There's a Lot I Forgot About Babies: The Grammy Diaries

By Terry Pickens

Join Terry and her husband Jim as they explore the world through the eyes of their new grandson. Their experiences will keep you laughing and nodding with recognition as they fumble through diaper changing, feeding, and playing with a wiggly and independent-minded baby. Much to their surprise, they find that the world is a much shinier and more interesting place than they thought. This book is for families to enjoy together and it’s the perfect gift for new grandparents.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Sep 30, 2016
• ISBN: 9781483582993

Book preview

35Wow!

1

Grammy and Papa Jim

Go Shopping

W hat are you doing? I asked my spouse in honest bewilderment.

I’m comparing strollers, he said.

But you’re looking at the three biggest and most expensive models in the store.

You get what you pay for, he said without taking his eyes off the Cadillac version.

Who is this man masquerading as my husband? I wondered. After all, the shopping excursion had started simply enough. All during our daughter-in-law’s pregnancy we’d been excited about becoming grandparents, but we’d delayed purchasing baby items to have on hand at our house. I think we couldn’t imagine a baby in our lives after being child-free for the last six years and infant-free for decades. We were enjoying freedom from parenting responsibilities, and I was definitely enjoying my first year of retirement.

Baby Boy Damon arrived on schedule late in February. I had, in a moment of insanity, promised his parents—our son, Chris, and daughter-in-law, Mary—that I would take care of him for a couple of months when Mary’s six weeks of maternity leave were up. Once the darling baby was on the scene, however, six weeks seemed too long to wait to set up a cozy corner of our house for him. Here’s the thing: Jim and I considered ourselves to be practical people. We prided ourselves in our ability to sift through marketing ploys and buy only the items that would serve our needs. Typically, we bought everything from appliances to cars without a lot of bells and whistles. Jim’s strong belief was that the more gadgets or functions attached to any given product, the more there was to go wrong. My strong belief was that gadgets and functions increased the need to read instruction manuals. And then there was our underlying suspicion, as children of the sixties, that corporate America couldn’t be trusted. In other words, we were on to them.

In keeping with past practice, therefore, we laid out a shopping strategy that not only included what we needed but how much we were willing to spend. As Jim noted, babies are infants for such a short period of time that there was no need to get carried away, and I agreed. Basically, we only needed something for Damon to sleep in and some kind of carrier to prop him up when he was at our house.

And so, innocent as lambs, we entered Target and confidently strode past any number of attractive displays on our way to the baby department. However, between entering the baby section of the store and exiting through the front doors, I became completely disoriented. My confusion began when we were faced with bewildering choices in multi-function kid containers. Take, as an example, the Eddie Bauer Play Yard. As I stood there, I pondered which was more absurd: that a leading purveyor of upscale outdoor clothing and camping equipment sold baby furniture or that the term play pen had apparently met the Word Police, and had been politically corrected to a play yard. Wouldn’t do to have the little tykes in a pen with its connotations of animals and criminals, you know.

But back to the multifunctional capabilities—not only was it a portable play yard, it was also a bassinette, changing table, and crib. And that wasn’t all: it had a built-in nightlight as well as a battery-operated device that attached to the top rail and jiggled the whole play yard, kind of like the coin-operated Magic Fingers that used to be in motel rooms. To further insure a contented baby, it had a music box that played Rock-a-Bye-Baby and Mozart while a mobile rotated stuffed puppies over the infant’s head.

According to the box, everything was packaged into one easily assembled or disassembled Eddie Bauer gym bag. I eyed it suspiciously. It didn’t look like it would be all that easy to assemble or transport. I had to admit, however, that the camouflage print on the exterior of the play yard and gym bag was a nice touch for babies who hunt. Jim said it was a marvel of engineering design.

While I was still thinking about jiggling babies and Mozart, Jim had made his selection and moved on to infant seats. If I was bewildered by the kid containers, I was totally baffled by the elaborate seating options. The next thing I knew, Jim was wrestling another big box into the shopping cart. Look at this! he said. It’s a seat, a swing, and a toddler rocking chair all in one, and it has all these cool toys hanging from it. It’s great! Oh, yeah—it plays Mozart, too. Mozart’s supposed to be good for baby brains. The whole thing seemed to take multitasking to a new level.

At Jim’s request, I hastened off to get two more shopping carts. Before I left, however, I asked him if he didn’t want to comparison shop at Walmart. No, he said, Target’s got better stuff, and I don’t want to stint just to save a few bucks. I was stunned by his transformation into doting grandfather. How did he know Target had better things? Our house was full of Walmart-purchased items.

