When playing "would you rather," my husband always comes up with two absolutely horrifying choices. When I finally pick the one that is marginally less terrible, he says, "What you failed to ask . . . " and then tacks on some awful caveat that makes my slightly-less-appalling choice clearly the worst one. So I hate playing with him and usually refuse to answer.
Until recently, when he asked, "Would you rather have a baby now at age 48 or have our 21-year-old daughter have a baby now?"
"Her."
"What about her hopes and dreams???"
"She can go pursue them while I watch the baby and then I'll give it back at night. Easy-peasy."
The truth is, of course, I don't want her or any woman to have a baby before she's ready to, but I am pretty sure I will very much enjoy being a grandma.
Earlier this week, my (adopted) kids' older (biological) sister* and her nearly-two-year-old came to stay with us for a few days. I was reminded once again of how the English language is inadequate when it comes to having enough words for family members when your family looks like ours. We don't have a solitary word to explain what our kids' sister relationship is to us (or to our biological kids) and that's just one example.
However, my nickname is Gigi and that is apparently an acceptable name for "Grandma" now. You can bet I taught the little guy to call me that. Here are some highlights from our days of playing Grandparents:
1. Oh my god the tiny little hands and feet. Swoon.
2. Case of the sillies (& making big sister in Pittsburgh jealous)
14-year-old son: "Yeah, I like babies when they have functional legs."
4. Valuable lake time:
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| Teaching him important things in life, like how to squirt water at his uncle on a kayak |
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| I maintain that the two are not mutually exclusive. |
5. But then at the end of the day . . . back to his mother he went! That's truly the best part of grandparenting (real or pretend), right?
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