A Holly, Jolly Christmas

The gingerbread house is made of styrafoam,
for the record. I'm not that talented. 

Forming a relationship with a kid is easy compared to an adult. Step 1: Be genuinely interested in the kid. Step 2: Do what the kid wants to do. Step 3: Besties for life!

A handy guide for meeting adults: Step 1: Introduce yourself and immediately acknowledge you are terrible with names. Step 2: Ask superficial questions. Step 3: Search awkwardly for common ground. Step 4: Feign an excuse to leave the conversation.

How to keep the kids entertained
at lunch time: Selfies.
When my aunts were popping out kids in the mid-1990s, I was worried about whether their kids were going to like me. They're in their late teens and early 20s now and they're still calling me. Those early bonding sessions/baby sitting sessions paid off with unusually tight relationships in adulthood.

Still, I worried a little about being an uncle. The Wife's brothers and sisters-in-law began having kids a few years ago and I wanted to be the cool uncle. But I live 1,300 miles away; how's this going to work?

We got our answer on a recent trip to Minnesota. The nieces and nephew are mostly out of diapers, which is about the time for Cool Uncle to step into the scene. We loaded Group One into the cars on a frigid Saturday morning and went to the Children's Museum in St. Paul. It's the perfect environment for me ... er ... the kids.

TW and Chase stared at a perpetual-motion machine and its pingpong balls for 15 minutes, tracing the bounces and drops over and over. There was running and tickles and general frivolity for hours.

The next day, we went to Group Two's house to watch football and hang out. Holly, who is 6, needed help constructing a styrofoam gingerbread house. Being that I have hand-eye coordination skills, I was qualified to help. We spent hours plugging bits and pieces together.

Holly's sister wasn't much interested in playing. That's fine. She's only 2 and still in diapers. She'll come around.

It's exciting and rewarding to get to hang out with another generation of kids. They're so easy to form a bond with. Share an experience and you've got a buddy for life. Or so I hope.

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