Grandparenting 101

It’s Wednesday evening. We have spent the last two days taking care of our grandson from around 8:30 in the morning until Jon and Kaitlin get home from work around 5:00. Pam makes everyone dinner, I clean up the kitchen, then we hand him over to his parents for the rest of the night. So, what do we do all day with an 8 month old?

We feed him three bottles, plus a variety of disgusting whirled, mashed, and puréed vegetables and fruits in combinations which defy reason—mango, carrots and kiwi. Regardless of how foul the presentation, the boy devours them with great enthusiasm, leaving pieces of each offering strewn everywhere within a ten foot radius around his highchair. I am tempted to perform cleanup with a power washer.

After mealtime it’s time for play. He has an arsenal of toys, books and play stations to choose from. There are two bouncy contraptions which emit computerized music at the slightest movement. He loves them both. He has favorite toys—a rumbling dump truck with a wisecracking driver who shouts arbitrary commands willy nilly and every once in a while breaks into song—“When you have a job to do, do it right! When you have a job to do, do the best that you can do, when you have a job to do, do it right!” Clearly, the manufacturer of this particular dump truck is part of the misogynistic patriarchy, since the aforementioned wisecracking driver is male, and clearly not a member of a union. 

Silas is quite fond of his Old McDonald’s farmhouse and animals. When he opens the roof of the barn  he reaches inside and retrieves one of four animals, each of which makes the appropriate animal sound when squeezed—except for mister duck who, for reasons which escape us, seems to be mute. Despite this glaring defect, Silas is still enamored with the Old McDonald shtick, joining countless generations before him.

After play time Pam and I take turns giving him his bottle and then reading him stories before putting him down for his nap. Sometimes this nap lasts a mere 30 minutes. Once a day we might get lucky and he will sleep for an hour and half. When he wakes up we like to mix things up. Tuesday we took him for a walk in his stroller around the neighborhood. Today we went on an adventure to his Mom’s favorite coffee shop in Columbia. He was a perfect angel. Everyone in the coffee shop seemed delighted by his presence except for the man at the table right next to ours who had been working on his computer and found it difficult to do so once Silas began serenading the shop with his version of Old McDonald’s Farm which sounding like this…HaaaaaHHHHaaaaaaaa!

I should add that these two days have also included quite a few diaper changes and so far one bath. The most difficult part of each day has been picking out the “outfit of the day.” I’m not involved in the selection process. Pam stands at the entrance to the child’s voluminous clothes closet and ponders just the right combination of style, comfort, practicality and color. In so doing she is basically choosing from among the truck load of outfits that she has filled this closet with. Eventually she picks a winner and I must admit—the kid is styling.

We have two more days of this responsibility left. Once Saturday comes, Jon and Kaitlin will morph back into the boy’s primary care givers—and Pam and I will sleep for three days.