Tag: kids

I’ll Meet You at the Station

~ Judy ~ 5 Comments
ARRIVING ON PLATFORM NO. 5

Thank God, Cosette’s birthday finally arrived. She turned five last week. For the last three months, I’ve received almost daily phone calls reminding me of her pressing need for more Thomas the Train engines, available in Aisle 2 at Target and if I wanted she would give me directions to the store.

The list was endless. Gordon, Henry, Rocky, James, Emily, Toby, Percy, Annie and Clarabel, Cranky the Crane, Donald and Douglas… “Have you got your pen, Grandma? I’ll wait.”

Of course, her birthday was all about Thomas. The cake, the plates, the decorations, the games. Somehow she ended up inviting every single child in her preschool. I think about 22 showed up; counting the tag-along siblings and cousins, there must have been over 30 kids. They all got little engineer hats and bandanas and, in an effort to maintain order, were divided into groups in the backyard and chugged from “station” to “station” by energetic helpers.

I was assigned to the face-painting station. I don’t ask for these jobs. They just turn up, along with the necessary tools and false encouragement. The boys all chose pictures of snakes and Spider-Man; the girls went for balloons, flowers and Hello Kitty. Unfortunately, the paints were more like crayons, which worked fine when they were sharp but quickly wore down and/or broke, so by the end, the snake was mostly just a green squiggle and Hello Kitty a white blob with a pink bow. They’re preschoolers. They didn’t care.

As for the other grandkids…
Toddler Bret bumped his head that morning and refused to get out of the armchair until he had received an acceptable amount of sympathy. He wouldn’t wear a hat or a bandana and had to adjust to the fact that, yes, there were a lot of presents and none of them were for him. He isn’t all that flexible.

Baby Lee didn’t get a hat or a bandana and slept through almost everything.

Christian helped the “little kids” at the makeshift obstacle course. He has turned into a sensitive, kind, helpful boy and I have no idea when it happened. His friend Gus was at the party too. I figured Gus was somebody’s big brother, but there’s no way to keep this stuff straight.

Grace was my assistant at the face-painting table, where she held the colors and the mirror and offered general instruction and encouragement to the clients.

Maria took a nap. She went to a football game the night before, followed by an all-night lock-in party at school marked by the usual controlled mayhem and little sleep. So now we’ve come to that.

We had a family birthday party after all the tots left, with more food, more cake, more presents. So basically just a full day of fun. I drove home and fell in bed about eight o’clock.

You’d think Cosette would have had enough locomotion for a while. She phoned me on Monday. Toddler Bret hadn’t given her a present yet, she said, so maybe I should take him to Target, as she was missing Cranky the Crane. I told her I’d think about it. She called me on Tuesday. Christmas is coming and she wanted to let me know: she doesn’t have Cranky, Spencer, Elizabeth, the Troublesome Trucks, Bertie the Bus, Bash and Dash, Harold and… “Are you writing this down, Grandma?”

BRING YOUR VISA CARD.

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Saturday With Grace

~ Judy ~ 2 Comments
THE SKY OVER PARKER’S LAKE – BY GRACE, AGE 7

My granddaughter Grace, who just turned seven, came over last Saturday to visit and spend the night. Gracie is sort of quiet and reserved, so it isn’t entirely clear how she ended up in the family. Even when she’s feeling giggly, it’s a subdued kind of giggly. No need to make a spectacle of yourself. There are plenty of others around to do that.

Grace and I did several subdued, tasteful things together. She designed a number of lovely outfits on the computer and printed them out. We played Cootie and she beat me twice, fair and square. She’s a Cootie master. We went out to eat and she found every word in the Wordfind on her placemat. (She’s only going into first grade but already can read words like marshmallow.) We mowed the grass and watered the pots.

I showed Grace my blog and asked her if she would like to write something. She said she would. Here it is.

