Why, Oh WiFi?

My sister and her family were in from the West Coast last week, and I got to have three whole days and nights alone with my teenage nephew and preteen niece. Because they WANTED to be with me. Or so I thought.

While my sister and her husband stayed with our father, J and J happily packed their bags for what was supposed to be one sleepover. We went to the pool, did the mom tasks they were assigned (him: thank-you notes from his recent birthday; her: reading); and went out to dinner at a Japanese steakhouse (complete with open grill and startling flames and flying shrimp sometimes making it into a diner's gaping, expectant mouth). Then home to brush teeth, watch a movie and camp out in the living room, as we have always done; the tent-bedroom I set up when they were small giving way to him on a pull-out couch, her in a chair-plus-hassock bed she likes to cobble together, and me on the big sofa, until they fall asleep and I remove myself to one of the upstairs bedrooms they don't want to use. I love it - love the auntie-ness of it, watching them sleep, making them breakfast, the fact that they are so well-behaved for me even though they act differently with their parents... it's all good.

So I was delighted when they asked their parents if they could spend another night, and then another. Until the sibs started fighting, and the 14-year-old busted his 11-year-old sister: "She wants to be here for your wifi, you know." And then my sister/his mom, told me later: "He wants to be at your home because you have On Demand movies." Sigh. I know they love me. I just didn't know I would be sharing their love with my house.

© 2017 A Bit of Brie/Anitabrie