How many “Don’t Do This, You Crazy Grandmother” articles have I read in the last 9-months? Too damned many. That’s right, makes me a little twitchy being told by strangers to stay inside my grandma lines when all we newbs need is a little understanding. Some of us are plainly hyper-exuberant and completely gaga over …
Boy
I offered my first What I’ve Learned as a grandmama when Sweet E hit six months. How much more could I have learned in three months? Plenty. ~ I’m good in a crisis concerning Sweet E, but once I get a green light to cry, I’m all in. Sweet E and DIL were in a …
I thought it would be fun to look back over the last six months since Sweet E was born and see what I’ve learned (with apologies to Esquire). #1) The human capacity for love doesn’t spring from one well, but many. My absolute love for my own child is so deep and wide that I …
After Boy was born, my sweet M-I-L ceremoniously handed me a folded and well-worn page torn from a women’s magazine. When I unfolded it, there was an image of a child’s birthday cake in the shape of an elephant. She told me that she had made the elephant cake for Husband almost from the time …
As Boy grew, we kept a growth chart right inside his closet door. I first wrote about it here. The last entry was dated right before he left for college. 6’2.25″ We grow ’em tall in my family. On Boy’s last visit home, he brought Sweet E, and we decided to start E’s chart beneath …
If you were allowed one parenting do-over, what would you use it on? Or shall we never speak of that which shames us? ~gulp~ Parents make mistakes. Truth. Parents can make mistakes daily. Hard truth. Parents are learning as they go. Worst-kept parenting secret ever. So, what would be my parenting do-over? Let me start …
I love Christmas foods. Fine, I love food…but there’s something special about the food you only eat during a specific season, like at Christmas. It’s during late June and early July that I start my Christmas cravings. And just in case you don’t want to do the math, that means that I need to wait …
I wrote this post on vulnerability in the winter, a couple of days after Sweet E had been born and I offer it now in my “What I Will Tell Sweet E” series. (spattering of NSFW language) Vulnerability The “v” word is a tough one for me. I was brought up to be a lady …
What makes us, us? Is it mostly genetics? I largely swing to the DNA side of the aisle because even when I’m trying as hard as I can not to, I hear The German and see The German in my idiosyncrasies. Her “Oh my Got, Patti!” rings through the air. I can’t escape it, people. …
I went to check my mail and my neighbor met me out front. John is a great neighbor. He and his wife Marilyn regularly babysit Dexter (as we babysit theirs). You remember Dexter: Not only are they neighbors whom we trust with our house keys, but they were a large part of Boy’s youth; they …