When I returned with the carts, he had three models of strollers lined up. I had my eye on an inexpensive umbrella-type stroller, because it would be so easy to collapse and throw into the car. Alas, the economy model lost out to a three-in-one baby transportation system. And I’m not making that up—the print on the box said it was a transportation system. It consisted of an infant carrier, car seat, and a stroller. It looked as if these things had become status symbols for the upwardly mobile family, but I kept my opinion to myself because Jim was having too much fun to squelch him. So about an hour after we arrived, we exited the store with several hundred dollars’ worth of merchandise piled haphazardly in three shopping carts. The plan to get the basics was in tatters, but Jim was elated. I had been married to the guy for thirty-six years and had no idea that baby furniture would make him goofier than sweet little booties made me.

In the good old days, when we were raising our children, it was all about pretending that the baby just fit into our lives with a minimum of fuss. Back then we didn’t have much disposable income, so I suppose some of our frugality was in recognition of that fact. But the times had changed, and we must have changed with them, because we entered Target as sober, sensible, and altogether practical people but we exited as satisfied consumers. It was at that point that I began privately to refer to Damon as He Who Must Not Be Denied. Papa Jim was his first acolyte.

2

Operating Instructions

One would’ve thought Mother Nature would send a user’s manual with babies, or at least provide a phone number to a help desk. The fact of the matter was that I didn’t think I had any knack for tending to babies. As excited as I was to care for Damon, I was also apprehensive. I came from a small family, so the only newborn I got to practice on was my son, Chris. Daughter Katie was fifteen months old when she joined our family from an orphanage in Korea, and she was self-sufficient from the get-go. But here I was now, a grandmother, and although that word conjured up images of comfort, security, nurturing, and wisdom, those traits were not automatically conferred upon me with the arrival of my grandson.

Just a few weeks before Damon’s birth, I left my highly responsible and visible job as the director of the public library. I had worked in the library since I was thirteen; I was confident in my professional duties and I loved being a librarian. I told myself that if I could juggle library administrative duties, elections, fundraising, public speaking, and schmoozing with politicians, caring for an infant should be a snap.

When Damon was just a couple of weeks old, I was presented with the opportunity to prove that I could be the sort of grandmother I wanted to be. Chris, Mary, and Damon had been doing quite well, but Chris had recently taken a new job, and his company unexpectedly sent him to North Dakota for sixteen days. The timing wasn’t great for Chris or his beleaguered bride, but since he was new to the company, he had no choice. The lack of spousal support and the irregular sleep habits of the very young led Mary to have a minor meltdown and to accept my offer to keep the baby for a few hours so she could nap. Goodness knew that, thanks to Target and Papa Jim’s love of clever baby furniture, we had equipped our home with everything Damon would need when he came for a visit.

Mary and baby arrived around noon, and Mary looked as if a nap wouldn’t begin to cover her sleep deficit. I fed her a nourishing soup lunch and shooed her out the door. She shed a few tears at leaving her darling for the first time, but her call to sleep was strong and she headed home.

And Boom! Just like that, I was alone with The Baby. Good grief, did Mary really think I was competent to handle such responsibility? Had lack of sleep left her totally bereft of her senses? Nearly frozen with anxiety, it crossed my mind that I might have my own meltdown. Through the mists of memory I recalled the last time I had suffered such nervousness—it was when I was left alone with my baby boy, Chris. I remember feeling quite indignant when my husband went back to work and my mother went out of town. What made them think I was grown up enough to take care of a tiny baby? Why, I was hardly more than a child myself, even if I was twenty-eight years old.

Thirty years later and I still didn’t feel like a competent adult. Unfortunately, it didn’t take Damon long to realize his Grammy was more than a tad nervous. He stiffened in my arms and began to wail. What to do, what to do? I knew he wasn’t hungry because Mary had just fed him. I checked his diaper and verified it was as pristine as it was when it came out of the bag. What if he was still crying when Mary returned? What would she think? Arrrggghhh!

Since there was no one else to hand Damon to, I finally regained a measure of sanity. Taking a deep breath, I sat down in Papa Jim’s recliner and began to rock. As we rocked, I hummed a lullaby and—like magic—we both calmed down. Damon soon fell asleep, and I drifted into a reverie as I brought to mind the lullabies I had sung to Chris and Katie. When Damon’s daddy was an infant, he liked Hush Little Baby. Later, Katie preferred Good Night Irene. Of course with that song, I had to leave out the verse about jumping in the river. Now all these years later, the song that crept unbidden into my mind was Tura-lura-Lura, That’s an Irish Lullaby. Since I couldn’t remember more than the first verse, I improvised. It’s amazing how many words rhyme with by.

There was a lot of irony in the fact that babies liked it when I sang or hummed. My inability to carry a tune in a bucket was well known in the family and subject to much teasing. Once, Jim suggested that I put the tune