The joys of grand-littles!
With 13 children who inexplicably still insist on calling me dad, (go figure), one might imagine I would have a grandchild or two running around.
Well, they would be very right.
With seven (but soon to be eight!) grand-littles, it seems everywhere I turn I am tripping over a screaming, crawling, eating, barfing, disgustingly messy but enormously wonderful grand-thing.
For a broken down one-legger like me – attempting to navigate the wake of daily disaster my grand-monsters leave out for the sole purpose of trying to get me to trip and fall for their viewing pleasure – can be a very difficult and sometimes painful experience.
For the last several years, I have fallen so often and with such regular frequency, I have gotten to become intimately familiar with the ground in and around my house. Seriously, Greg and I are on a first name basis. I really hate Greg. LOL Sorry Greg.
Trust me…Greg will pay me back later. Greg always does.
So, since my most recent above-knee amputation trying to get around mountains of toys, not to mention my wife’s ever-growing menagerie of helpless “rescue” fur-beasts, is not always an easy or safe task.
Now my doctors and other amputees will be quick to point out you can only “technically” have one amputation per limb and each subsequent amputation on that limb is actually referred to as a “bone revision.” As if that made my third “bone revision” any more pleasant!
Of course I talk about my Demon-Spawn…er…I mean grand-babies with all the love and pride a Papa can possibly muster. So, y’all can stop the private message hate train already! As if…. HAHA Keep those flowery messages coming, I look forward to waking up to them every day!
But back to my story about grand-kids…. or toys, or was it mountains? I am pretty sure it was something like that… but, unfortunately I digress. I tend to do that a bit too often nowadays. Just kick me in my fake leg. My wife does it all the time.
So anyway, the other day I was working away on the computer in my bedroom when I heard my beautiful wife Robin and and my sweet little grand daughter “Boo” getting into the shower together. Boo loves taking big-girl showers with her Bubbie. So from the next room I listen to the following conversation:
Robin: (To Boo) Honey, what are you staring at?
Boo: (Sounding as if in awe) Bubbie. You’ve got bewwwwbies.
Robin: (Barely holding back giggles) Well, yes Boo. I do.
Boo: But they’re so BIG, Bubbie!
Robin: Well yes, Boo. I’m an adult.
Boo: (Sounding almost sad) I don’t have bewbies………Yet…….But I’m going to have bewbies….SOON!
I swear, you could almost hear the devilish delight in that last line, so innocently spoken by a 3 year old.
It was then that I realized I had lately begun to observe an interesting fascination between Boo and her newly discovered girl parts.
For weeks now, she has been going around obsessing about and talking about girl parts to anyone unfortunate enough to get cornered by her. Of course, she is three. When they are young like that and they get their little brains stuck on some new tidbit of joy and/or embarrassment, all you can do is wait for the initial fascination to wane.
Over the years I have learned, sometimes the hard way, that the more embarrassed you are about a topic and the more desperately you want your little ones to stop talking about those awkward and sometimes embarrassing subjects, the more stuck your little beloved will get on that topic of conversation. No matter how inappropriate or awkward we as adults think that subject might be….what is that old saying? Out of the mouths of babes or something to that effect.
Regardless, one thing I have definitely come to know for sure is that you can’t really appreciate that fact until you have already wrecked your own kids and moved on to floundering your way along through the next generation of innocent little cherubs.
Trust me about this.
But unless you have a fleet of littles always running around and constantly underfoot you couldn’t possibly expect to hear and see some of the wacky things you inevitably hear fall out of their….adorable….little….faces.
However, if you listen from the perspective of a grandparent, you soon start to get just an inkling that your children’s children are absolutely insane. Every time you ever secretly or openly wished your children’s children would be just as impossibly devious, cunning beyond their years and absolutely bizarre as they were, you can now see what you have done. What YOU created!
However, if you can see past that obvious insanity and if you are willing to have a bit of a sense of humor, you might learn you have a very interesting and truly awesome, if not nearly impossible to comprehend grand-little.
Yet sometimes their actions almost defy logic, were it not for their pure and innocent simplicity. Especially when you see one of your Minions licking the full length mirror in your bedroom and the following conversation ensues:
Me: Boo, what are you doing, silly?
Boo: (Ignores me and takes another lick)
Me: (Trying VERY HARD not to laugh) Did I just see you lick the mirror?
Boo: (Very coyly and innocently) Yesssssss…
Me: (Really, REALLY trying hard not to laugh) Well, why in the world would you lick the mirror, honey?
Boo: (Completely, 100% serious) Because I wanted to know what my tongue tasted like.
I literally burst out laughing so hard I nearly choked to death on the awful and bland, but healthy!, old-man, soft diet, lunch I had been enjoying beyond measure <insert sarcasm here>.
You just can not make that kind of preciousness up. Well, you could, but you would have to add a ridiculous canned laugh-track and it just wouldn’t be nearly as funny.
Of course, sometimes the hilarity ensues after an innocent misunderstanding.
About a week later Boo came marching into my room while I was typing away and she very excitedly announced that Carl’s Jr. was giving away FREE BOOBS with all their Kid’s Meals!
I picked my jaw up off the ground and tried to go back to typing and Bubbie pretended she was reading her book and hadn’t heard anything at all – because she is clearly much smarter than I am.
