I Realized It Was Cruel and I Did It Anyway

I love children... especially children that belong to other people and even more especially when that person is my sister. The reason for this is that most other people wouldn't allow me to continue to answer the "why?" questions from a 3 year old with answers like "the sky IS purple on Tuesdays, you're just not paying attention". "But...why?". "Oh, that's because on Tuesdays eggplants float". However, when you test fate, fate gets you back and although my sister is ordinarily a sweet, kind and loving sort of person (yes, we are related) she has her own ways of getting back at me.

It all began around July. My sister was trying to teach my eldest niece, we shall call her Princess Superior, about respecting who's in charge. In order to relay this, she would inform Princess Superior that Mommy was the boss of her and Mom-Mom was the boss of Mommy and so on and so forth. One day I walk into my Mom's house and my niece comes running up to me, puts her hand on her hip, shakes her finger at me like a scolding school teacher and goes "Aunt Kelly, I'm the boss of YOU!!!". You can envision the fits of laughter that then raged from my sister and my Mom at the glory of paying me back for years of my own overbearing behavior.

Now it's been two months and Princess Superior is holding true; she's my boss and she's not backing down. My sister tries to explain to Princess Superior that she needs to listen to her Aunt Kelly and Princess Superior looks at her like "are you f*n kidding me? I'm her f*n boss Mom..". So on my last babysitting adventure I tried to stem a deal about how many books we were going to read before bed. This is how it went:

Me: "We'll read one book, how's that? You can make it a looooong book"

Princess Superior: "How about two books? Two books is better"

Me: "One book, one loooooooong book"

Princess Superior: "Aunt Kelly, you know... that... I'm the boss of you"

Me: "I'm aware... and... I'm the boss of you" (just to try it on for size)

*She looks up at me, contemplates whether to barter for 2 books and wager her boss status, then shrugs her shoulders*

Princess Superior: "At least we're both the boss of someone"

We read two books and sang three songs...

Then Boyfriend came and I decided that after hours of having my eyes poked out with crowns and having to dress up as Sleeping Beauty only to have the Wicked Stepmother order me to clean the floor while prodding me with a "magic wand"...it was only fair... (my ONLY real regret is not having an actual camera around)