Snickers, smiles, and laughing out loud

I'm not one to laugh out loud a whole heck of a lot. I'm a fairly happy person, I've got a pretty active funny bone, but I tend to snicker or chuckle or just plain smile at things that might make others literally LOL.

Except, of course, when it comes to my kids and grandkids.

My daughters make me laugh out loud. Often. Once, when Megan and Andrea (my youngest two) were away at college, they came home for the weekend. The Monday they left, I spent a good while trying to figure out why I had such pains in my ribs, as we'd definitely not done a whole lot of physical activity while they were home. We did, though, laugh and laugh and laugh, and I eventually realized my ribs hurt so much because I'd been laughing so hard all weekend long.

My grandsons make me laugh out loud, too. I think grandchildren make most grandparents laugh out loud on a fairly regular basis. Which is why I ask the Grilled Grandmas, "Describe a recent time that one (or more) of your grandchildren made you laugh out loud." I love the stories the grandmas relate.

Because my grandsons live so far away and I only see them every couple months, my grandchild-induced LOLing happens only every couple months as well.

For the most part.

A few days ago, despite the 815 miles between us, my grandsons made me laugh. Out loud. By myself. And then again as I shared the story with Jim.

Megan texted me pictures of Baby Mac and Bubby on Monday, each preceded by her caption for the photo. The first two were certainly cute. It was the third, though, that elicited the elusive LOL from Gramma.

FIRST TIME IN A POOL

BRING YOUR SWIMSUIT!

THEIR REACTION TO ME IN MY SWIMSUIT

Baby Mac seems to have gotten quite a kick out of Mommy's poolside fashion. Such a silly, silly boy.

Turns out, though, it was Mommy who was silly. Megan admitted in a later phone call that her attire wasn't really the reason Baby Mac was laughing so hard; she just thought it would make a cute caption.

And it did.

And it made me laugh.

Out loud.

Like I said, my grandsons and my daughters are the ones most capable of making me laugh out loud.

Even if one particular daughter is a big ol' liar.

(Or maybe just a mom who would rather be considered a liar than a swimsuit-clad laughing stock to her sons.)

Today's question:

Who makes you laugh out loud the most often?

Bad grandma

I've always fancied myself a pretty darn good grandma, one who goes out of her way to spread love and joy and special acts of kindness and self-sacrifice all for the sake of her grandsons.

A conversation I had with Megan over the weekend made it clear my delusions of grandmotherly grandeur and goodness may be exactly that—delusions. I'm not all that good. And not all that self-sacrificing. At least not all the time.

I'm scheduled to soon babysit Bubby and Baby Mac for the longest duration I have yet. It's a stint of nearly 10 days on my own—no Megan, no Preston, just me and the boys at their place. Such a stint feeds into my "I'm a good grandma" belief.

Well, Megan and I were discussing this and that over the weekend, and she just so happened to mention that Bubby has started pooping his pants. On a fairly regular basis. This is a kid who's been potty trained for, gosh, well over a year.

Sure, potty-training regression is to be expected when there's been a big change in a little one's life. But Bubby's big change happened nearly a year ago when Baby Mac came along. And several months ago when they moved into a new house. No poopy pants at the time of either of those events.

Now, though, Megan reports that at least once a day Bubby will traipse off to a corner where he thinks he's hidden and do the dirty deed in his big boy undies...then wait quite some time before telling Mommy about it.

Megan's perplexed. And I'm concerned only for myself.

"Yuck! You sure as heck better have that all figured out before I get there," was my instant, unfiltered response. "That's definitely not something I want to deal with."

Yep, I'm a bad grandma. A bad grandma who has no problem whatsoever changing poopy diapers of newborns, infants, even young toddlers who've not yet been potty trained. But big butts of big boys who have fairly big poops is, like I said, definitely not something I want to deal with.

Megan's researched solutions and is working fervently to bring success.

I'm crossing my fingers that success comes sooner rather than later. Only 16 days til I head to the desert. And only 17 days til I get really unhappy if I have to clean up poopy pants on a boy who's nearly four years old.

Today's question:

When did you last change a poopy kid—diapered or otherwise?

Long-distance grandma = long-distance mom

Baby Mac is sick. Again. Seems like my youngest grandson has continuously battled bugs of this sort and that ever since he was just a few months old.

