What I learned this week: Tattoos aren't as painful as I expected

I considered getting a tattoo years ago. I wanted something subtle and relatively small, and I flirted with the idea of getting a thin ankle bracelet tattoo of some sort. From what I hear, though, getting an ankle tattoo would be rather painful because there's so little fatty tissue on my ankles (well, on most days). I'm not a fan of pain, so I never got that — or any — tattoo.

Yesterday I finally got a tattoo, and it wasn't painful at all. I've no doubt that the pain-free application was because of the loving-yet-professional manner in which the tattoo artist worked. That tattoo artist being my grandson.

Bubby's tattooing technique elicited not even the slightest wince or grimace from Gramma as he applied the cheeriest of flower tattoos upon my ankle.

Tattoo work courtesy Bubby was done as a barter deal. Once he had completed my tattoo, I returned the favor by applying tattoos to him and his brother, Mac. The designs were admittedly less cheery than my smiling flower; the "Angry Birds" tatts were selected by each boy, as were the locations for their faux flair.

Despite Mac's woebegone look in the photo above, the process was as pain-free for my grandsons as it was for me. Which supported my assertion that getting a tattoo isn't as painful as I've assumed all these years. At least not when applied by my grandson — or by a grandma.

And that is what I learned this week.

Have a wonderful weekend, everyone. May it be as painless as the process of getting tattooed — with temporary tattoos, that is.

Today's question:

What did you learn this week? (And if you have a tattoo tale or two, please share.)

17 things I'll do this week

I'm flying to the desert today to spend a week with my grandsons. Here are...

17 things I'll do this week:
(in no particular order — except for No. 1)

1. Swelter in the desert heat.

2. Hug Bubby.

 

3. Cool down with my grandsons at the water park.

4. Hug Mac.

 

5. Jump with my grandsons at the indoor trampoline center (Kegels, don't fail me now!).

6. Hug Megan.

7. Sit with Bubby on one side and Mac on the other while enjoying Despicable Me 2 at the theater.

8. Collect more artwork from my grandsons for hanging on my refrigerator.

 

9. Take a picture or two (thousand).

10. Worry about scorpions and lizards crossing my path — or getting in my bed.

11. Watch Bubby jump from the diving board.

12. Be proud of Mac, who is reportedly potty-trained.

13. Teach Bubby how to play Froggy Boogie.

14. Think of my partner in grandparenting, who couldn't visit our grandsons with me (and find time to Facetime him with the boys).

15. Read Dr. Seuss' Bartholomew and the Oobleck and make oobleck.

16. Hug Bubby and Mac again... and again and again.

 

17. Be one heckuva happy grandma!

Today's question:

What will you do this week?

Picture this: Time flew, now he's 2

Mac celebrated his second birthday on Saturday.

Happy second birthday to my adorable and much-missed grandson No. 2.

Today's question:

June is a busy month for birthdays in our family. How many birthdays will your family celebrate this month?

Boys in a Batman pool

Bubby and Mac kicked off summer with their first swim in the Batman pool Gramma gave them last year.

Megan texted a photo of their first dip:

 

Megan also texted a video snippet of the Memorial Day fun:

Thank heavens for iPhones and a daughter who's willing to use hers quite wisely now and then to help this long-distance grandma endure the space between.

Today's question:

Where do you swim in the summer?

Two boys, one bedroom

Ever since Mac was born, he's had his own bedroom. Which meant Bubby had his own bedroom, too.

Mac did just fine in his very own room for the past nearly two years. He enjoyed hanging out alone there...

 

He endured breathing treatments there when sick...

He moved into his big boy bed there...

 

Mac loved being in his very own room.

Until the past few weeks.

Mac recently started showing up in Mommy's bed some mornings. He'd drag his sheets with him, and when Megan told him he needed to sleep in his own bed, he'd teasingly show Megan his sheets and say, "I seep my bed. Mommy bed."

Other mornings Megan would find Mac had crawled into Bubby's bed in the night, where big brother Bubby had scootched over to give his little brother a safe spot to sleep, and the two made it through the night together.

Mac is no longer happy to sleep by himself in his own room.

After trying a variety of measures to make Mac happy in his room, all with no success, Megan proposed to Bubby a solution for Mac's bed-hopping. Megan — gingerly, nonchalantly — asked Bubby how he'd like to have Mac move into his bedroom with him, so the two brothers could sleep in the same bedroom together rather than all alone in their own rooms.

