You know the typical story of the excited grandparent that buys their 5-month-old grandchild a full-size baseball glove?
Yeah, that’s us. We are now decidedly in that category.
Bob recently had a delightful conversation with our eldest granddaughter, soon to turn the ripe old age of four. Her mom is just so amazingly great about taking her to museums and using so many available resources for their Precious One’s brain development! And, since Grandpa teaches biology at our local college, naturally a little course on “cells” has been on the educational menu of late.
Precious One has decided that microscopes are all the rage right now. So, in an effort to take advantage of this current (and momentary) interest, I thought it prudent to send her a toy representation. Of course, the one I picked out was W-A-Y too juvenile…according to the Professor. Continue reading “Grandparenting 101.”
Bob and I were incredibly fortunate to spend this past Christmas with our oldest granddaughter and her family at their beautiful new home in Los Angeles. Let me clarify: our oldest granddaughter is 2-years-old and her family is our oldest child and her husband. Now, Bob and I have memories of when this precious bundle was born, when she started to walk, and one of my favorite life events is rocking her as she fell asleep in my lap even just this past summer.
That’s when she had just turned two, but even then the storm was beginning to brew.
And this past holiday season, it was the southern California equivalent of a nor’easter. Of course, being the parents of three children of my own, this comes as no real surprise. As much as I know her parents love and Continue reading “And I quote, “NO!””
No, as the title might suggest, I haven’t been gone in some foreign country for two years.
At this writing, Bob and I just returned home from a week-long extended family vacation in Maine where we all stayed in a huge old house (older than my own, fancy that, and in many ways, reminiscent of…) The week prior we were superlatively blessed to have our two-year-old granddaughter and her mommy (our eldest) with us before the four of us flew out to join our son-in-law and the rest of the crew.
Here’s what greeted me upon returning home from the airport this morning at 1:30AM…
Some of the aftermath…A poignantly empty booster seat…
It’s been about 30 years since I’ve had a toddler. I believe that one really doesn’t appreciate parents adequately until you have children of your own. Now, I’m thinking the same about the grandparenting experience, so here goes.
Open letter to my mom (now a great-grandparent several times over!):
Dear Mom,
Whenever we came to visit those, oh-so-many times, did you ever find yourself—
—cutting fresh peaches into small pieces for your own cereal?
—arguing with the Pack-n-Play about fitting back into the carrying case? (oh wait, you didn’t HAVE the convenience of Pack-n-Plays back then…!)
—Cleaning the oatmeal (or worse, as I remember…) from your Sunday outfit before church?
—locating a forgotten bag of (used) diapers upstairs after the house had been closed up for a week?
And did you start noticing how many horribly dangerous plastic bags there are in the world?? Sheesh, they’re EVERYWHERE!
Did you ever wonder if there is a heavenly equivalent to rocking your granddaughter to sleep on a patio with cool breezes gently blowing? (Or maybe that’s just a little piece of heaven that God allows for us to have down here.)
Hey, Mom, I continue to appreciate why you loved Erma Bombeck so much, with pearls of wisdom like,
“When a child is locked in the bathroom with water running and he says he’s doing nothing but the dog is barking, call 911”, and,
“Onion rings in the car cushions do not improve with time.”
Sound asleep in the carseat that takes an engineering degree to figure out how to use.
I remember your wisdom as to why the knees always wore out in my long trousers, and now, thirty years later, how my knees just feel, well, worn out.
But one thing I know never wore out was, and continues to be, your prayers for us, a gift far too precious for adequate expressions of gratitude!
Mom, it’s not technically Mothers’ Day, but we would have no days at all without you. Thank you for teaching me to be a mother, and now teaching me how to be a grandmother.
I think it’s time to start ordering my own library of Bombeck classics. In fact, it’s on my “to-do” list for today, along with laundry, and picking up the dog from the vet, and cleaning the car…
Bob is smitten.
(nah, just wait until the fragrance makes itself known a little more, right?)
You know the typical story of the excited grandparent that buys their 5-month-old grandchild a full-size baseball glove?
Bob and I were incredibly fortunate to spend this past Christmas with our oldest granddaughter and her family at their beautiful new home in Los Angeles. Let me clarify: our oldest granddaughter is 2-years-old and her family is our oldest child and her husband. Now, Bob and I have memories of when this precious bundle was born, when she started to walk, and one of my favorite life events is rocking her as she fell asleep in my lap even just this past summer.
No, as the title might suggest, I haven’t been gone in some foreign country for two years.
INSPIRATION with an ATTITUDE 