I LOVE MY GRAMMA BECAUSE SHE LOVES ME SO MUCH SHE WILL LOVE ME NO ,MATTER WHAT.
MY NAME IS GRACE. MY BEST FREIEND IS GRACE
H. WE PLAY GAMS, TO GETHER.
ME AND MY GRAMMA ARE GOING TO TAK PICTURES OF NATURE.

Oh yes, we also drove to a little nearby lake and walked around, and Grace took lots of pictures, 134 to be exact. Here are some pictures she took of clouds. Because why not.

At the end of the day, Gracie and I blew up the airbed in the living room and watched a movie. And when the movie was over we went to sleep, because we were already in our bed!

Life is hard a fair amount of the time. We get sad and tired and overworked. Sometimes it seems like things will never sort themselves out, and we will never have a happy or restful thought again. Then it is good to have a grandchild like Grace around.

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You Can Call Him Lee

~ Judy ~ 3 Comments
3 DAYS OLD AND RESIGNED TO BEING OUT

You can call him Lee because that’s his name. He finally arrived, a big, chubby baby who couldn’t make up his mind whether to stay in or come out, sending his mother back and forth to the hospital like a wind-up doll and distressing the entire family for the past two weeks. I personally am exhausted.

As it happened, when the moment came, I ended up driving to the hospital with Cosette, just as she predicted several weeks ago. I don’t know how she knows these things. The neighbor guy came over to sit with Toddler Bret, who was already in bed. I was tired and anxious, of course, trying to find the hospital with a four-year-old who never stops chattering in the backseat. “That’s 36, Grandma, you go that way. That’s 3-5-W. There’s 280, Grandma, take that.” For the love of God, I thought, give me a break, Cosette!

Both siblings were beside themselves with excitement at bringing the baby home. He didn’t care. But then he probably doesn’t know they see him as a big, almost lifelike toy. Cosette has been honing her mothering skills for months.

He’s a good-natured baby, fortunately, and cute as a button. Doesn’t cry much. He’s already survived being poked in the eye by his brother. No tears but it did make him screw up his face. This is good. He should get used to it.

Welcome to the family, baby Lee. We love you very much.

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Pages from Grandma’s Diaries: Bret Jr., Part 2

~ Judy ~ Leave a comment
NOW I AM BIG.

Toddler Bret had his second birthday this week. I think I can still call him Toddler Bret since he just entered the Twos, as evidenced by the minor meltdown at his birthday party yesterday. “Just leave him alone and he’ll stop,” his sister said. Which proved to be the case after everyone – grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins – studiously avoided looking at him and certainly made no attempt to engage him in speech.

What really brought him around was his mother’s suggestion that he open his gifts a little early. It was an amazing turnaround. His favorite present was a little remote-controlled dog from his 93-year-old great-grandma. It didn’t matter how many times the dog walked off the end of the coffee table, he found it hilarious every time.

He liked everything else after that… the Happy Birthday song and the cake and the candles, which he blew out all by himself because he’s a big boy now. Soon he will be a big brother to someone. We’ll see how that goes. Meanwhile, here’s a few thoughts from the last two years.

December 31, 2009
The most exciting news I got over the holidays is that grandchild No. 5 is on the way. Gina and Bret like to surprise me with this kind of thing. When she was pregnant with Cosette, they gave me a bunch of photos to look at, including one of the dog next to a sign that said, “I’m going to be a big sister.” I thought they were getting another dog, which seemed odd, but not for them.

You’d think they’d learn to give it to me straight, but no. This time they gave me a jar of spaghetti sauce for Christmas. I thought maybe it was homemade. It wasn’t. Then I thought, “What a stupid gift.” Finally, someone yelled, “She’s prego!” There are no Hallmark moments in our family.

September 8, 2010
I babysat for Cosette and Baby Bret Sunday night while their parents went to Stillwater for a good night’s rest. It’s hard to make it through the night at their house, mainly because Baby Bret has some baby reflux thing going on, which is seldom bad enough to wake him up but enough so he complains in his sleep.

