Sunday, May 9, 2010
At mid-week, my brood of grandchildren will have grown by one, as Daughter #1 will give birth to a baby May 11th.
The new addition brings my grandmotherly doting issues to five little peppers.
In the days to come, eight pounds of the newest little someone with the mess of dark, fine hair and star-lit eyes staring back at me from the baby blankets in my arms won’t seem as heavy as the 4kg of sugar I carried in from the truck—and conversations will be all about possibilities.
By mid-week, I’m quite sure I also will be on my second case of the energy drink ‘Red Bull’, as the only vim I expect to have left will be that of the cleaning brand of the same name in the cupboard under my kitchen sink.
Reasons? Two charges—a.k.a. sister and brother of the new baby—both under the age of four-and-a-half years, who will have been visiting Granny Daycare while Mommy is in hospital.
I am beginning to realize with some disbelief that the energy it takes to look after small fries exceeds any other vigorous activity I engage in.
Sometimes I can’t believe I too once was a mother with three small children and that I survived that maternal power supply drainage project.
Please excuse me while I duct tape the kids to the living room wall and go take my morning Granny nap.
The funny thing is, I had a dry run at this chipmunk festival last week, when Daughter #1 unexpectedly went into hospital for complete bed rest. My daycare centre only lasted for one night and two days and yet I was completely worn out.
This is not to say that Adam and Julie were unmanageable. In fact it was just the opposite. They ate their carrots and slept until the sun came up at 5:24 a.m.
However they did try to convince me there was no such thing as manners at their house and compared everything I did for them to the routine they were used to with their mom, including how small and in which shape I cut up their meat.
Say it with me. “Ohm.”
And on the visit to the toy aisle at the local department store with me during his mother’s absence, Adam picked up a “Leapster” computer game and said most casually, “Granny, my mom told me that the next time we come here to shop, she’s going to buy this for me.”
“That’s very nice,” I said, looking for an empty shelf that I might curl up on for a five-minute siesta.
“That’s today,” he said in a serious matter-of-fact tone.
He then proceeded to repeatedly trip over his bottom lip when the tactic didn’t work—as we moved on to the hardware section to look for more duct tape.
Julie on the other hand hasn’t gone the wily route just yet. She’s just happy if there’s a snack to be had.
Clearly I was not prepared. I had flax seeds, lentils, and red kidney beans in large quantities—none of which seemed to thrill the child.
She ran over to the "Lazy Susan" kitchen cabinet—the same one where the old square cookie tin sits in the same spot as it did in my youth when my grandmother ruled this kitchen—and spun the shelving.
“Cookies in there?” she queried as the shelf slowed down and stopped like a roulette wheel, bang-on the cookie tin.
She looked up at me with those brown eyes, as I poured another can of Boost into my coffee cup.
“No. There are no cookies in there. I don’t have any,” I said.
Julie spun the shelf again and when the cookie tin came round again she shouted enthusiastically, “There it is! Cookies in there?”
It was as if it was a new discovery every time over the span of six to eight more spins.
Oh yes, and never underestimate a two-year-old’s ability to find the one thing you don’t want them to touch when you turn your back for 10 seconds. It was a record-breaking spree as she picked off all multiple new leaves of the flower sprouts I had just replanted in peat pots after six weeks of difficult germination.
Later that afternoon when the little mice coaxed me outside to run about the yard, we decided to play hide and seek in the half-light of the barn.
Once inside, I encouraged my energizer bunny duo to go and hide and that I would close my eyes and count to 10.
No sooner had I put my head into the crux of my arm and counted to five, did Julie come running up to me and said shout, “There you are! I see you!”
It was too funny.
As I write this, I am sharing my blood supply with my leather couch and another bottle of Boost and reading quotes from Erma Bombeck about motherhood.
“All of us have moments in our lives that test our courage. Taking children into a house with a white carpet is one of them.”
She might be right, but I don’t have any carpets in my house.
However, what I do have is three less buds on a dried pussy willow arrangement and which I didn’t know were missing until Julie sneezed and all three came flying across the room out of her nose.
Say it with me, “Ohm.”
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