The Alpha Auntie

You probably know that I'm an aunt several times over. If you didn't, well I have one niece and five and half nephews. I call them my ibbi because there is no word in English for nieces and nephews, so we made one up. At the time we invented it, ibbi spelled out the first initials of all our sister's children's names. We would keep adding to it, but then it would eventually just be gibberish.

This is one of my nephews, Isaac. He's the only ibbi who lives in Calgary, so he's the one I see the most often, and the one who got to model for a lot of my photography assignments. The above photo was actually my final photo for the angle of view assignment.

Anyway, this past Saturday, I went to my sister Emily's (Isaac's mom) to do some work for my kitchen gadget story. Isaac was having his quiet time when I got there, so I remained out of sight for the first little while to prevent him from getting too excited and not getting any rest at all. When he finally came downstairs, I experienced one of those moments in life when you feel so totally awesome. He squealed, ran right for me and called out, "Auntie!" and gave me a big hug. Then he preceded to go jumping around the kitchen gibbering about his trains.

After boosting my ego, Isaac went running into the living room where his dad, Shaun, was. Still bouncing, he announced;

"Daddy, Auntie's here!"

Shaun (who of course, already knew I was there) responded with, "Which auntie, Isaac? Is it Aunt April? Aunt Jaima?"

Isaac looks at his dad for a minute and then says quite seriously, "No. Just Auntie."

I guess I have no name. I'm just the generic aunt.

Though, as Emily pointed out, I'm the aunt he sees the most often, plus I'm the unmarried one who is not in Finland. So really, I'm the Alpha Auntie.

Score! I will now go check off "Become favourite auntie" from my to do list. It's been there for seven years.