There I was in bed with two hot babes, my 23 month old granddaughter, Ashley and her grandmother Christine, better known as "Gama."

It was the first time Ashley Elizabeth did a sleepover at the Aun household in St. Cloud, Florida, and it was for a very good reason… the birth of her baby sister, Ava Emily, a 7 pound 4 ounce bundle of joy.

Ashley is a trip. She's clearly the reason why we go through the pain of having children… to get some grandchildren.

Ashley doesn't sleep like adults. To begin with, she sleeps upside down. All night long, I'm getting punted in the face by this precious little foot. I guess she enjoyed rubbing her foot up against my beard.

Occasionally, she would do a turnaround and sit up, going into a rendition of her A-B-C's. After a dozen rounds of A-B-C, I could tell she was fading as she skipped from e-f-g to x-y-z. She ends every song by clapping her hands and yelling "yeah." No clapping on the final round, just snoring.

Ava Emily is a carbon copy of her big sister Ashley Elizabeth. If you put their birth pictures together, they'd look like twins. Ashley's father, Cory, is an identical twin himself, so Ashley has been pretty confused since she arrived on earth a couple of years ago, referring occasionally to her Uncle Jason as daddy. Poor kid is going to have identity issues at this pace.

When Ashley decided she had enough singing, she would reach over and pull on my ears, which is the largest item protruding from my head. She'd pull the ear over and grab my nose, the next largest thing. Now she has a good handle on me.

She calls me Jiddo, pronounced Jiddy, an Arabic word for grandfather. I call her my Hyetti, a Lebanese word for "my life or my heart," translated- she is the breath of my life and my heart.

"Jiddo, are you awake?" she asks pulling my ear and grabbing my nose. "I'm awake now Ashley. What do you need Hyetti?" Not knowing how to respond, she reached over and patted my on the cheek and said "night-night Jiddo."

This exercise repeated itself several times during the night, rendering me with the most pleasant night of sleeplessness in my life. What a trip to have that precious gift with me for several nights.

Still, I'm distant second to her most favorite person outside of her own household, her grandmother, Christine, affectionately known as "Gama." We're having some issues with the "r" in her vocabulary. Gama works fine.

Gama rules! No question about that. Still, that "Jiddo" geezer is fairly cool. She loves playing a game we have affectionately named "kiss first." I get down on the floor, which is no easy task for a 58-year old buzzard. I lay on the floor and she puts a Kleenex over my face. On the count of one… two… three… I blow the Kleenex in the air and she catches it.

I'm a salesman by trade, so I figure I need to do some negotiating. I told her I couldn't blow the Kleenex unless I got a kiss first, thus the name of the game. So she stands behind my head, leans down holding on to each of my facial cheeks and plants a big wet one on my lips. It's not a peck, mind you, but a mashing of lips on lips. Finally, when my hands go flailing into the air, she caps off the kiss with a huge smack and places the Kleenex over my face… and I blow. Imagine in your mind's eye a whale spewing water in the Pacific.

Ashley is all chick; make no mistake about it. However, she fell in love with Uncle Gutt's truck. Gutt is the nickname of my third son, Christopher, a nurse by profession. Ashley loves trucks and tractors. So I guess she'll be a babe in a pickup when she earns her license in another 14 years. She's done a good job of becoming a surrogate mother to little Ava Emily.

What a treasure chest of love I have in my life. Aren't you jealous?