All grandmas great and small
Today was my grandmother's 90th birthday, so Harvey my mom and me headed into Brookline to meet my brother and Grandma for a birthday lunch.
I have never been so exhausted by a 90th birthday party.
My mother is like crack cocaine to babies. She is engaging ramped up to eleven: every moment offering a new game or a fresh toy or a snack of one kind or another. If she's in a room with multiple adults Harvey will scream bloody murder if he's being held by anyone but her. Wonderful for him I guess, but how long can a one year old stay on a coke binge? When he's with her for an afternoon he comes home completely wasted. He sleeps for two hours straight and then moans for the rest of the evening. Either his brain can't take the overstimulation, or he goes into withdrawl. Either way, it's a difficult situation for his parents, and for grandma-parental relations. Like, "Yeah mom, Harvey LOVES you. Listen, do you think you can watch him for LESS time next week?
When I went back to work after Harvey was born, many people comforted me with sentiments like, "At least your close to family and you have so many people around who love him." And I'm thinking, "yeah, I hope he can survive it."
Tomorrow we're planning a whole day out in celebration of our upcoming anniversary. We've organized several switch-offs between Harvey's two grandmothers so that my mom can play the shit out of him in the middle of the afternoon and Dan's mom can make sure he actually naps. Either way he'll be a wrecktastic disaster by the time we get him home tomorrow evening, but I'm reasonably sure he'll be alive and breathing. And when he recovers a few days later we'll forget about the screaming and remember the time we spent going down all those water-slides.
Yes, we're headed to Water Country. It's not your 5th anniversary every day, after all! Have some fun!
comments
I was hurt beyond words by this post, and Leah has dismissed my feelings saying it is just humor. I felt that she is saying I am acting inappropriately in a way that is injurious to my grandson, whom I love with all my heart. That accusation is absolutely devastating to me.
I would like a jury here. Does anyone else understand why I would be hurt? Am I reading this incorrectly as Leah is indicating? Did you find it humorous? Does it sound at all hostile to you?
That's what grandparents are supposed to do - spoil the crap out of their grandchildren to the point of annoying the parents of said child. What I read from the following: "Either his brain can't take the overstimulation, or he goes into withdrawl." is that Harvey has a WONDERFUL time with his grandma and goes through withdrawl without her. My in-laws love my kids to death, but have the belief that a child is not a happy child unless well sugared. So after a day with their grandparents, I get my kids returned to me all sugared up and with no nap, which does not make for a very happy mama because I have to deal with the aftermath. But for my in-laws it's great. They have a wonderful time with the kids and my kids absolutely LOVE them to the point of completely ditching me when they walk through the door. And that just seems to be the way of life and I guess I will do it too when I am a grandma. Until then, I too will either complain about it or tell hilarious stories about it.