We have sole custody of our grand baby this week. And somehow Tarun managed to travel on work for two of the five days. Hell yeah, there will be a come-to-Jesus moment between my other half and me but, right now, I am wondering how on earth did we raise our kids from infancy to adulthood.
This little one cannot talk, cannot walk, she only smiles and cries. The smiles are so damn cute, they melt my heart. The crying bit is hard! It turns out that grandmothers have zero instinct about child-rearing. So, I run through a laundry list of is it your diaper, are you hungry, are you bored, are you sleepy. In the process, the baby gets mad - like, why in the world, is it taking you SO long to figure out what I need!
Ok fine. I don't care that I am fumbling through this. The point is to have a good time. When she is goofy, it makes it all worthwhile.
Like when she gnaws at Sophie the Giraffe as if that's an all-you-can-eat buffet.
Like when she poops and makes you wonder how can carrots produce this level of foulness.
Like when she gets all serious at the dark clouds rumbling overhead at the end of a walk, earnestly egging me with her eyes to take shelter.
Like when she giggles every time we say, "cultural diversity". She loves the way those two words roll off our tongues and tickle her ears. She grins and then she guffaws, while we repeat this in a loop. I think she laughs more about how nutty her family is than at the possibility of being the only brown kid in her class in the middle on Maine.
Just to be sure she doesn't fall behind, I've been repeating 1, 2, 3, 4 since the day she was born. Six months in, her eyes are lighting up when we start droning onnnne and then twoooo. I can't say the same thing about ABCD. She loses interest at about "G". Definitely worrisome, but we are focusing on STEM for now and not losing hope.
Every second she is stuck with us, I pray that she doesn't miss her AWOL parents, especially at night when she senses that grandpa ain't dad and grandma ain't mom or worse yet, grandpa is AWOL too!
Thank goodness for Sophie the Giraffe. To stay calm, the baby is chewing on the hind legs and grandma is gnawing on the front ones and sometimes we are fighting over Sophie.…whatever it takes to get through our days is ok with both of us.
