GRANDPA AND GRANDMA FOR A DAY

I don’t know what it is about women. The reproductive urge is so intense, so powerful, so all-pervasive, that women crave the presence of babies years after their own children cease to be babies. Maybe that’s what keeps ’em young. [The women, not the babies. Babies, by definition, are young. Duh.]

It must be this craving to be in the presence of little humans that impelled She Who Must Be Obeyed to agree to baby-sit a friend’s kids Friday night.

Not that there’s anything wrong with lending a helping hand. This friend is a young woman who has two lovely children – a four-year-old boy and a fifteen-month-old girl – but whose ex-husband is a member of the all-too-common species of Homo Americanus Sphinctericus. Yep – the guy that runs off with another woman and leaves his wife and kids in the lurch. To him, I offer a rousing, “Fuck You!”

Every so often, it’s not a bad thing for this now heavily overburdened young woman to get out of the house and have some time to herself. And that’s where we came in.

It’s been a loooong time since SWMBO and I have had little kids of our own. Ours are off on their own now, and Elder Daughter is even off the family payroll. The closest we have to a rugrat on our limb of the family tree is nephew William, who (inconveniently) lives 850 miles away in Texas.

So dealing with little Elijah and Ava was fun in a kind of “exercise them rusty parenting muscles” kind of way. Ava is now walking, so we had to keep a close eye on her constantly-changing whereabouts. And Elijah is at that age when he can be at once sweet and maddeningly stubborn.

We sat down to dinner and were pleased to see Ava eat a reasonable amount of food rather than throw it on the floor / in our faces / at the walls. Elijah was a little more recalcitrant, not deigning to eat the grilled salmon or candied carrots we placed in front of him. We did, however, manage to convince him to take a few bites of well-buttered baked potato. And we made it clear that, if he didn’t eat dinner, he would be one hungry little dude at breakfast. (Which he was.)

After a brief excursion to visit some friends at Chez de Zoog (which required our figuring out the intricacies of modern Car Seat Technology), we returned home, put Ava to bed, and slapped “Finding Nemo” into the DVD player. Elijah didn’t watch too much of the movie, but spent most of the time playing alphabet and number games with me. Hey, nothing wrong with a kid who wants to show off his growing knowledge base. Next year, calculus!

And bedtime went surprisingly well. The little guy was reluctant at first, but I reasoned with him. “You’re a big guy now – almost five! Way too big to argue about going to bed. And, beside, I’m going to sleep, so you’re going to be awfully lonely down here by yourself.” There wasn’t too much dawdling after that…and no crying. A few minutes of bedtime story, then right to sleep. Ahhh, sweet nostalgia...it reminded me so much of reading to our girls when they were little. I don’t like to toot my own horn, but I can read the National Review to a kid and make it sound interesting.

The little one started making noise after a while, but SWMBO took her into our bedroom until she quieted down. And that, friends, is where it becomes obvious to even the most casual observer: women just love them babies. Babies make women light up like the sunrise.

Must be all them hormones.

The night passed uneventfully - thank God! - and I got to play Grandpa In The Kitchen the next morning. And, bubba, I can toast an Eggo waffle with the best of ’em. Elijah gobbled up two of them bad boys with the full treatment – butter and syrup. Told you he was hungry in the morning.

Yeah, it was fun to be Grandpa...for a night. And SWMBO sure did like playing Grandma. And, just like with real grandkids, the best part is, you get to give ’em back to Mom.

’Cause we’ve been there and done that.