Ah, Perspective...

Having children is a good way to keep things in perspective -- like how important you really are to your child.

We spent the weekend visiting Heather's parents and her brother and his family. Elli had a ball playing with her two cousins and visiting with "Mimi" and "Buh-bah" (Can I just say that the members of my generation in the family LOVE that my father is being called "Buh-bah"? And that the kids are identifying him as such so strongly that, for example, Elli will give kisses to "Buh-bah", but doesn't know what you're talking about if you ask her to give kisses to "Grampy.")

Anyway, back to the point of the post: We started noticing around Saturday evening that if I picked up either my niece or nephew when Elli was around, she started crying. At first, we thought she was jealous that Mommy was holding and kissing one of her cousins instead of her. Then my mother suggested that I pass my nephew over to her, and Elli started whining again, even when I picked her up. At this point, Jeremy started calling her "Little Green Eyes," and was joking that she just wanted to be the center of every one's attention. Then we put my nephew down, and Elli calmed down immediately, smiled, and went right over to him and starting playing with and kissing on him.

Net, she didn't care that Mommy or Mimi was holding her cousin instead of her -- she was upset that we'd taken him out of commission for playing!