Category Archives: Grandparents

Coming Out of Retirement is a Full Time Job

 

Juniper and Big B rolling Lil 'B to parenting class

Juniper and Big B rolling Lil ‘B to parenting class

Well, a lot has happened since my brief sojourn as an Uptown Girl. Lil’ B was welcomed into this world by  the gathering of both of his birth clans who eagerly and joyfully passed his little bundled self from arm to arm so that all could inspect and confirm that he was blessed with the expected amount of appendages in good working order. Big B was allowed a precious three days away from his baseball team to participate in the birth of his son which he did by cutting the umbilical cord and sleeping overnight on the pull out couch in Juniper’s maternity room so as not to miss a single one of Lil’B’s diaper changes or cuddles.

 

Lil B came home to the townhouse a scant 30 hours after he was born. Juniper allowed herself three days to settle into her new motherhood role, and then summoned the realtor to start showing the townhouse again. The next week was  a blur of feedings, showings,  closet purges, and interviews with movers. Lil B’s nursery was packed up and dispatched to climatized storage with the rest of the family furniture, while he and his mama flew to Ohio to spend a glorious summer following Big B’s baseball team from stadium to stadium.

I came home to catch my breath and regroup. I had been gone so long over winter and spring that I had to be re-introduced to my home and community. Where did I keep my spatulas? Which roads would take me to my hair salon?  There was some cool bric-a-brac in the dining room that I had completely forgotten about, so I patted myself on the back and acknowledged that I really loved what I apparently did to the place. My re-orientation didn’t last long; by mid-summer it was apparent that  Mom’s melanoma infusion therapy was taking a toll and she had fallen into a state of severe exhaustion, so I found myself flying back to Montana. My retirement from homemaking was officially coming to an end with the beginning of my new responsibility  as care giver.

Mom’s Yervoy infusions that were meant to stabilize her existing melanoma were not only unsuccessful, but also failed to prevent the growth of a brand new 4 inch tumor. She was released to hospice care and advised that there might be other treatment available to her at MD Anderson in Houston. I closed Mom’s house up as best I could while McGator made arrangements to have her admitted to MD Anderson. We brought her down to Houston in a fog of numbness and with heavy hearts, for we all believed that she would not survive to see Christmas.

The biggest challenge is making room for everybody's stuff

The biggest challenge is making room for everybody’s stuff

Our empty nest became a multi-aged  assisted living facility  almost overnight. We moved our stuff out of the downstairs master bedroom and settled into our corner of the upstairs. Two other corner bedrooms were occupied by Shooney, who  had moved home from North Carolina, and Bo, who had settled into his new job and was concentrating on personal  asset building. Big B, Juniper, and Lil’ B temporarily squeezed into the fifth bedroom while the finishing touches were being put on their new house. Baseball season was over, and they had come back to Houston for the winter.

McGator and I have put travel plans on hold for awhile, but in exchange we are totally embracing the roles of grandparents while Lil B and his parents are in town for the off season. We babysit regularly, and since Lil’ B’s parents have not advanced their culinary skills much, we have been hosting lots of big family dinners on a regular basis.We missed Bo and Shooney for several years, and now they are back under our noses. We like having them around, and appreciate the positive attention they give their ailing grandmother. Miraculously, Mom’s new Keytruda infusions have been shrinking her tumor and she is slowly regaining strength. We are daring to imagine she will win this battle and are making tentative plans to take her home to visit her house and garden this summer. As harsh as this situation has been for everybody, there could not be a better place to deal with it than within the heart of the family.

 

 

Trying on New Roles as Baby Grands in Waiting

View of striped wall and crib in nursery

McGator and I are about to be Baby Grands. Juniper and Big B are expecting a baby boy by the end of the month. We know he is a boy because, thanks to 3D technology, this baby’s gender was positively identified 14 weeks after being the proverbial twinkle in his proud daddy’s eyes. He has never been generically referred to as “the baby”, since he has been fully named ever since Juniper and Big B announced his imminence last Thanksgiving. I wouldn’t be surprised if my highly efficient daughter has already contrived to have a photo id issued using the sonogram portrait, and I suspect Lil’ B might already have a social security number.

We are counting down the last few days to Lil’ B’s birthday, and of course, there are logistical complications. Big B is at extended spring training in Arizona preparing for his return to playing triple A ball with his team in Ohio, while Juniper is sticking close to their home base in Dallas, winding down  work projects in anticipation of her upcoming maternity leave. She and Big B have recently decided to move back to Houston, so they are also juggling the sale of their present home while building a new one just a few minutes down the road from us.

McGator and I drove up a couple of weeks ago to offer support and are poised to escort Juniper to the hospital in time for Lil’ B’s grand entrance into the world. Our first duty as Birth Monitors was to help put the finishing touches on the nursery. No problem, we thought. Big B’s mom had already taken care of the difficult task of painting stripes on the wall, and all we had to do was hang a few decorations. Back in the day, this was  a fairly simple operation. We would trot off to the big box baby store and choose  bedding in appropriately gender neutral colors, and then coordinate it with puffy wall art featuring wide-eyed baby animals floating away on clouds of balloons. We tied giant bumper pads to the crib, tacked the gentle menagerie to the wall, and bam! The nursery was done.

composing collage frame items before installation

We are such nubes. Today there is the internet, home of Pinterest, eBay, Etsy, and all manner of shopping sites that make big box stores look like specs of dust compared to the baby universe of etherspace that goes on for infinity. The nesting urge was elevated to an Olympic fever as Juniper pored over and pinned images of baby paraphernalia onto the imaginary bulletin boards of her laptop. We were amazed at how quickly she emptied their home office of  professional furniture by simply advertising its availability on Craigslist, and then just as magically, purchased the baby suite online as well.

Then the real work began. According to Pinterest, the best decorated nurseries feature entire walls of picture frame collages which deftly weave combined themes of color, gender, and visual suggestions of the baby’s possible future hobby and career interests.  Most importantly, the collages must by punctuated clearly by the new arrival’s name and initials. Assembling these visual stimuli took weeks, and consist of a collection of wild animal heads, baseball gear, and, curiously, a curly silhouette of a handlebar mustache. Yes, mustaches as nursery décor are big for baby boys this year, and I first noticed them when they were given away as party favors at Lil B’s baby shower. I was a little confused at the significance since Lil B won’t be shaving until 2030, and kept checking  for a candy striped barber shop quartet lurking behind the buffet table.

view of collage wall in nurseryBack to the nursery. We Baby Grands were each assigned a batch of frames and shadow boxes to be spray painted and mounted on the nursery walls in such a fashion that the resulting composition would “pop”. This was essential. After each frame or shelf was painstakingly hung on the wall, Juniper would stand back and assess its pop. Regardless of how well you have measured, balanced, and stuck your collages to the wall, no matter how symmetrical and perfectly proportioned the display, if there is no pop, you have failed. Juniper was not about to be doomed as a parent before poor Lil’ B was even born. Happily, Juniper’s future as a mother is secure. We all agree, in our humble opinions, that the nursery looks beautiful enough to grace the pages of a magazine. Or, as we hip Baby Grand’s like to say,  it’s pop is Pin worthy.