It's My Brother's Party and I'll Cry If I Want To

This is essentially what my Godchild's sister (also my Godchild) looked like during most of the party except that her hair still looks as though it was painted on like a newborn doll's hair.

Today was my Godchild's first birthday. I showed up at his party about two hours before its scheduled start as I was asked to in order to help with setting things up. I helped with tables and chairs, tying balloons in strategic places, and similar rocket-science calibre tasks. afterward, I helped with the clean-up. I'm a dutiful Godparent. The main duties are to provide gifts for every occasion and to help with stuff such as birthday parties. Today I fulfilled both requirements.

The birthday boy was in perfect form. He didn't cry a single time until almost an hour after the party was over when one of his cousins pulled his hair. I felt like decking the brat who attacked him but I don't usually engage in hand-to hand combat with two-year-olds. Little does the hair-puller know that Andrew will be both bigger and smarter than she is within a year and will be more than able to hold his own if she chooses to continue her aggressive ways. For Christmas I may get him a karate suit and pay for his first year of karate lessons so that he can defend himself at family events. Do they allow one-year-olds in karate classes? He's quite mature as one-year-olds go.

Andrew's little sister, on the other hand (it's not a typo; he really does already have a little sister even though he's barely a year old; his parents have white trash ways), cried more than enough to make up for every kid there who wasn't crying. She's three-and-one-half months old, though she was born about six weeks early so she's still pretty small for her age. She screamed bloody murder pretty much anytime she noticed someone other than her mother or father or nanny (or I) was looking at her. She knows my voice from skyping so I was allowed to hold her and she didn't cry when I looked at her. I almost felt honored. My dad said she has my disposition. I don't think it was intended as a compliment.

One of my aunts who was there illustrated perfectly why some old people should not dabble in technology. She took up violin this year at the age of fifty-something, and she plans to purchase a new violin soon. She apparently put several violins in her Amazon.com  shopping cart simply for the purpose of remembering what models she saw online and liked. She seems not to have discovered Amazon's "Wish List" feature. I told her about a particular brand of rosin that I use and like, so she used her phone to order it from Amazon. Instead of using Amazon's one-click feature, she put the rosin in her shopping cart -- with approximately thirteen violins -- and when she clicked "Proceed to Checkout" and "Place Your Order," she ordered over twenty-three thousand dollars worth of merchandise. Fortunately for her and/or her husband and for her offspring, who would like to inherit at least enough to bury their parents someday, she checked her order a few minutes later to see when the rosin was scheduled to arrive, and she noticed that thirteen or so violins plus miscellaneous violin paraphernalia [that she found interesting and wanted to consider buying later but was too lame to use the "Wish List" feature] also scheduled to arrive in the next week or so. She very nearly had a seizure. My Aunt Jillian's  brother spent the next fifteen minutes cancelling all her purchases for her.

Notice to Old People:   There are still things called stores in most places. You can buy stuff there. You don't have to risk bankrupting yourselves by accidentally ordering twenty-three thousand dollars worth of violins and associated paraphernalia when almost anything you would ever want can be found in stores.