Quiet Please!

Wanna see something cool?
Wanna see something cool?
Wanna see something cool?

Auntie come watch this!
Auntie come watch this!
Auntie come watch this!

Wanna see something cool?

I love my niece, I adore her. If something were to happen to my brother and parents, I would take her in a second. But OH MY GOD she does not stop talking. And she's a show-off -- just like I was at her age, I hear -- and requires constant attention. She's, basically, a 6-year-old.

A and I spent the weekend with my niece. She joined us at the flower shop and behaved better than Uncle A as we finalized the flower decisions. Later, we took her to her best friend's birthday party. This was taxing. The girls were constantly demanding we watch them do this trick and that, although "this" and "that" were pretty much the same thing. We humored them, we laughed, we congratulated them on their gymnastics skills. It was actually quite cute at first, but it got old. Fast.

Then there were the boys. Oh dear god the boys. One, whom my mom dubbed "tough guy", kept challenging kids to do dangerous stunts on the slide and merry-go-round. The other was "the sand thrower", and he just threw sand at everything. People, dogs, and he coated the slide with it. Where were their parents? In all cases Dad was huddled by the barbeque, Mom was talking exasperatedly with the other moms and shooting annoyed glances at them while saying "stop that" in a nonthreatening voice. There were, of course, no consequences for NOT stopping that.

After we tore her, sobbing, from the birthday party, we went out to the camp site. We blew up the air mattress and she began practicing her gymnastics on it. It was adorable, at first, of course. Auntie, watch me do a flip/summersault/running summersault, which were all, again, pretty much the same thing. A showed her how to do a headstand and she practiced this for awhile. But the moment we stopped paying attention, it was "wanna see something cool?" And, of course we want to see something cool, so she'd do another summersault and say "wasn't that cool!"

After dinner, she let up and we had a really fun game of Yahtzee, which she is frighteningly good at. I think it was because we were actively involved in a game she was playing that she was so, well, not annoying. Now THAT was quality time spent with her. The night ended well, but the next morning it all started up again. "Wanna see something cool?" After I tear down the tent, C. "Watch me do this!" I can't right now, I'm trying to clean up. "Wanna see something cool?"

I just have no patience for her after awhile, and while I love this child more than any other, I was so glad to have grownup time after we left. I can't help but feel like having children is a life-sentence of limited grownup time. Sure, the kids are cute, but after the novelty wears off it just gets irritating. I can't have a dog for the same reason, and sometimes I get so frustrated with my cat's constant cries for attention that I hide under the covers or go so far as to lock him out of the room. How do people DO this??