Nephews, man.

My 8 month old nephew is going through a "clingy phase" it seems -- I asked Nani last week "How's Santi?" and she laughed and said, "attached to my body." He can't quite crawl yet, but he's SO on the verge. I spent a couple of hours with him last week, trying to encourage him to play on the floor, and he just wasn't having it -- all he wanted was to be held by an adult (standing up, no less!), with his arms around their neck. My gut instinct was to push him on this, because it felt like "giving in" to pick him up. Eventually, we ended up with a sort of compromise, with Santi sitting on the floor, playing with a noisy toy (to distract his attention), and me lying on my side with my head in my hand, right next to him, so that every couple of minutes, when he'd start to whine and reach for me to pick him up, I could put my free arm around him, and say (right into his ear) "do you want a HUG? How about a nice HUG?" and he accepted that amount of contact / reassurance (whatever), and would go back to playing with the ball for another couple of minutes, before the next "Pick me up / okay, fine, I'll make due with your hugging thing" interaction.

So that was last Monday evening. Then yesterday afternoon, we stopped by for a short visit, and when Nani brought Santi down from a nap, he looked at us, and I chose that moment to go "Boo!" (the way one sometimes does with babies), and he got this Shocked look on his face and burst into tears.

Rob turned and looked at me with amusement.

I've, uh, never had the experience before of seeing a baby burst into tears when they recognize my face. In my own defense, I said, "Geeze, I didn't think babies understood the *concept* of Boo!" Or was he just sleepy / cranky, or did he actually remember the stress experience of hanging out with me the week before...

Kids, man. Or maybe, more specifically, other people's kids, man.

;-)