This time Baby Mac has an especially nasty bug, of the croup and bronchiolitis sort. Megan called me Tuesday on the drive home from the pediatrician, where Baby Mac and his Mommy had to endure the trauma of Mac's first-ever nebulizer treatment. It was horrific—for both—with Mac screaming from beginning to end.

My poor babies. I imagine it was no fun at all for either. I can only imagine such treachery because as a mother, I never had to do such a thing, never had to administer a breathing treatment for a sick child. In all honesty, my kids were—thankfully!—relatively healthy. Now that Megan's a mom, she realizes that. It's something we've discussed often, as both my grandsons seem to be sick a lot, and Megan thinks there's some magical answer to keeping kids healthy, one she's not yet been privy to.

"Am I just a bad mom?" she pleaded for an answer Tuesday. "What am I supposed to be doing that I'm not?"

Usually when Megan asks that question, my first response—selfish as it may be—is, "You need to move out of that <cuss> desert and back home to the mountains."

Not this time, though. Because Megan was on the verge of tears. Because she was scared. And because she was sitting in the car in the garage having just reached home from the doctor's office and had a sick nine-month-old zonked out in his carseat, exhausted from the traumatic treatment, as well as Bubby sitting quietly beside him, and they all needed to get into the house.

"You're doing everything you're supposed to, Megan," I told her. "You got the baby to the doctor and he's being taken care of. That's what you were supposed to do. There's just a lot of crud going around right now and Mac just keeps getting it, for whatever reason. It's nothing you are doing or not doing."

Jim, who was home for lunch and part of our call, confirmed to Megan that a mom he works with has young kids who are sick far more often than was the norm when our kids were little. It's just the way it is nowadays, he said, for reasons we don't know.

"It'll be okay," I told her. "Just get the kids inside and call me later."

It's exactly such times that the distance from my grandbabies, from my daughter, are the hardest. I couldn't just hop in the car and head over to her place to help her out, to hug my sick grandson or, more importantly, to hug my stressed-out daughter.

The most I could do was text her a few hours later, when I figured things had calmed down a bit: 

Despite the crappy day and a croupy kid, at least my daughter still had her sense of humor. Jamaican or not, Megan is indeed a good mon—just because it sounds so cool.

And perpetually sick kids or not, she is indeed a good mom, too. Just one who needs a hug from her own mom—yet lives too far away to get exactly that.

Today's question:

What are your thoughts on kids being sick more often than they were back in the day—that day being when you were a kid or when your kids were kids?

10 things this grandma wants to know

1. How to get natural-looking, 100% gray coverage from home coloring products that promise exactly that. I've gone from brown with gray roots that have become trunks with far-reaching vines highlights to Bronco orange to not-so-orange in the past week trying to figure it out.

2. Why my grandsons seem to be sick so much more often than my daughters ever were. Why all kids nowadays seem to be sick so much more often than kids used to be.

3. What the point is of non-binding caucuses. If it makes no difference in the grand scheme of things, why waste so much time, money, effort?

4. How to succeed at growing anything in the mountain desert gardening zone in which I live. I'd like to know before I once again waste so much time, money, effort (and water!).

5. Why sometimes using the auto setting on my DSLR camera results in awesome photos and other times they look like <cuss>.

6. If a despicable, child-killing, poor excuse for a human being gets a free pass through the pearly gates simply because he asked for forgiveness in advance of his heinous act. Or in an email to his pastor. Or at the very last minute. Seriously.

7. Okay, so there are four time zones: Eastern, Central, Mountain, Pacific. If it's 9 p.m. in Eastern time zone, it's 8 p.m. in Central, 7 p.m. in Mountain, 6 p.m. in Pacific. So why do television programs advertised as being on at "9 p.m. Eastern/8 Central" play at 8 p.m. in the Mountain time zone?

8. I want to know what love is. I want you to show me. Okay, not really. I know that one, but how could I resist? (Resist what? you ask? Ummm...referring to this...from Foreigner, not Mariah.)

9. Why the marijuana legalization issue is an issue at all when (legal!) alcohol has ruined far more lives and killed far more people than marijuana ever will.

10. Why this silly little family won't move closer to Gramma: 

Well, I do know the answer to that one. And I respect it. But it can't hurt to ask again.

This post linked to Grandparent's Say It Saturday.

Today's question:

What do you want to know?

Savor the moments

Jim and I had three daughters in a short period of time. There are 16 months between the oldest and the middle daughters, 19 months between the middle and the youngest. Which means, obviously, our daughters are very close in age. In fact, for one month out of each year—roughly mid July to mid August—the girls' ages are consecutive.

