Are We Too Old For This?

My wife is Noni, I am Granddad to our grandchildren. Out of a misguided sense of making life easier for our son and daughter-in-law to take a vacation, I, perhaps a little more eagerly than my wife, volunteered to watch their soon-to-be two year old son, Preston, in our home.

Obviously memory loss had something to do with such rash volunteering. Like forgetting how it was to raise seven children. One of our children, our second daughter, at age two was an intense, dynamo of exploratory energy who couldn’t be trusted for an instant. Loveable. Exciting. Destructive. Dangerous. Our grandson Preston came from the same genetic pool.

The worst of toddlerhood revisited. We needed to know where Preston was all of the time. We had to alternate showers while getting ready in the morning so that one grandparent could have an eye on him. If either of us had to accomplish something, the other had to take over in tag team fashion.

Temporary disappearances were a cause for alarm. Preston would go on his little search and destroy missions when he was tired or bored. It was when we would hear a loud audible uh and ooh’s followed by a belly laugh that we knew we were in trouble - like when he was ripping apart the mattress in his crib.

We moved the bedroom phone up to the upper shelf after hearing a wicked little laugh. Preston had pulled the receiver as far as the cord could go and then watched it retract when he let go - kind of like a retractable measuring tape. Zooom!

Our house and garage are not child proof. Our yard has no fences. Preston easily mastered the opening of our locked doors and was focused on fleeing whenever he got a chance. Talk about geo-spatial intelligence. His sense of global positioning gives him an awareness of exactly where the community swing set and swimming pool are - down a hillside from our house - and the shortest path to get there. It is called a beeline and a scurry before the big people in his life decide otherwise.

He crawled into our cars on two occasions, scooted to the driver’s seat, gleefully honked the horn repeatedly and was quite miffed when he had to be extracted him from big "cause and effect" drama he was creating. After that, the cars were locked.

Preston is a budding electronics geek or should I say "demolition expert." The TV is definitely one of his main "toys". He continually worked all the buttons on the TV until it became inoperable.

Preston would cram any DVD he could find into the DVD player. After two extractions to remove them by shaking the DVD player upside down, we removed the DVD player entirely.

Non-disciplinarians to the core. Preston understands pushing buttons, including ours. When he was reprimanded about doing something, he immediately intensified his efforts to do the thing which had been disapproved of, watching with great glee and relishing our reactions.

It was a big game. You have to get on the mean side to let him know it wasn’t a game - something we were probably good at when our children were little. But now in our 60s the challenge to our authority is tinged with bemusement, a little bemusement, and not a whole lot of amusement.

How about swim time? Preston decided that the swimming pool was the perfect receptacle for the decorative rocks. Our efforts to be emphatic and stern were in vain. He did learn a new two word sentence, "No rocks!", but that didn’t stop him from chucking rocks into the pool. We decided his parents could be the ones to teach him the purpose of a swimming pool. We retreated from the challenge with honor and impotence.

Early on in our experience, when I wanted to go out to eat, my wife said, "What we need is a babysitter." Exactly! We understand the need. Too bad it was only the second day of what would be an eight day ordeal. My thought was to teach him to whimper in his sleep, "Momma, never leave me again." I was hoping he would have that down by the time his parents returned.

As the days stretched on, I began to hum the song, "One More Day," from Les Mis. I changed the lyrics a little to, "One more day to liberation." In exchanging e-mails with our son and daughter-in-law, we reassured them that we weren’t tired of their little boy, only tired. We complained because it made us feel better. If we reported that all was pleasant and problem-free, they would know we were lying anyway.

Lessons learned. I don’t know how young parents do it. And we’ve already done it. My wife remembers because she did most of it. Where was I anyway?

The greatest thing you can do for a Mom is to give her a break from her children - at least for a little while. We did get to know our little grandson’s personality and bonded with him. Despite it all, it was a joyous occasion to see Preston back with his parents - joyous for everyone concerned.

Our five daughters noted what we had done for our son. I believe our names were penciled in on a few lists. Yikes!