Photo replay: Walking partners

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My walking partners for the week:

Baby Mac & Bubby — April 18, 2012

They'll surely be easier to keep up with than Mickey and Lyla. Especially because if we happen upon a wild animal, they'll run from it rather than to it like the dogs do. I hope.

Happy Sunday, one and all!

Snickers, smiles, and laughing out loud

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I'm not one to laugh out loud a whole heck of a lot. I'm a fairly happy person, I've got a pretty active funny bone, but I tend to snicker or chuckle or just plain smile at things that might make others literally LOL.

Except, of course, when it comes to my kids and grandkids.

My daughters make me laugh out loud. Often. Once, when Megan and Andrea (my youngest two) were away at college, they came home for the weekend. The Monday they left, I spent a good while trying to figure out why I had such pains in my ribs, as we'd definitely not done a whole lot of physical activity while they were home. We did, though, laugh and laugh and laugh, and I eventually realized my ribs hurt so much because I'd been laughing so hard all weekend long.

My grandsons make me laugh out loud, too. I think grandchildren make most grandparents laugh out loud on a fairly regular basis. Which is why I ask the Grilled Grandmas, "Describe a recent time that one (or more) of your grandchildren made you laugh out loud." I love the stories the grandmas relate.

Because my grandsons live so far away and I only see them every couple months, my grandchild-induced LOLing happens only every couple months as well.

For the most part.

A few days ago, despite the 815 miles between us, my grandsons made me laugh. Out loud. By myself. And then again as I shared the story with Jim.

Megan texted me pictures of Baby Mac and Bubby on Monday, each preceded by her caption for the photo. The first two were certainly cute. It was the third, though, that elicited the elusive LOL from Gramma.

FIRST TIME IN A POOL

BRING YOUR SWIMSUIT!

THEIR REACTION TO ME IN MY SWIMSUIT

Baby Mac seems to have gotten quite a kick out of Mommy's poolside fashion. Such a silly, silly boy.

Turns out, though, it was Mommy who was silly. Megan admitted in a later phone call that her attire wasn't really the reason Baby Mac was laughing so hard; she just thought it would make a cute caption.

And it did.

And it made me laugh.

Out loud.

Like I said, my grandsons and my daughters are the ones most capable of making me laugh out loud.

Even if one particular daughter is a big ol' liar.

(Or maybe just a mom who would rather be considered a liar than a swimsuit-clad laughing stock to her sons.)

Today's question:

Who makes you laugh out loud the most often?

Nine in five

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Nine things I've learned in the last five days:

1. I will never again use Kool-Aid to color Easter eggs. The colors aren't vibrant, purple turns brown, green is impossible (even if you mix yellow and blue), and the color doesn't stay on the eggs very well at all.

2. Woodpeckers will from now on be called Woodeffers by me because they do nothing but eff up the wood on the side of my house. And they chuckle from the trees when I chase them off, only to return to their previous effing pecking spot the instant I go inside.

3. Traditions started in childhood continue to matter—as much to my daughters as to me.

4. Photos sent via text messaging are the next best thing to Skype which is the next best thing to being there.

(Though it would have been nice to be there to hug Baby Mac, who looks a wee bit scared of—or, more likely, annoyed by—Mr. Bunny.)

5. Popping Vitamin E pills really does help with cracked heels. Literally popping the pills, that is, and rubbing the oil into your heels.

6. I can't get enough Bones. The series. We may be late comers to the series, but thanks to instant streaming on Netflix, Jim and I are well into the fourth season and never at a loss for what to watch on TV despite having canceled cable several months ago. (And we will surely be just as sad to end the marathon viewing sessions as we were when we finished Lost. And Firefly. And Lie to Me. And Friday Night Lights. And Sons of Anarchy.)

7. Jim is dead serious about preferring chocolate desserts over any other kind. Even ones that look—and taste!—as delicious as the Mini Cheesecakes I made for Easter dinner.  

8. I'm no longer compelled to stay awake until my children come home after a night out, proven by my being sound asleep when our Easter weekend houseguest, Andrea, went out with friends Saturday night and got home well after the bars had closed.

9. Despite huge changes to the dynamics and logistics over the past several years, the best part of each and every holiday has remained the same: time with my favorite people, my family—all except the desert dwellers, of course.

(Even when they're dorks like Brianna and Andie and unwittingly wear the very same outfit on the same day.)