The complaints are hard to describe, but they’re enough to set off the super-sensitive baby monitor sitting on the nightstand next to your head. As a result, you’re in his room roughly every half-hour, because maybe he really is awake and needs something. You never know and you never will until you get up and check. I sort of gave up on sleeping after a while, which is why I was washing dishes at 3:30 in the morning.

December 30, 2010
I watched Cosette and Baby Bret last night. He’s a pretty easygoing baby, especially if you carry him around without stopping. I guess he’s hungry a lot, because I’ve never known a baby so determined to suck your face. Which is hard to avoid when you are, as I say, carrying him around nonstop. As soon as his little face gets next to yours, he’s sucking your cheek or your chin or your eye socket. It feels weird. It is weird.

Also, he never stops talking. I call it talking because I don’t know what it is. It’s loud and comes from down in his throat somewhere. Along with Cosette’s never-ending dialogue, it’s noisy at their house. I would be very surprised if that changed in the new year.

January 28, 2011
I’m babysitting for six-month-old Baby Bret tonight while the rest of the family goes ice skating. Haven’t seen him for a while, but I imagine he’s as chubby as ever, and since he obviously can’t propel himself anywhere, I’ll have to lug him around. It isn’t going to help my back, which is still achy from last Saturday night when I slept with ten-year-old Maria, who will sleep smack dab in the middle of the mattress and good luck trying to move her.

He’s a cheerful little guy though, Baby Bret that is, as long as you keep him fed. Which I do whether it’s feeding time or not. My job, I believe, is to keep them happy by whatever means necessary and let their parents deal with it later. It is free babysitting after all, by someone who really loves your kid and doesn’t care what time you come home. Not surprisingly, parents find this very appealing. I figure they can deal with a kid who’s a little off his schedule.

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Dumb Wildlife

~ Judy ~ 2 Comments

For the third day in a row I’ve had to pull a pile of twigs out of my newspaper box. Some clueless but determined bird fills it up about as quickly as I can empty it. While I don’t mind a persistent bird as much as persistent hornets, who continue to try to establish a hive in the eaves over the kitchen window despite the fact that I keep blasting it off with the hose, obviously I cannot allow wildlife to nest in the newspaper box. Even if I had the carrier throw the paper in the driveway until the baby birds had hatched and flown away, the mailbox is part of the whole setup, and I can’t have some territorial mother bird dive-bombing the mail carrier. I am not going to the post office to pick up my mail just because a stupid bird can’t figure things out.

One fall some Swifts built a nest in my chimney. They made a racket up there and, convinced it was a raccoon, I sent up an exterminator, only to find out that Swifts are protected and cannot be removed from your chimney no matter how much they annoy you. You just have to put up with it until the whole family picks up and flies away. Forget about having a fire.

I don’t know why the creatures of this earth want to torment me. There was a turtle in the garage last week. It had parked itself under the car and I was afraid to back out, because the last thing I need to come home to is a dead turtle. I think it’s the same one that’s been hanging around since Mother’s Day, when daughter Jessica spotted it in the driveway and made her boyfriend John reluctantly put it in a bucket and then transfer it into a plastic kiddy pool to show the grandkids; except that it looked so pathetic trying to scramble up the sides of the pool that they let it go and it crawled off into the raspberry bushes to hide, which was ridiculous because any one of my grandchildren could have been the inspiration for Lord of the Flies. Well, not Grace.

Since then I have seen the turtle plowing through the grass, parked on the front walk and lurking in the rock garden. Yesterday it was back in the raspberry bushes. At least I think it’s the same one. They all look the same, green and neurotic. Stalked by a turtle, besieged by things that fly. No wonder I’m a mess.