Which also means, obviously, I was one very busy mama while raising them. I felt hurried and harried much of the time, and I rarely stopped to savor the sweetest and simplest of moments with my three girls, from their toddler to their teen years.

I'm trying to not make the same mistake as a grandma.

Things are pretty clear cut with Baby Mac because as an eight-month-old, what he wants, he pretty much needs...and gets. With three-and-a-half-year-old Bubby, though, it's different. His needs are met; his wants are up for negotiation. That's where my tack as a grandmother differs from the tack I took as a mother. When Bubby requests my participation, my attention, I do my best to stop the busy work and savor the moment. As long as his requests are reasonable, that is. And most reasonable he proved to be during my recent visit to the desert.

For example, "Gramma, can you play train with me?" was a reasonable request. So, despite not being one for typically enjoying sitting on the floor—and Baby Mac needing some attention, too—I busied Mac with some blocks, plopped down next to Bubby, and followed his lead of "You be Henry, Gramma, and I'll be Thomas." Moment savored.

Another instance: Bubby's bedtime routine typically features one bedtime story read. One night we finished the chosen book, and I stood from his bed to tuck him in, kiss him goodnight, and head out the door. "Can we please read this one, too?" Bubby pleaded, holding up a book. "It's soooo funny!" So I did, all the while savoring his snickers at "There Was A Cold Lady Who Swallowed Some Snow," savoring his sense of humor, savoring the moment.

When Bubby asked, "Gramma, can we build a fort?" I didn't hem and haw about the mess it would make. Instead, Bubby and I together built the fort to beat all forts, with tunnels and secret passages and cardboard boxes blocking out the light. Moment savored...and video captured of Bubby and Baby Mac savoring the fort again and again and again, with giggles galore as they chased one another through tunnels and more.

At snack time, Bubby wanted his snack in the fort. At naptime, he wanted the bedtime story read—to both him and Baby Mac—in the fort. Both requests filled. Easily. Both moments savored. Surely.

At the park, Bubby asked if I'd climb up the play structure and "play pirate" with him. Baby Mac slept in his stroller, within viewing distance, of course, as Bubby and I climbed and slid and shouted "Look out, Captain! They're after us!" again and again. Moment savored.

Most mornings of my visit, Bubby woke me with a gentle nudge on my knee—except for the first morning when he slammed open my bedroom door and shouted, "GRAMMA! It's morning time!" (My freakout at his announcement led to knee nudges going forward, I'm sure.) One day when I woke before him, Bubby watched me from the open bathroom door and said, "Gramma, after you're done brushing your teeth, will you start your day with me?" Request easily filled as that was my intent anyway. The sweet moment of his request, though, especially savored.

Requests of "Will you jump with me, Gramma?" brought leaps and bounds of joy each and every time we giggled and wiggled and waggled about on the trampoline—which was pretty much each and every time Bubby asked me to do so. And my request to him one night to lie quietly on the trampoline and look at the stars together was enthusiastically met with a resounding "Yes!" That grandson of mine, he truly gives as good as he gets. Moments savored—by both of us.

One of Bubby's favorite cartoons is Olivia, which begins with the inflation of a pirate ship bouncy house. Once, a discussion of bouncy houses ensued after the program began, and Bubby gushed about the most awesome of parties he was scheduled to soon attend. "It's gonna be so cool! There's gonna be a bouncy house and pizza!" he raved. "Do you want to come, Gramma? Maybe you can ask PawDad if you can come!"

This was one of Bubby's few unreasonable requests. Not because I wouldn't be in town at the time of the party or because I'm sure the guest of honor wasn't expecting grandmas to join in. No, I thought it unreasonable—and, more so, surprising—that Bubby naturally assumed I had to ask PawDad's permission to go to the party. My I-am-woman-hear-me-roar sensibilities wanted me to explain to Bubby that I don't need PawDad's permission to go to the party, that I didn't need his permission to do anything. Women, I considered telling my grandson, don't need permission from a man to do anything—we can do anything we choose.

What I chose to do, though, was to not tell Bubby those things. There's plenty of time for him to learn such lessons—and woefully little time that a precious boy earnestly and enthusiastically extends to his grandma invitations to birthday parties with pizza and bouncy houses.

What I chose to do was savor that fleeting moment instead.

Today's fill-in-the-blank:

A moment I recently savored with my grandchildren or children was ___________.