rent-a-child

early on in our relationship, al was overwhelmed by the love of ... my nieces and nephews. it was actually a pretty good litmus test as to whether he was a keeper ... kids can be good at sniffing out character.

in fact, i think the first notable instance was the first night he stayed over at my cousin's place - i woke up in the morning and went downstairs to the guest room to find him hanging with syd. now the kids are all great: friendly, affectionate, outgoing, and generally just used to being around a lot of people - but of the 3, syd is the hardest to crack. sam and i-man, they're kind of the same ... sam is super friendly and i-man is so doggone lovable and dispenses hugs indiscriminately. but syd - she's much more picky about who she warms up to, and she has a definite circle of ins and outs.

so the guest room downstairs has a tv mounted in the corner, and that's where the kids generally watch their saturday morning cartoons. apparently that day syd went in to find someone sleeping in that bed. al rolled over and sees her in front of him and says good morning. she then proceeds to run over and give him a big hug saying "i missed you!"

according to him, he melted. (haha. when he told me i was like...dude, did you just say "i melted??")

i love the kids and the kids love me ... but as time went on i would find that they loved him more. seriously, chopped liver over here. one time i decided to put it to the test. we came in the door at the same time, and i-man was in the computer room. i made sure to separate myself from al, maybe a few feet apart, and sure enough, when issac came running over to hug hello, he made a beeline straight to alan.

as time went on, we grew to have lots of good times with the kids, frequently getting mistaken for their parents. i'd almost always get smiles when taking issac grocery shopping and having ridiculous conversations with him, that people would comment on multiple occasions "your son is so cute!" and then i'd reply "thanks, he's not mine!"

one night, after some particularly cute incident, we started joking around that the chongs should start a rent-a-child program for couples who are having cold feet about having kids. the idea being that their kids are so endearing that you could take the most committment phobe curmudgeonly dude - and he'd buck up and start giving hugs and pony rides.

so here we are, the poster parents for the program:



as family, i guess you could say we get free rentals. or, uh, i guess you can call it free babysitting for the parents. =)