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Pages from Grandma’s Diaries: Bret Jr., Part 1

~ Judy ~ 2 Comments

All kinds of things change when you’re the fifth grandchild. For one thing, Grandma doesn’t have as many pictures of you to pick from when she needs one. For another, you have to be more assertive than numbers 1 to 4 to get any attention at all. Luckily, this is not a problem for Toddler Bret.

I call him Toddler Bret because he’ll be two in July and I can’t call him Baby Bret anymore. His sister said so. As I believe I mentioned, when his parents chose to make him a Junior, they failed to come up with a nickname, leaving everyone to muck along with two Brets in the family. I’m starting to wonder what Toddler Bret makes of it himself. Conversation at the dinner table, for instance.

“How was your day, Bret?”
“Bret, eat your apples.”
“Would you pass the mashed potatoes, Bret?”
“Bret, do you want more milk?”
“Ursa really needs a bath, Bret.”
“Bret, no feeding Ursa from the table.”

I picture him throwing up his little hands in despair. “What in the name of Fisher-Price does the woman want of me??”

Or maybe not. His days are full. He’s like a little locomotive, legs pumping, running here, running there. He has wants. He has needs. He has a lot to think about: “What’s going on? Wait for me, Cosette! I want to do that. Run, run, run! Where’s Ursa? Get the ball, Ursa! Where’s Mom? It’s time to jump off something! I can dance like the Wiggles. Mom, I need a hug. I want to go outside now. Where’s Cosette? What’s Cosette doing? I can do that!”

And that’s pretty much how it goes, all day long. His sister is commander in chief, i.e., whatever she does, he does. WHATEVER she does. Cosette jumps off the bed, Bret jumps off the bed. Cosette sticks out her tongue, Bret sticks out his tongue. Cosette marches down the driveway carrying a stick, Bret marches down the driveway carrying a stick. Cosette picks a flower and throws it in the bushes, Bret picks a flower and throws it in the bushes. Well, you get the picture.

Cosette likes to call me on the phone and let me know what’s going on at their house. Lately she’s been putting me on the speakerphone, because Toddler Bret has things he wants to say too. Well, yell. “Ball! Dog! Ma! Down!” God knows what he’s saying. It doesn’t matter, he just wants to be acknowledged.

Of course, very soon now he won’t be the youngest grandchild anymore, but number 5 of 6. It’s hard to say how that’s going to go over. As I said, he has wants, he has needs. On the other hand, he could end up commander in chief.

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Too Much Ketchup

~ Judy ~ 1 Comment
SURROUNDED BY WOMEN

Last week was interesting. Daughter Jill and family stayed with me for four days while the painter and carpenter were busy at their house. The invasion discombobulated me a little. I kept forgetting to take my calcium tablet before bed. Also, I forgot what I had in the refrigerator because I’m not used to seeing that much food in there. Mysterious food. The kind I never buy.

But other than that, things went fairly smoothly. The grandkids were on their best behavior. I’m sure there were threats along the way, but I don’t need to know about them. One evening it was just them and me around the dinner table, when the conversation, as it will, drifted to Christian’s food allergies, a subject on which every female in his family is an expert. It began when he was squeezing ketchup onto his plate and, as I recall, went something like this…

Maria: That’s too much. You aren’t supposed to have that much ketchup.
Christian [still squeezing]: Leave me alone, Maria. I can have ketchup.
Grace: He can have ketchup.
Maria: [To Christian] Stop that. Mom said you aren’t supposed to have that much.
[To me] Mom doesn’t let him have that much ketchup.
Grace: He can have ketchup. Ketchup isn’t in the nut family.
Maria: Ketchup is in the tomato family. He can’t have that much.
Christian: I keep telling Mom I don’t have food allergies, but she doesn’t believe me!
Maria: [To Christian] Ketchup is in the tomato family. Remember when you had that spaghetti sauce? Your eye got like THIS.
[To me] Mom doesn’t let him have that much ketchup.
Christian: Ketchup isn’t in the nut family.
Maria: [Heavy sigh accompanied by eye rolling]
Grace: Chili is in the nut family.

