Dear Daughter (a.k.a. mother of my granddaughter),
Please don’t spend your money on a Grandparents’ Day card for us this year. Spend it on gas.
Hop in the car and drive that baby girl (okay, toddler) up to visit her grandparents. It’ll be a gift for both of us.
You can take a much-deserved break from the hectic life of a wife-mother-student-social-worker, and we can wallow in the fun and hilarity of grandparenting.
Papa can tote all 30 pounds of her on his hip while I pull a perfectly good wagon around the zoo. And yes, we know she is perfectly capable of walking.
We’ll let her wade in the inflatable pool in the side yard and even let her play with the hose. And yes, we also know that one of us (probably both of us) will end up with a face full of water when she decides to wave it around. Of course, we will take video of her squealing as she slips down the slide into the pool.
We’ll watch Moana on repeat, pausing only to watch Santa Paws 2 every now and then.
Then we’ll have a tea party in the upstairs bedroom, along with a teddy bear and a stuffed rabbit. We’ll sit on those annoying tiny chairs while she makes “coppee” in the microwave of her tiny pink kitchen. Then we’ll paint her toenails . . . one in each color from Lolo’s basket of nail polish.
We’ll stifle our giggles and take more video while she wears only a diaper and an NBA knit cap (as one does) while singing “Happy Birthday” to the dog.
We’ll let the dishes sit in the sink, shrug off the ink marks on the wall, and let the laundry pile up. We have to make sure we have time to cram all of this into one weekend.
When we head back to work on Monday, we won’t have a paper greeting card to sit on the mantle. But we will have some great memories (and hilarious videos) to share. Even though we’ll probably look like we’ve been beaten with a bag of rocks, I promise it will have been well worth the gas money.
Cards get lost–or at my house, tossed out–but these memories? I’ll keep those forever.
Love,
Mom (a.k.a. Lolo)
