Everyone warned me what it would be like to become a grandma.
“You will have never loved a person more.”
“She will just bat her eyes and you will give her whatever she wants.”
“There is nothing you will not do for her.”
I knew this was most likely true just from watching the metamorphosis of my own mother.
Things that my own mother would have NEVER done for me, she was suddenly doing while singing songs, playing the ukulele, and giving spoonfuls of melted chocolate.
For example: This woman who would never buy me the sugared cereals because of how “bad they were for me” now makes a stop every single Friday at 7-11 to buy my youngest daughter a Slurpee and three of their nasty rolling-case, withered hot-light taquitos.
She acts as if they are necessary, and medicinal.
Things that would have gotten my grounded for a week, have her saying, “Aww. Mama,” while she side-hugs whatever child I am supposedly ruining with my judgment, forming a team, and she looks at me disdainfully, trying to chide me.
I saw this trend in my own grandmother when I once mentioned to her that I liked peanut butter cookies not too long after arriving on a cross-country flight to come see her.
I laid down for a nap to try to fight the jet lag from the trip, and when I awoke, I kid you not,
there were about 8 baking sheets scattered around her kitchen, covered in fresh peanut butter cookies.
There was literally a pan on top of the refrigerator because there was not any more counter space.
“You said you like peanut butter cookies?
Here’s 12 dozen of them.
Hope your return trip comes with a seatbelt extender.”
I have seen all of this, but friends,
I STILL HAD NO IDEA.
It has now been 15 months of life with my very own granddaughter.
She is, without a doubt, the most adorable human to have ever walked the face of the earth in both looks and personality.
If anyone would like to argue that fact,
I would simply say I will challenge them to an arm wrestling competition.
I have truly loved being a mother with everything in me, but – to be honest –
Even my girls know that I would probably have too quick of a response for their liking if pressured to toss any of the four of them like an Australian Quokka because I was told it would come down to tossing them or my precious Mavie.
I would do anything for her.
The fact that she is in the toddler phase only sweetens the deal to me.
While other people speak of this age with trembling, it has always been one of my top favorites.
(Now, three and thirteen are a whole other story.)
I love the sparkle in their eyes,
and watching them discover the world around them.
I love the new words every day,
and the way they pronounce them.
I love everything from their rounded teeth to their chubby side profiles.
I drink her up with my ears and my eyeballs.
Unfortunately, she’s been in a pretty bad mood lately.
She is teething her molars, and has decided all living beings should pay for it.
I can’t even count the number of times she’s shouted “NOOOOOOOO” to the sky lately like her life is ending.
(The world is full of many injustices for which toddlers suffer)
*She cannot eat hair ties
* No one will let her complete her most dire mission of dipping her toy cutting board in the recesses of the toilet
* She is not even allowed to try electrocution
* No one will allow her to press the leaves of the Fiddle-Leaf Fig down all the way to see what happens
I watch her while my daughter works, and lately we are both more than ready by the time nap time comes.
I pull her into my lap to give her her bottle before-hand while sighing.
But, the other day when I did this,
as my body ached from having to heave her out of crevices and her self-inflicted predicaments…
as a hundred toys lay around like shrapnel,
She sat looking at me for a long time with her bottle in her mouth, until I melted and smiled, forgiving her, and that is when she pulled her bottle out of her mouth long enough to say,
“Ga-ga (Grammy) baba. Aww. Nice,”
She likes Grammy bottle time.
Then she petted my face softly over and over.
See.
This is why it is true, all those things people told me.
This is the reason grandparents would bend over backwards.
I am more sore and slow now than I was a decade ago.
This little person is getting me much softer; Much more intentional in my movements and actions.
It was like I’d worked my whole entire life for the sole purpose of reaching that specific Ga-Ga baba.
Sure, they may want to feed your whole house straight into the chipper,
but then they come at you with their spiraling eyes, and you are rendered unable to ever oppose them.
The only downside comes with the fact that this is also the age they start to catch onto this dynamic.
The other day, my daughter Alena reported that she asked Mavis if she wanted to go see Grammy.
As we live next door, this is a very short journey,
but Alena reports that, at this suggestion, Mavis got so excited about the prospect that she spun around too fast, sending herself crashing into something, and getting injured.
When Alena brought her to me, she still had eyes glistening from the leftover tears of crying about it, and so I put on my best overly-dramatic Grammy voice and asked her,
“Oh, Honey! What happened?!”
At this, she smacked her own face with her palm pretty hard to mime out the injury,
which only made her cry again,
but she never broke eye contact.
“Oh no! My Mavie! What do you need?
What do you want Grammy to get for you to make it better?” I asked her;
And this is when she pointed forcefully towards the toaster and commanded, “WAFFLE.”
The look in her eyes at that moment made it clear she had just been waiting for an excuse to ask for it.
The confidence of her little caterpillar-sized finger pointing without so much as a tremble proved to me she knew there was no way she would not get it.
Friends, this kid was 100% milking that injury as a ticket to buy her a “Grammy Special:”
A hot buttered waffle with a thin amount of strawberry jam.
Maybe she will always remember the taste of it.
She didn’t know she would get it when she first heard the words “go see Grammy,” and she spun on that heel, but I have reason to believe that as soon as she felt that blow to her cheek,
she thought to herself,
“Oh, yeah! Come to Mama!”
This is just the way it is.
Who am I to think that the two of us will be any different?
I come from a long line of Grandma Enablers.
It’s time-honored:
A Cycle Through the Ages.
That waffle was my slurpee and my hot-light taquitos.
I have completely joined the ranks.
I simply have to face it.
Mom Outnumbered
Hi! My name is Kerri Green; Wife to Justin, and mother to four highly entertaining daughters -Alena, Chloe, Tessa, and Paige. I am an artist, a writer, a daycare provider, a lover of people, a believer that there is humor and beauty in all things, and the author of Mom Outnumbered; a blog about real family life, and my observations of it. My goal is to make people laugh, to be there for them when they cry, and most importantly, to let them know that they are not at all alone in this up and down world. I live with my family in Sebastopol California, and I am opening the window into our life. So welcome! Come in. Sit down. Just please don’t mind the mysterious wet spots.