Too many nuts in the family, if you ask me.

Pages from Grandma’s Diaries: Christian, part 2

~ Judy ~ 2 Comments

Nov. 21, 2008
Called daughter Jill last night to talk about the upcoming weekend. As usual, it was a multitasking nightmare on her end – i.e., talking to me and making turkey sandwiches while getting the kids to come to the table, stay at the table, and not fight over the condiments. While his sisters were content with turkey, Christian, of course, wouldn’t have it. Said he’d make himself a grape sandwich instead. Jill, who goes with the flow now, said fine but he’d have to wash the grapes first. This momentarily stunned him, as in his four years on earth no one has ever given him permission to wash food before. But he did wash the grapes (in the bathroom sink), cut them up, put them on bread and maybe even ate it, who knows. He’d do it.

Nov. 4, 2009
All the grandkids, ages 2 to 9, went trick-or-treating on Saturday (an Indian, a Superhero, Snow White and a China doll). Everyone remembered their manners and said thank you when they were supposed to, until they got to the house where a man answered the door holding a big bowl of vegetables while his wife stood behind him with a camera. “What would you like?” he asked the kids. “An onion, a carrot or some broccoli?” The three little girls were speechless. Christian looked at the vegetables, turned around and said, “I’m outta here.”

Jan. 20, 2010
If you ever start to think you’re indispensable, get yourself a grandchild. I haven’t seen the kids for a while and was missing them a little, so I called over there yesterday and Jill put Christian on the phone.
“Hi, Christian,” I said. “I miss you!”
“Oh, Grandma,” he said, “I miss you too. Here Maria, talk to Grandma.”

March 26, 2010
My son-in-law Bret couldn’t come over to hunt mice last weekend, so I couldn’t go down the basement to wash clothes. Five-year-old Christian spent the night on Saturday, but he’s a little young to hunt and I wouldn’t want to scar him psychologically. I may have to bite the bullet and go down there soon. Or I may just buy more socks.

You’d think Christian would want to go to a movie or McDonald’s or the Science Museum once in a while, but all he ever wants to do is play. With me. Even though I’m no good at it. Even though I approach play with great reluctance and the sure knowledge that I’m going to be hurt. I will be hurt, because all toys fight. Not just Spider-Man and the robots but the toy animals and the K’Nex and the videotapes and lumps of Play-Doh. Dixie Cups make an excellent army – just line them up and smash them flat. I think what he likes is that I’m always willing to be the roundly defeated loser. You can’t get that with a lot of playmates.

January ad nauseum

~ Judy ~ Leave a comment
READY FOR SOME WINTER FUN

Why, yes, it is snowing again. I’m ignoring it.

July 24, 2009 – The Garage Sale, Part 2

The garage sale progresses as well as you’d expect, only worse. The mountain in the garage is rapidly encroaching on my parking space and the kids keep dropping things off. I can’t open the car door all the way and have to step on bed rails to get out.

Gina, hubby and toddler spent last weekend at my house so she could sort through her stuff. She didn’t finish, and if she finds one more thing she wants to take home with her, divorce is imminent.

Jill brought several things over to sell but never looked at her pile of belongings in the basement.

Jessica found a number of household items her paternal grandmother gave her, but we can’t put them on the garage sale in case they turn out to be valuable.

Also, I’m getting some pushback on selling the formals. One daughter might want to dress up as a lounge singer for Halloween. Another thinks she may again fit into that dress she wore to the 1993 Homecoming Dance (once the baby weight is gone).

More garage sale treasures found:
sweater stone
inflatable palm tree
cowboy hat cleaner
5 Christmas wreaths

Meanwhile, I have several closets and drawers to go through. I overdid it last weekend – now I have a sore back and two tennis elbows, and I figure the chiropractor’s bill will probably eat up any garage sale profits.

Coming up: The Garage Sale, parts 3 to 6