My Niblets

My friend, Mindy, calls her nieces and nephews her "niblets," and I think it's cute.

Anyways, I have a video of my nephew, Troy, and I thought that, while I'm at it, I could blog about my funny, funny niblets.

Nat's kids all look completely different from each other, and their personalities are also very, very different from each other. And they all crack me up. I could seriously watch them all day; they are just that entertaining to me.

Jake is five. He LOVES Ironman:

He's got the pose down pat:

He's extremely resourceful and artistic. Look at this Ironman puppet he made by himself:

Jake HATES being put under any kind of pressure to perform. I just think he gets really embarrassed. Here he is at preschool graduation:

At one of his t-ball games (he didn't like being yelled at to run, so he walked sullenly):

And here he is at his little school Christmas performance:

It cracks me up so much. Jake LOVES to jump. I wish I had a better picture of him jumping than this. He jumps from couch to couch in his family room - we're talking like ten feet. I'm serious. Here's the only pic of him kind of jumping that I could find:

Whenever I go over there, he's always like, "Aunt Kar, watch me fly!!!" And, speaking of flies, Jake can catch flies with his bare hands. And then he rolls them between his fingers and deposits them into the heating vents in his house. It's insane! I can't even kill flies with a flyswatter! Here is Jake, holding a captured fly:

Okay, now to Brockey. Brock is very wary of me lately. We used to be buddies - Nat called me Brock's "food beyotch," because Brock knew he could count on me to give him food. But he's in an anti-Kar phase. I have been grouped with Brianna now. We are the Aunts Scary. Hopefully he'll come around. When Brock gets nervous, he gets an underbite. It is really cute. He puts all of his toys in his backpack and carries them around all day. Nat calls Brock's backpack his "third arm":

Note him looking warily at me in the above picture. He very graciously calls Jake "Ironman," which I'm sure Jake loves. Brock loves to be pampered. When Nat rubs sunscreen on him, he sighs, closes his eyes, and enjoys it. We used to call him Little Princess, but we worried about giving him a complex, so now we call him Little Prince. Brock hates getting his picture taken:

Most of his pictures look like the above. Nat calls Brock Mr. Justice, because he has a very innate sense of right and wrong. If all three of the boys are getting into trouble, the others may deny the wrong or run away, but Brock stands his ground and allows himself to be punished. I went over a couple of weeks ago to pick something up, and I brought the kids some candy. They had brushed their teeth, so Nat told them they had to give her candy until the next day. Jake ran away, and Troy started opening his candy, but Brock immediately gave his candy to Nat. The boys were doing something naughty a couple of weeks ago, and Nat said, "Okay, that's it. I'm going to call Santa and tell him not to bring your presents." Troy and Jake were like, "Nooo!" But Brock nodded his head solemnly, like, "Yes, that is the just way." So cute.

Troy is Nat's Dylan. He gets into stuff, a LOT. This is sunless tanning lotion:

And Kool-Aid:

Poor Nat. Here he is, after he pulled a very heavy knicknack onto himself:

He is a little monkey who can climb onto ANY surface. He's very resourceful. He is talking sooo well, which is great. Nat says that Troy is Important. Whenever we all get together, the kids will play downstairs at Nat's place or Mom's place, and the adults will usually hang out upstairs, but Troy is always, always with the adults.

Here is the cute video of Troy, at my house, doing some organizing:

He's a busy little man.

And last but not least, Ivy:

She is so smiley and chubby and cute. She loves to chew on fabric. She's a huge fan of her bottles, but not so much with solid food. She lets you know when she's ticked. She's a very big momma's girl, so she doesn't often like to go to other people, but luckily, she gets tricked by my voice. Nat and I have the same voice inflections - we often trick each others' babies into thinking that we're "safe" from our voices being alike. Nat calls me "Brown-Haired Mom," and I call her "Blonde-Haired Mom." Ivy can stand on her chubby little legs really well. I wish Micah was as interested in physical pursuits! :)

So there are my niblets. So funny and so stinkin' cute.