Bouncing Joy

Last weekend my little cousin, Thomas, turned three years old. People often times mistake me for his aunt or his mother, my aunt Jennifer, for my cousin. I know that aunts and cousins are a really hard concept to grasp but I do actually know the difference. When I introduce someone to Jennifer and say, "this is my Aunt Jennifer" there is really no reason for that someone to respond with "Oh, you mean your cousin Jennifer"? This exact scenario has played out multiple times in my 31 year life span. So, just be clear, Jennifer is my mother's youngest sister and while she and my mom are 18 years apart, we are only 11 years apart. The combination of our relatively small age difference and Jennifer waiting until later to have children means that I have a 3 year old first cousin and 6 month old twin cousins. Evans has three first cousins once removed (I really do NOT understand all that once removed hocus pocus) who are close to his age, there is a 31 year difference between my first cousins and me and Jennifer is a Great Aunt at a pretty young age. Bet you didn't think you would get a lesson in genealogy, did ya? I just didn't want anyone to feel the need to point out to me that I might be referring to my family members with the wrong title. So, in the picture above I was attempting to get a cute shot of Evans and Thomas in their monkey shirts. Believe me or not, but Jennifer and I did not buy the shirts together or plan them. Evans is way more concerned with the little boy that was sitting on Thomas' other side that he clearly didn't want sitting there.In this picture I sort of feel like Evans was trying to use telepathy to communicate with me his plan to get rid of this other child. Scary. Thankfully, he let it go and there was no major incident. Deaner and I have taken Evans to several of these bouncy places in the past and I have to say that he really could not have cared less about them. I think it might have had something to do with the not being able to walk issue we were having a few short months ago. When we arrived at the birthday party I was not particularly surprised to see this amount of enthusiasm from E. Like perhaps he might just sit angelically and watch the other children tearing the place to shreds. Thankfully after a bit of observation he threw caution to the wind and let loose.He attempted to walk in the bounce house using only his tongue for balance.He watched in awe as his friend Henry showed off his fancy moves (not the same kind of fancy that the girl in the red dress on The Bachelor displayed last week).However he did not try and imitate them considering he witnessed Henry's ultimate fate.Since this was the other shot that I happened to capture of Henry, I can sort of understand where Evans' hesitation came from.Henry was not afraid to take a nose dive (or two). Eventually, in the end, the bounce house got the best of Evans as well and brought out some maniacal and hysterical behavior.You could argue that this last one borders on psychotic. All and all I think that I can safely say that Evans had a great time at Thomas's birthday party and that he can finally enjoy places like Monkey Joe's.I'm afraid that if he and Henry played any harder Evans' cheeks would have caught fire and Henry would have become dehydrated due to profuse sweating from the head. I'd just like to say happy 3rd birthday COUSIN Thomas and thanks for inviting us, AUNT Jennifer! :)