I tried to ask Boo what she meant, but she just went on bragging about how much she LOVED her free boobs!
While Bubbie wisely went on pretending not to be hearing anything at all, I must have asked for clarification three times. But Boo just ignored me and went on and on her new boobs and how much she loved them! I was afraid to ask any further questions, but Boo made sure to let me know they were HER boobs and they had been TOTALLY FREE!
After Boo triumphantly walked out of the room, presumably to go tell someone else about the great deal to be had for the price of a Kid’s Meal, my wife and I just looked at each other – like only grandparents can – and we both went back to what we had been doing.
Or at least tried to.
All I knew was my little Boo Bear was quite happy with the new boobs Carl’s Jr. had been so kind to provide with her miniature meal and I wondered about what our crazy world was coming to.
Later that night, all I could think about was how much times had changed. When I was a kid, the Kid’s Meals toys were fun, but generally cheap and useless. But free boobs? Not very cheap and rarely useless.
It wasn’t until the next day that I just happened to see a commercial for Carl’s Jr’s latest Kid’s Meal toys at the time, which featured the character Boov, from Dreamworks recently released movie Home.
Imagine my relief. (o.0)
For the record, Boov is the blue and purple character wearing the spinning cat as a hat.
But you never know when that innocent fascination will suddenly turn to revulsion and outright disgust with a three year old.
I was barely over the shocking Boov incident when, a few weeks later, I was once again typing away like a demon-possessed monkey when I heard the following truly bizarre conversation that could only originate with a three year old:
Boo: (While sitting on the BIG GIRL toilet in our bathroom) BUBBIE!!!!
Bubbie: (Answering from shower) What Boo?
Boo: (Sounding a bit panicked) BUUUUBBBBIIIEEEEE!!!!!
Bubbie: (Already jumping out of the shower and running – naked – to the bathroom)
Boo: BUBBIE!!! I HAVE A HOLE IN MY PEE-PEE!!!!
Bubbie: (Choking back laughter) Well of course you do honey, that is how you go to the bathroom.
Boo: (Sounding absolutely horrified) But, BUBBIE!!!! I DON’T WANT IT!!!!
(INSANE FUNNY STUFF, RIGHT? But wait….there’s MORE!)
Boo: (Suddenly distracted, after seeing her nekkid, dripping wet, grandmother standing in the doorway for the first time and sounding outright disgusted) Bubbie. Put those THINGS away! NOBODY wants to see THOSE!!!
So, it suddenly occurred to me today, that with all the crazy, bizarre and sometimes incomprehensible things my grand littles say and do, I could probably write a book about the unbelievable things I have seen and heard from my mini-mini-me’s. Well, at least a short, picture book.
Regardless, I will leave my readers with this short explanation, because people constantly ask me how I was crazy enough to end up with so many kids. All I can say is, it all started innocently enough, as most stories do: (Just stop me if you’ve heard me tell this one…)
It was the dark ages of the early 90’s. The fun “Big Hair Days” of the 80’s had come to an unceremonious demise and “grunge bands” were all the rage.
Walking into a Babies ‘R’ Us one cold and quiet morning I was greeted by the sole front register clerk. I can still remember the conversation as if it were yesterday.
As I walked into the slightly disorganized but kid-friendly store, the teenaged clerk greeted me indifferently, like only someone who works for minimum wage around screaming minions all day possibly could. I walked over to his register and waited for the reprobate to acknowledge my existence.
When I had been standing in front of the pimple-faced teen for a few minutes and he could no longer justifiably ignore me, he put down his copy of Kush Today and (pleasantly / mockingly?) greeted me with, “Good morning, SIR.”
I wondered if I had actually heard the extra emphasis he placed on the crotchety title, or if I was just imagining things, once again. I also wondered why it now bothered me to be called sir when I had been calling older men sir my entire life. I wondered about the origin of the word sir. I was lost in thought wondering about those questions and fifty others, when the whippersnapper broke my (lack of) concentration.
Is there anything I can help you find?” he repeated, clearly annoyed at being bothered. How many times he had repeated himself, I couldn’t tell you, but the impatient hooligan was definitely starting to sound more than a bit annoyed at the sudden inconvenience of having to actually do HIS JOB. Go figure.
I looked around a bit nervously, but very dramatically. Lowering my voice to just above a whisper, I finally answered him, saying, “Yeah…….I’m here to buy a baby.”
The clerk immediately appeared to get all flustered and he stammered, “But sir! This is Babies ‘R’ Us…we don’t actually sell BABIES!”
I tried to calm the young man, but I wasn’t about to be swayed. “Just give me my baby, NOW, so I can be on my way.”
Nearly panicking, the kid just kept looking around for a manager or someone else to come save him from the deranged old man standing in front of him trying to broker the sale of an actual, living child.
I finally allowed my frustration to show a bit and my voice was stern and cross when I forcefully said, “Look pal! I’m in a hurry. It’s been a long night, I’m tired and I just wanna go to bed. So just sell me my damn baby and let me be on my way home.”
The clerk looked shocked and horrified and stammered, “But, but, but SIR!
Finally, I had endured all of the nonsense I was going to take from that argumentative punk. I slapped a $100 bill down on the counter and slowly slid the bill towards the clerk, who immediately relaxed, looked around the rest of the store, took the $100 bill and calmly said, “Alright sir. Meet me around the back of the building in five minutes.”