Bubby's response? "Oh, Mom!" he exclaimed. "I've been dreaming about doing that for so long!"

In the blink of an eye, Mac's furniture was moved into Bubby's room. My two grandsons now happily share one bedroom. Mac's not hopped into anyone else's bed since.

Oh, how very different the situation when their mother was a child. Megan shared a bedroom with her younger sister, Andrea, for years. "Happily" is definitely not one of the words one might have used to describe the arrangement.

Megan and Andrea shared a room from the moment little Andie was born. In fact, Megan and Andrea and Brianna all shared a bedroom when Andrea was first born. We lived in a two-bedroom townhome — the townhome where, through a bizarre twist of fate, Brianna now lives on her own. Two bedrooms plus three kids and a mom and a dad, too, meant the three kids shared a bedroom. It was a large bedroom, the master suite of the home, actually. My three little girls had good times in their shared room.

The good times didn't last once we moved to a larger home, one where Brianna, the oldest, got her own room, and Megan and Andrea had to share a room. Oh. My. Goodness. Those two were at each other non-stop. Maybe it's because there's only 19 months between the two. Maybe it's because I failed miserably at teaching them to show love and respect for their sister... and their sister's belongings. Whatever the reason, two girls in one bedroom did. not. work.

At one point, the fighting over which side of the room belonged to whom became so heated that one of the girls — I can't recall which — applied masking tape directly down the center of the room. The idea was to designate permissable boundaries for each. The idea didn't work. For starters, the door to the bedroom was on one side of the room, allowing the owner of the "other" side to trespass as she pleased. Who "owned" the closet was another glitch in the plan.

By the time Megan and Andrea were in junior high, the only solution was to remodel our house so there were three bedrooms for the girls. Three girls, three bedrooms, one each. Yes, a tad extreme, but the bitching battling had gotten so bad that it was either that or end up with one of the girls killing the other.

If you've lived with teen girls, you know that's no exaggeration. If you've been a teen girl — with a teen sister, no less — you're likely vigorously nodding your head in agreement.

I was once a teen girl. With a teen sister, and several younger ones, too. I shared a bedroom with that teen sister. She was older — and tougher — than me, so she ruled the room. It was not fun. At all. It was so unfun, in fact, that we had many knock-down, drag-out, pile on top of one another on the double bed we shared incidents, all featuring hair-pulling and doing our best to pull out each other's oh-so-fashionable hoop earrings, too — preferably with a chunk of earlobe attached.

Not fun. I tired of my sister smoking cigarettes and putting them out under the edge of the rug; she tired of my hamster that continually escaped the Habitrail cage, ending up under the covers on her side of the bed. What saved us from killing one another? She left home to get married.

I'm pretty sure neither Bubby or Mac will need to settle for an ill-fated marriage in order to escape their shared bedroom. I'm also pretty sure they won't emulate the knock-down, drag-out fights my sister and I had or the tape-down-the-middle-of-the-room arrangements their mother had with their aunt. And I feel confident about saying that the two boys will never, ever consider killing one another while residing in the same bedroom.

No, I imagine the only killing going on in that one bedroom shared by those two boys will be the killer good time those kids will be having. Maybe it's the difference between boys and girls, between brothers and sisters.

All I can say about that, though, is where's the justice? I keep waiting for the payback Megan is supposed to suffer through as a parent, the fabled consequences for the trials and tribulations she put her mother through. Seems she'll get by scot-free, at least in terms of payback for her shared-bedroom years.

But then again... Megan and Preston are considering having more children eventually. I'm rooting for a set of twin girls — twin girls who have to share a bedroom.

Today's question:

What was your bedroom situation when you were growing up?

Photo replay: Cold turkey

After spending 10 days of 24/7 time with my grandsons, it's now been more than a week since I've seen their faces or heard their voices.
Going cold turkey stinks, to say the very least.

Bubby, Mac and Gramma at the zoo — April 26, 2013

Enjoy your Sunday!

Sing-a-long with Grandma

While visiting my grandsons, one of our favorite things to do was play Ring-a-Round-the-Rosie on the trampoline, with us all falling down in the most bouncy of ways.

The fun continued off the trampoline, as well, as Mac loved singing "pocka full posies" over and over with Gramma throughout my time there.

Today's fill-in-the-blank:

My go-to nursery rhyme to sing with kids is ______________.