IMHO-52
February 13, 2011

As I was preparing for the most recent “sleep-over” visit, from our nearly two-year-old grandson, I did a little inventory check of our fridge and pantry supplies to see what we had for kiddy food in the house. One thing about getting older is that there is a slow, evolutionary, and mostly undetected, transformation of the food stuffs in one’s household as our children grow from toddler to adolescent to young adult to “out of the house.”
Mac and cheese, wieners, ice cream, Cheerios, Fruit Loops, Pizza Pops, Spagettios, non-diet puddings, and the like, have been replaced with Bran Buds with psyllium, probiotic yogurt, spinach salads, and fibre, fibre, fibre. See a theme developing here?
Now, I know it’s been a while since my wife and I were chasing toddlers and changing diapers on a regular basis but there are some things that you never forget. Making sure one is on a “regular” schedule, if you catch my drift, in your mid-fifties, is one thing, but I think that one just might want to hold back some of the sharing of these kinds of foods, with the grandkids, unless you’re really adventurous or you don’t have a sense of smell or a gag reflex or anything.
I recall an interesting “what not to feed your baby” story, from too long ago, when one of our kids was about a year old and our babysitter had fed him some French Onion Soup. I guess it wasn’t too bad going in but what came out...yikes! What a mess that was. I think the neighbors could even smell it! And, yoi, his poor little bottom was red! I think we went through a couple of tubes of Zincofax that time. Sorry, was that maybe a bit too much information?
As a grandparent of an active two-year old, I had to chuckle at the TV ad about the grandma who comes to the door, after the children’s parents had been telling the two grandkids to take it easy on the ol’ girl while she’s babysitting them, and she’s taken some supplements, or something magical, and then presto, bango, she can now suddenly keep up with the lil buggers. Hah! Good luck with that! I don’t know if there really is a supplement that will work that fast, or that good, but what I do know is that after a full day of grandparenting I certainly don’t need a sleeping pill to fall asleep at night!
But that’s okay; I’ll take the physical challenges and the mess in the odd lumpy diaper, too, in trade for “Grandchildren Time” any day of the week. What did that old bumper sticker say about Grandchildren? “Grandkids-If I knew it was going to be this much fun I’d of had them first.” And I like this one, too-“Grandparents-so easy to operate even a child can do it.” Kind of gives you a view from both sides, doesn’t it?
As we are entering into the Family Day long weekend I am, once again, reminded of how fleeting life really is and how precious our families are to us. Life does go by in a hurry so cherish the time you have together and whether you’re a Grandparent or a Grandchild, a Mom, a Dad, a brother, sister or cousin, aunt or an uncle, make sure you share a little family time this weekend.
"On the seventh day God rested. His grandchildren must have been out of town." ~ Gene Perret.