Family Visit 2016: State of the Niblings

[muckefuck]

By now, my sister has done the first-weekend-in-August Chicago trip enough times that's she decided to make it A Thing and getting the planning done in advance. It's pretty amusing to look back at previous visits and compare how much things have changed. Late on Saturday, my sister confided in me how she found it slightly unsettling to look at her oldest "and start the see the adult he will be". For me, it's simply amusing--and somewhat exciting. I had misgivings about taking the boys to a Chinese restaurant given their insane levels of finickiness, but not only did AWI love almost everything we ordered he complained about not getting to order the seabass. Oh my goddess, kid, we are going to have so much fun going out when you come back next summer.

So here's a quick one-by-one rundown on the current State of the Niblings:

• AWI: A geek in my own image. Watches Dr Who religiously? Check. Reading LotR? Check. Wears bowties? Check. Bores you with chatter about his fantasy game world? Check. But I think his most charming character trait is his affection toward his brothers, particularly the youngest. He seems to genuinely enjoy babysitting. (Apparently he's been able to make a little income from it, though still not enough to afford a cellphone.)
• ECI: Still less aloof than he seems. Yeah, he spent the most time looking at a tiny screen, but he also gave me the longest hug when he left. He's smarter and more socially-aware than his older brother, but also more devious. He's also a budding scientist: For him, a cup of ice on a hot day is an invitation to experimentation. (DeGrasse Tyson would be thrilled with the amount of encouragement he seems to be getting on that score.) I'm happy to see that he still enjoys doing some little-kid stuff like riding a carousel or telling really dumb jokes, because I don't expect that to survive contact with high school.
• IMI: For years, I thought of him as the Tantrum Child, but he seems finally to have settled down. Now he's the Enigma Child, who is the most likely to be off in a world of his own devising that he only occasionally verbalises about enough to give you a brief glimpse. Maybe I'm warming to him at last?
• OGI: Not gonna lie--still my favourite. But with IMI becoming more placid, his whininess and fussiness stands out more. He was the only child who refused to eat anything set in front of him at Sun Wah (until the fortune cookies arrived) and he almost became the source of an I'll-Turn-This-Car-Around moment at the zoo yesterday. But he let me take him down to see the Secret Village in the basement of the home and loved the idea of bringing along his brothers one-at-a-time. (I hadn't the heart to tell him we probably wouldn't be back.) And Saturday night, he asked me to lie down next to him so he could fall asleep. (Which he did in like five minutes; of course, just as I was about to extract myself, his brother chose that moment to put down his book and rest his head on my chest. Oh well; nothing I haven't been through before with the cat.)
• JHI: Still preverbal, which I know has my sister concerned, but what's he really got to say at this age anyway? He's also very interactive, having not discovered screens yet. In order to tire him out before the return trip on Sunday, I spent some time helping him to stalk pigeons. He was being a mama's boy much of the time, but not so much that he didn't let me hold him up to view gorillas. He also hasn't found out yet that he's allowed to dislike 99% of all food in the world, which makes him a close second to AWI when it comes to new dining experiences.

JHI got a little screechy at the restaurant, but that's okay because "at Sun Wah, no one can hear you scream". ECI discovered that duck "is just chicken" and ECI and IMI found fascinating things to do with chopsticks. AWI was reluctant to eat the fish when he realised it still had his spine, but a little quick fileting on my part and he was good.

Not sure they'll have much in the way of new memories of their Uncle monshu from this visit, which is a shame since it means they might not end up with many at all. Despite having only one therapy session on Saturday, he tired quickly and they were distracted by cushions and Pokémon. Maybe they'll remember more of their Uncle Nuphy, who was able to join the trip to the MSI which I decided was a longer haul than I was up on my only day for sleeping in.