Remember the movie, It’s all about the Benjamins, baby? Well, these days, it’s all about the Baby, Baby. Someone asked me what I have been up to lately. My response. Aunting. The Aunt has been Aunting. I’ll break that down:

When someone has been killing it at what they are doing… we take that word and add an “ing” to the end. For reference, Urban Dictionary defines Aunting as: The Act(s) of being an aunt, usually in an awesome way.

Last year I shared a post about how I received an extra serving of .... I’ll need a separate forum soon just to express my excitement. I never thought I could share in the joy another kid could bring, next to my son.

Being a single mom was no easy feat although we all tend to make it look easy. In observing my sisters interact with their children I could see similarities in how I cared for my child. I concluded that all mothers, not just single mothers take on a momma bear role with their children, even when they are married as both my sisters are, it’s all about the baby.

Aisha. That’s her name, meaning: ALIVE! She’s my little comfort baby.

I was happy to visit, knowing Alicia and her husband planned a date night and this would be the first time they left Aisha with someone alone. Well, second time next to our mom having been given the first honor.

Giving my sister and her husband this time to hang out and have some freedom while I bonded with Aisha, auntie style was the breath of life I needed. To be entrusted with something so precious was quite the compliment. But imagine being the only guard on duty, protecting Leonardo da Vinci, Salvator Mundi or Mona Lisa in 2022. Aisha and I had a wonderful time watching Christmas Carol videos on Netflix. She kept me alive and young while I was there. Aisha makes it known that she is there just in case you forgot!

After spending those few weeks in NYC during the month of December with my sister Alicia and her baby, I must say the mom has been mommying. Giving close attention to Aisha’s feeding times, reading and educational time, tummy time and play time, from sunup to sundown all while preparing breakfast and dinner throughout the day, nursing Aisha and making sure she stayed on her napping schedule. There were times that I had to tell her, “I got it… Auntie got this…go take a shower, get dressed, wash your hair… take as long as you need” But I truly understand the plight of a mom, a mother. We put ourselves secondary to our children, meeting their needs before we address our own at times.

I felt like an echo of my own mother when she used to tell me the same thing. She would give me money and tell me to get something for myself, but I would spend it on my son. She wound hint around at how I was not giving myself the attention that I once did, but she recognized that it was because I was doing it all for my son.

Isn’t it funny how we all tend to look at babies as they are forming personalities and we determine what attributes they may have inherited from their mother or father before they are even walking…Aisha is her mother’s child, cut straight from the cloth. There was no switch up at birth and I don’t mean physical features and facial aesthetics. She’s active to say the least. She has her mom’s personality all around. She possesses the energy and rambunctiousness that her mom possessed as a toddler. Aisha, like Alicia, is a Curious George. A climber. And she’s quicker than Robert William Munden, Jr. AKA Bob Munden, on the draw. She demonstrated that when she hopped on my laptop and insisted on adding an extra touch to my work assignment. I wonder if the boss will know.

Aisha will be my revenge for the time that I was home watching Alicia once when she was about 5-years old. I happened to look out of the upstairs window of my bedroom and saw that she managed to get out of the house and was steps away from the road. I knew I wouldn’t make it downstairs to get her in time so I banged as hard as I could on the window while screaming her name. The window broke and it caught her attention. She ran back into the house, but I was left with the task of explaining to my mother why the window was broken when she returned home. 

Then, there was the time Alicia went missing when she was 4-years old, but my parents found her in a neighbor’s backyard playing with the horses. Then there was the time that she fell out of a tree and another time when she fell off the top of a car… Oh baby, the baby was babying. I absolutely did not want to be the watcher over my sister when she was younger. There was always going to be an accident that we would need to explain as she stayed into everything.

Altogether, it was an amazing and unforgettable visit. I described Aisha as my comfort baby because jokes aside, when I held her, I could feel a calm over my body even with all her movement. I felt at ease. It’s indescribable how I felt connected at the heart with her and so at peace. It’s breathtaking how babies can do this.