CiCi Heaven

I spent three days in Montgomery with eleven high school juniors going up and down stairs in the Capitol and State House, but it only took one year-old granddaughter to wear me out! Whew! Parenting is definitely for the young!

But I dearly loved every minute I got to spend babysitting my beautiful, precious granddaughter Kate last weekend while her parents took a much-needed vacation ski trip to Utah! That one-on-one time I got to spend with her was priceless! Although she got sick with an ear infection, and we spent four hours in the Urgent Care on Sunday (and I forgot the pacifier) with about a hundred really sick people (I disinfected Kate, me and everything we took with us when we got back to the house)!



The first night was an experience. Kate has a precious room upstairs with a really nice baby bed. But these new baby beds (that convert as they grow up) don't have "let down sides" like our old-fashioned baby beds did; and me, being a little (maybe a lot) on the vertically-challenged side, couldn't reach all the way down to the bottom of the bed! So after I rocked her to sleep, I tried to lay Kate in her bed. Since I couldn't reach all the way down, I tried to "drop and roll" her into it -- it wasn't that far down! But it did wake her up -- and I knew that wasn't going to work. Casey said not to sleep with her in the regular bed because she might fall out-- so what else could I do? I got a comforter off the bed and laid down on the floor with her to sleep! Even with the comforter and carpet, that floor was still pretty hard!

She was so funny! A couple of times she woke up during the night, and she would put her face right up to mine and look at me so seriously -- like she was thinking, "Who in the heck is this person on the floor with me?" Then she'd flop back down and go back to sleep!

She also likes to run her hands through your hair while she's trying to go to sleep, then she'll grab your hair at the top and just pull -- and pull -- and pull! Gladly my hair is still intact!

So the next night, I said the heck with it and we slept in Casey and John's bed with pillows piled up on the sides to "fence her in"! That worked just fine -- she didn't fall out -- and my back was saved!

Of course, I just about let her do whatever she wanted! We played farm -- watched Elmo videos (she loves Elmo) -- read books (really fast, you have to skip the words!) -- took walks around the neighborhood with Cherokee (their black lab I also babysat) -- sang "Itsy Bitsy Spider" -- and played with the remote controls! She doesn't mind telling you (with grunts and turning her head) when she doesn't want to eat any more or she doesn't like something (like her medicine)! In fact, she kind of reminds me of her mom Casey when she was little! It's amazing how much you forget once yours get grown! It's also amazing how fast it all comes back -- and how much things have changed in thirty years since I had kids!

Thanks, Casey and John, for letting me have this time with my beautiful granddaughter! Although I had to go back to work to get a rest -- I wouldn't take a million dollars for that fun CiCi and Kate time!