Today's question:

What have you recently learned?

Lesson learned

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Not long ago, I wrote in this post of Bubby's utter and undisguised disappointment in the gift I sent him for Valentine's Day. He made it perfectly clear then that little boys want toys not something practical in the gifts they open from their grandma.

So when looking for small gifts to mail to Bubby and Baby Mac for Easter, I thought long and hard about my choices, hoping to hit the mark on two counts: 1) they were toys, and 2) they were toys my grandsons would like.

For Bubby the Batman fanatic, I found a set of action figures that featured Batman, Robin, and a motorcycle. For Baby Mac—who truly wants for nothing because Bubby has it all and shares it all—I opted for a stuffed Mickey Mouse. According to Megan, he loves Mickey and Bubby never did, so there were no Mickeys in the house.

The day the package arrived, Megan texted me the following photos of the boys upon first opening their Easter gifts from Gramma. 

I think Gramma did okay this time.

Lesson learned.

Today's question:

What was the highlight of your Easter/Passover holiday?

Irrefutable proof

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There's been much discussion and debate among family and friends as to whom Baby Mac takes after—Mommy Megan or Daddy Preston.

Since Baby Mac first arrived on the scene, I've always leaned toward him taking after Preston's side of the family. Many folks agreed. Even Megan.

This week, though, Megan stumbled across some old photos of herself at Baby Mac's age and matched up one of her photos with a recent one of her baby boy:

Megan on the left; Baby Mac on the right.

While the photo may be a tad blurry, the bottom line is crystal clear: Baby Mac irrefutably looks just like his mama!

Debate settled.

Today's question:

Do your children look more like their mom or their dad?

Long-distance grandma = long-distance mom

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Baby Mac is sick. Again. Seems like my youngest grandson has continuously battled bugs of this sort and that ever since he was just a few months old.

This time Baby Mac has an especially nasty bug, of the croup and bronchiolitis sort. Megan called me Tuesday on the drive home from the pediatrician, where Baby Mac and his Mommy had to endure the trauma of Mac's first-ever nebulizer treatment. It was horrific—for both—with Mac screaming from beginning to end.

My poor babies. I imagine it was no fun at all for either. I can only imagine such treachery because as a mother, I never had to do such a thing, never had to administer a breathing treatment for a sick child. In all honesty, my kids were—thankfully!—relatively healthy. Now that Megan's a mom, she realizes that. It's something we've discussed often, as both my grandsons seem to be sick a lot, and Megan thinks there's some magical answer to keeping kids healthy, one she's not yet been privy to.

"Am I just a bad mom?" she pleaded for an answer Tuesday. "What am I supposed to be doing that I'm not?"

Usually when Megan asks that question, my first response—selfish as it may be—is, "You need to move out of that <cuss> desert and back home to the mountains."

Not this time, though. Because Megan was on the verge of tears. Because she was scared. And because she was sitting in the car in the garage having just reached home from the doctor's office and had a sick nine-month-old zonked out in his carseat, exhausted from the traumatic treatment, as well as Bubby sitting quietly beside him, and they all needed to get into the house.

"You're doing everything you're supposed to, Megan," I told her. "You got the baby to the doctor and he's being taken care of. That's what you were supposed to do. There's just a lot of crud going around right now and Mac just keeps getting it, for whatever reason. It's nothing you are doing or not doing."

Jim, who was home for lunch and part of our call, confirmed to Megan that a mom he works with has young kids who are sick far more often than was the norm when our kids were little. It's just the way it is nowadays, he said, for reasons we don't know.

"It'll be okay," I told her. "Just get the kids inside and call me later."

It's exactly such times that the distance from my grandbabies, from my daughter, are the hardest. I couldn't just hop in the car and head over to her place to help her out, to hug my sick grandson or, more importantly, to hug my stressed-out daughter.

The most I could do was text her a few hours later, when I figured things had calmed down a bit: 

Despite the crappy day and a croupy kid, at least my daughter still had her sense of humor. Jamaican or not, Megan is indeed a good mon—just because it sounds so cool.

And perpetually sick kids or not, she is indeed a good mom, too. Just one who needs a hug from her own mom—yet lives too far away to get exactly that.

Today's question:

What are your thoughts on kids being sick more often than they were back in the day—that day being when you were a kid or when your kids were kids?