That will make me feel really old.