Nephew time is always a good thing

I recently spent quite a bit of time with my three nephews, ages 2, 11 and 12. I wasn’t with all of them the entire time. It was split up over the course of about three weeks.

They live in different towns and we don’t get to have everyone together as much as we would like. The 11 and 12-year-old are brothers and live about three and a half hours away from their cousin.

For the last weekend, I had all three of the boys and it was a joy to watch them together.

I don’t think there’s quite anything like listening to a child laugh with abandon, completely caught up in the moment. It’s something I think we find harder and harder to achieve as we get older. There’s always something that creeps in, worry about the car or work or this person or that person.

I could see that in the boys.

Two-year-old Liam is almost always smiling from the time he wakes up in the morning. He’s usually standing up in bed with a big smile on his face when you go into his room in the morning and takes every opportunity to laugh at the antics the taller folks get up to during the day. He’s also thrilled by bubbles and so pleased with his ability to put his shoes on himself that he insisted on wearing them to bed one of the nights I had him.

For 11-year-old Caydyn and 12-year-old Rylan, they certainly still have those moments of abandon, like when they pretended to chase Liam around the house just to hear him giggle.

But they’ve started to feel the pressures of the world and it makes me wish I could freeze time for them. Of course, if I could do that, they’d miss out on so much more, like driving, first dates and learning to be the men they’ll become.

But while I can, I want to find more reasons for them to forget to be mature, growing up young men and laugh with abandon. Fortunately, with little boys any type of bathroom humor seems to produce immediate giggles. I think that’s something that won’t change for a while yet.

Donna Farley is editor of the Daily American Republic. She can be reached at dfarley.dar@gmail.com.