**Guest Post** Tara from A Serendipitious Life

 Tara from A Serendipitous Life is Guest Blogging for me today! Tara's blog was one of the first I discovered, and I absolutely love it! She is an amazing amount of fun, extremely sweet, and always ready to give sound advice, encouragement, and love! 
I am so excited she has decided to share this little piece of her life with us...

When Annie offered up her blog for guest posters, I jumped at the chance but had no idea what I could write about! However, she mentioned a few things she would love to hear about and one was people's nieces and/or nephews, so I jumped at the chance to write about my own...because I actually haven't written about them in my blog yet!

I still remember when I got the call from my sister, telling me that I was going to be an aunt. I was 23 and she was only 18, so you can imagine that my first niece wasn't exactly planned. About eight months later, though, my entire family was up at the crack of dawn and gathered in a hospital room, anxiously awaiting my sister and our brand new niece/granddaughter to return from her cesarean section. And she was perfect, literally perfect, like a tiny porcelain doll.

You see, I've never been much of a "kid person". To be completely honest I still don't think I want children of my own, and no, having a niece and a nephew hasn't changed my mind either way. Most of the time I just feel awkward around children - but not around my niece Savannah and even less so around my nephew Spencer, who came along almost exactly three years after his older sister and is quite possibly the happiest, sweetest little boy in the world. Watching my niece and nephew "grow up" has completely proven that boys are far, far easier than girls. They may be active...they may get into things...but I swear, they cry less, sleep more, and eat better!

The thing about nieces and nephews is that you get all the joy of children and basically none of the work...which is of course perfect for those like me, who just aren't sure about the whole kids thing. I get to be the "cool aunt" who introduces them to things like great books, weird foods, and playing the guitar.

Nowadays, Savannah is four and a half and Spencer is one and a half, and at the beginning of this year I found out that my other sister was expecting! Just last week I got the "what I'm having" call...another niece for yours truly! And I'm a little older now, a little wiser, so maybe--just maybe--I'll actually offer to babysit this one sometimes ;)