Grand Parenting

One of my favorite bumper stickers is the one that says “If I’d known grandkids were so much fun, I would have had them first,” which is similar to what author Gore Vidal advised: “Never have children, only grandchildren.” Good luck with that.

I’m in a grandparenting state of mind because this past Sunday was my wife’s and my day to care for our 22-month-old granddaughter, aka: the amazing Miss Bailey Brooke. At least once a month, we have the privilege of being with her from pre-dawn until dinner, bath and bedtime. As exhausting as a full day with the “monkey child” can be, we deeply treasure our Bailey days and look forward to her being old enough for sleepovers with Grandma and Grandpa.  

As I sat at our kitchen table last Sunday, watching the little stink butt snarf up her peanut-butter-smothered pancakes (it’s a Chase thing, you wouldn’t understand) and trading goofy looks back and forth across the table at each other, I wondered what it is about having a grandkid that’s so different from parenting your own children at the same age. Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely loved raising our four kids. But what makes time spent with a grandkid such pure fun?

After breakfast, we played “grocery shopping” with a Bailey-sized cart. We went through sheets of colorful stickers, placing them all over her face, hands and arms – then transferring each of the stickers from her to me, then to Grandma, then back to her own silly self. I played my guitar and sang her old Roger Miller songs while she sat high up on the bench at our upright piano – her little fists and fingers pounding out a “melody” on the keys. She built tall towers with plastic blocks and repeatedly tested the patience of our dear old yellow lab by kissing him, laying on top of him and generally pestering him in ways only toddlers can pester. Such a good dog. We colored on sheets of paper. We rolled all over the living room on a big, squishy exercise ball. Then we colored some more. We played with stickers some more. Grandma even made a special batch of her super-secret-recipe homemade girlie-pink play dough – which was then pounded and pulled and smashed and poked and kneaded into all sorts of various creative shapes. We sat at the kitchen window and watched a pair of fat squirrels raiding the bird feeders in the backyard and laughed and yelled at the furry thieves until we were hoarse.

And the next hour we did it all again. And the next. Then, finally, it was nap time. But Bailey wasn’t sleepy, so Grandma and Grandpa didn’t nap. Sigh.

That’s pretty much how our exhaustingly busy day went until it was time to hand little Bailey back over to her home-from-a-long-nursing-shift mommy.

Later, as we collapsed on our couch, my wife and I got to talking about the difference between grandparenting and parenting and she said something exceptionally wise, “As a grandma, I can pick out the very best stuff from my memories of raising our kids – and I can do those things again with my grandkids.” And she does, indeed. Like her treasured storybook times during our painfully-infrequent visits with our other precious grandkids, “Kana,” “Nakoa” and “Anuhea.” (Can you tell they live in Hawaii?) Or making Saturday morning runs to the doughnut shop in our pajamas. 

To me, time spent with grandkids is uniquely special because I know first-hand how fast any given stage in their lives will pass. I remember vividly when my own kids were this young. Then I blinked (and worked and paid bills and stressed about my career and worked some more) and suddenly they were adults. Not fair! I wasn’t ready.

Another wonderful saying about grandparenting goes something like: “A grandmother is a mother who has a second chance.” Amen, and I’ll see you ‘round town.

Note: This is a version of my column first published yesterday, 5.3.12, in the Crescenta Valley Weekly newspaper.

© 2012 WordChaser, Inc.

Oh Baby, How Things Have Changed

Our daughter and son-in-law had their first baby, a beautiful girl, a little less than a year ago. Although she was my wife’s and my fourth grandchild, she is the first to live within an easy drive from us. Our other three grand-munchkins live heart-wrenchingly far away in Hawaii. My dear wife and I are not extreme swimmers, we don’t own a boat or have stock in an airline, so that means we get to visit the grandkids in Hawaii far less often than we would like – an understatement if ever there was one.

Suffice it to say that our newest grandchild has so far had no shortage of time or attention lavished upon her cuddly little self. In fact, the fun had already begun with the pre-birth celebration of a baby shower that was thrown last year for our daughter and her soon-to-arrive child.

Now, I was told that it’s bad form to show up for a baby shower without a large gift in hand (apparently providing chicken salad, croissant sandwiches, a big honkin’ fresh fruit platter and homemade gourmet cupcakes wasn’t enough!) So that’s how my dear wife and I found ourselves a few days before the shower wandering the aisles of a super-baby-warehouse store in the Los Feliz area of Glendale, California.

I have to tell you, the visit to the store was an eye opener. Granted, it’s been quite a while since my kids were babies (there’s a joke here, but my kids swear they read this column at least occasionally so I’ll refrain), but I simply wasn’t prepared for what I saw wandering the aisles of this store. I mean, I remember that when there were only a few basics one had to have as a new parent. You needed a crib, possibly a bassinette to have near your own bed when you first brought the baby home, a relative gave you a hand-me-down dresser for the baby’s clothes, and you got a big spongy pad thing that you put in the kitchen sink and laid the baby on to bath it. If you really wanted to equip a baby’s room, you got one of those rickety changing tables with the cheapo foam pad on top and a shelf for thousands of diapers underneath.

New parents also needed half a dozen or so baby bottles, a couple of pacifiers, a stroller and a car seat. That’s pretty much it, unless you truly wanted to spoil a kid with one of those swings guaranteed to put even the most colicky kid to sleep in minutes. (But seriously, weren’t those blessed wind-up-baby-sitters invented for parents more than babies?) Oh, and you absolutely, positively needed a diaper pail of some kind. A big, easy-to-empty diaper pail to contain all the little neutron stink bomb bundles of joy, each with the power to instantly bring a fully grown, testosterone-soaked man to his knees begging for mercy and fresh air.

By the time our fourth child was born, the list of have-to-haves had grown to include a portable play pen (you know, the kind that never, ever fold back up as neatly and compactly as when you first take it out of the box). You also needed some sort of electronic baby monitor to eavesdrop on your spouse as they wrongfully whined to the baby about what a slacker you were for not getting up at 3 a.m. to check on him/her even though you did it already at 1:30 and your wife slept soundly through the entire incident and you didn’t get any “what-a-good-dad” credit like you deserved. Not that this happened to me. Much.

Anyway, that’s the sort of equipment we needed twenty or so years ago in order to bring up baby. Apparently, today’s babies need a whole lot more stuff. So much more, in fact, that I’ll need another post to discuss the catalog of goodies it apparently takes to be a parent in 2010. Hang on to your wallet, and check tomorrow’s My Thoughts Exactly post. I’ll see you ‘round town.

Note: This is an updated version of a column first published in the CV Weekly newspaper (www.cvweekly.com) on June 3, 2010.

This version: © 2011 WordChaser, Inc.