The Lady and The Wild Man Visit GG

I am very grateful that I have three living grandparents. I think it is amazing that my kids will spend time with their great-grandparents and have photos to see when they are older.

I still remember driving around with my own GG and visiting her in Florida. And it is a very vivid memory of mine of lining up with my cousins to get a haircut by Grandma Re and having her give us all Certs. Ah, Certs your wintergreen tastiness, stays with me to this day.

A few weeks ago, I piled in the car with the ladies and headed out to LI to visit my grandparents. It was a beautiful day and the kids played down on the beach by their house. It was the first time that they had gotten to see the newest additions and everyone was relatively well-behaved.

Yesterday, we packed up the car and headed north towards Albany to visit with GG. The ride is a little over two hours and when we pulled out my main concern was that the little Lady would need to eat halfway there and I would have to pull over at some Thruway rest stop and breastfeed her in the car. She however, was perfect and slept the whole way. The Lady on the other hand had her moments.

I have been allowing the Lady to listen to my iPod so that she can hear "Halo" on repeat. Yesterday, I made the mistake of not putting the earphones in her ears before we left, so she had a few issues with her "earpods" as she calls them. Once she figured out how to get them both in I had to listen to her sing. I am not a good singer. I admit it. I don't know all the words to songs so I just wing it, I can't carry a tune and any high note I hit sounds like a braying dog. I do, however, love music. The Lady is the same way. As my dad said the other night. "She loves to sing, but she isn't a good singer." So for about 45 minutes I had to listen to her hit the high notes in "Halo." Oh, it is a sound only a mother could love.

Anyway, things started to fall apart when she was unable to keep the earpods in, so I told her I would play the iPod through the radio. I then proceeded to listen to Halo for another 45 minutes, until I turned around and saw that her eyes were closed. When I switched songs, I heard a little voice in the backseat say "NO. Halo." So, we listened to Halo again.

It was around this time that the Lady got uncomfortable. She started squirming in her seat and complaining about wanting to get her backpack off. Now, I didn't realize she was wearing her purple Dora backpack and that my husband had strapped her in with it on. The whining started, then the winging, then the wriggling, until not only was the backpack off but the straps to her carseat as well. She then started to try and heave her body out of the seat. This wouldn't have been as scary, had she not hit the window button with her hand and the window rolled down. Note to self: Child Lock the window and the door immediately!

Needless to say we had to readjust and then finally we pulled into GG's.

The Wild Man had pulled in right before us and was already out of the car, around the side of the house and running through the leaves. The Lady made her way out of the car in her Dora nightgown, a pair of brown fleece pants with multi-colored hearts and her rainboots and was soon right behind him. Before we even got into the house, The Wild Man had knocked over the recycling bin in the garage and the Lady was right there with him. This should have been clue #1 that things were going to get crazy.

I realize now why, when we were younger, my cousins and I were confined to either the basement or the upstairs room of the house. I am not sure how our parents coped with not just two kids running around but upwards of 10-15.

Here are a few of the things that we encountered yesterday, and let me just preface this with the fact that my grandma said that there was nothing out that they could really get to that would cause a problem.

1. The Lady found a coin. This led to my aunt giving the kids handfuls of change, which they proceeded to carry around in a wicker wastebasket, that later in the day they both wore on their heads.

2. This obsession with change led them to the antique cash register that belonged to Grandma Re, where they tried, in vain, to open with a key that didn't fit the register and that ended up in the Wild Man's mouth.

3. Next to this antique cash register were two bells. My grandma has a bell collection, thank god they weren't all out or we would have been subject to some sort of jingle bell catastrophe. These kids were ringing the bells with such vigor that I thought that I would either go deaf, or one of them would end up hitting themselves in the head with the bell with such force that we would end up in the emergency room.

4. Silence is never good and it usually means that your kid is playing in the toilet. This happened twice.

5. Closing doors is probably a good idea (see above) or you may find yourself prying away eye drops from your two-year old, who insists she "needs them," while your nephew chews on a cork coaster in your grandma's room.

6. Letting the kids run around outside is a good idea. Letting them dig in your grandma's flower beds with diggy trucks works too. However, letting them play with sap covered pinecones that leave their hands blackened and sticky, isn't that good of an idea. And, once again when you hear silence, run. Because, as you make your way around the side of the house and hope that the two of them aren't in the street you will probably find them in the garage playing with the recycling bins again.

7. When you hear crashing from another room, run as well. My biggest fear was that they had knocked over something valuable, a bell perhaps or even broken a photo frame. I was grateful that it was just pewter coasters that had fallen to the floor. As I went to pick these up, I found the mechanical pencil with a three inch point on the floor with a pile of post-it notes that I noticed later had been randomly drawn on, the Wild Man with a handful of photos in his sap-covered hands, and the Lady wearing somebody's reading glasses.

8. If you have ever been to my grandma's house you would recognize the cat door-stopper. Basically, it is a brick-stuffed cat that will hold a door ajar. The Wild Man used it as a projectile.

These are just a few of the things we encountered. I am sure my grandma will find evidence of our visit in the next few days. The former "clown room" a scary kind of room when you are small, and lets face it when you are an adult as well, has been reconfigured. The kids were allowed in there, but still were able to take advantage of it. Apparantly, the Lady was trying on clothes in the closet, all the pillows were thrown from the bed, the little crib my grandma put out in case the little ladies needed a nap was full of anything and everything those kids could reach.

Luckily exaustion set in on the ride home. Both of my girls slept the entire way back to my parents, where we were meeting my sister for pizza. We left there a couple hours later, the second house that day destroyed, but with no toilet incident, a small victory that I will cherish.