I have two weeks of vacation to blog about and post photos from. There’re also a few things since then that I’d considered blogging about. However, the wave of real life crashed over me and took me under for a moment. I’m not fully in control, yet, but I need to start treading to keep my BLOG from being abandoned by my readers. =)

This week has been largely about my cousin Olivia’s two young daughters, Nikki (8) and Erin (6). Having faced tremendous adversity this weekend, the two girls march bravely forward with their lives, preparing for the long painful battle only just beginning for them. I haven’t been very close to them before now, but having come running this weekend when our family unified to support the girls, I can’t see myself being distant from them again. Nikki carries the weight of the world on her shoulders; she is the protector of her mother and younger sister, mediary between father and family, and she raises her family members as much as they raise her. I forget sometimes that she’s just a kid when I’m talking with her, but when I remember, I wish I could give her a childhood back. Erin is vivacious, clever, and full of questions. So far I’ve answered all of them, hoping she never loses her curiosity or her desire for learning.

I think both are doing very well, considering…

Nikki has a birthday next week, and a pre-planned birthday party on Saturday. Their mother, my cousin Olivia, asked for help. Only an exigent circumstance could force me to turn that down, so the girls jumped up and down and cheered as I started making plans with their mother. Twenty little girls will be gathered in a princess suite at Disneyland Hotel on Saturday afternoon, so we’re doing cookie decorating, bracelet making, and a beauty salon theme. I thought I’d put my high school Key Club volunteer experience working the facepainting booth at a local fair to use; Olivia will do hair; another person will do manicures. The girls will rotate station to station until they’re prettied up to explore Downtown Disney, an afternoon on the town. Olivia bought a cream facepainting kit yesterday, which I was unfamiliar with having used only the watercolor palette type with a paintbrush (I painted SO MANY Ninja Turtles that year on little boy cheeks), so I went over after work yesterday to experiment.

This was my first one, a flower and bee on Erin’s teeny hand.

I thought it looked a little awkward, and I wasn’t used to the paint consistency. I used Q-tips to apply colors, and the cotton tips fell apart on me. Both girls were thankfully easily impressed.
My second attempt, Erin asked for a Panda. It’s her favorite animal, so much so that she’d once requested her mother change her (Erin’s) legal Chinese name to Panda Bear.

Ain’t she adorable?

“Thank you for sitting so still,” I told her.
“You’re welcome!” returned the little sprite.

Nikki is a baby seal fiend. I tried my best, but again, wasn’t happy with the result. I just couldn’t get the precision I wanted applying sticky globs of paint with a big Q-tip on a small hand. Nikki was more than forgiving; she gasped, crooned about how cuuuute the seal is, jumped up and down, declared aloud, “I am the LUCKIEST girl in the WHOLE WORLD!” I added a ribbon of blue for water, and applied glitter over the water.

Nikki asked for a flower on her other hand, and now that I was more comfortable with the paints, I got a little more daring, using up her entire forearm for a design.

“I wish this were a tattoo so this never comes off,” Nikki declared.
“No no no,” I laughed, “You do NOT want a tattoo.”
“I want THIS one,” she insisted, looking at the white seal. =P

The girls’ father is on a business trip in China, so I emailed these photos to his work account through my cameraphone. Ah, technology.

While I was in the kitchen getting ready to leave, I overheard Nikki ask her mom, “Can I not take a shower tonight? I wanna show my friends this in school tomorrow.”
Her mother offered mockingly, “Want me to tie plastic bags over your arms?”
“I don’t wanna shower, either,” the little one piped in.
“I never want to shower again,” the older one said hopefully.
I looked at my cousin apologetically. “Your kids are gonna stop showering, and it’s all my fault.”

After helping Nikki take photos of her arms on her own cameraphone so that she could send picture messages to her friends with cell phones, the three of them walked me out to my car and I drove the hour home with a smile on my face. Some minutes after I got home, I received a recorded voice message from Nikki on my cell phone (which I don’t even know how to do). It looks like a text message, except when I open it, Nikki’s clear voice says, “I’m sorry Aunt Cindy, I’m just making sure you got home safe.” I texted her back that I did, thanked her for checking up on me. Looks like she’s picked up another person to be guardian angel for.

They’re tears, cheers, joys, and fillets
Dancing on toes, smiling with dimples
That’s how it is, girls will be girls
(best recollection of a poem printed on the cover of my childhood diary)