Precious Memories and Adventures of Being an Auntie

While home last week, I went through my old bedroom to clear out the stuff I no longer want or need. Unfortunately for me and the cleansing process, my old bedroom is now my niece and nephew’s bedroom when they come visit my parents.
I’m completely clueless as to how parents manage to get ANYTHING at all done around the house, or you know, at ALL in life with two little ankle biters running around. The entire time, I had to keep one eye on them in case they fell out a window or something and then try to go through the massive piles of junk in my old bedroom. Not to mention, any old toy I found, they IMMEDIATELY had to have and so ::shrug:: there went any hope of trying to toss it in the garbage.

At one point, I came across a shoebox full of old pictures. I went through every image, showing Addy and Harrison along the way the pictures of their mommy and daddy when they first started dating. But mostly within that box were images that really meant very little to me. Images of people blinking or a random shot of all of us sitting around the family room watching tv (I mean seriously, why even take that picture???). Or it was a crappy disposable camera that always had the look of a foggy room. You know the ones I’m talking about. So, I kept a small handful of the pictures and threw the rest away.

Oh, boy was that a mistake.

Addy threw herself onto the trash bag, reaching in for the images. She looked up at me, big blue eyes filling with tears and asked, “You’re throwing these away?”

I told her yes and explained that I kept the ones that meant a lot to me, but the rest weren’t needed any longer.

Well, by her next reaction, you would have thought that I told her I just threw away her kitten after peeing all over its head. She face planted onto the floor, bursting into a fit of tears, crying out, “YOU’RE THROWING AWAY MEMORIES, AUNT COLLEEN! PRECIOUS MEMORIES!”

Holy. Shit. Ever want to feel like a terrible aunt and an awful human being? Yeah, try throwing out pictures in front of a five year old.

So, at this point, I just wanted her to stop crying–I was pretty sure that any minute now my sister would burst through the door and accuse me of abusing her children or something, so I attempted to take the photos back from her and I was all, “Yeah, yeah, okay, I’ll keep them. Calm down.”

She wrenched the pictures from me with her sticky, candy covered fingers and said, “No! You don’t deserve them anymore!”

….

The moral of the story here? I’m so not ready to be a parent.