This date is so cool, I just had to do a post to use it!
Look at these two sweet, innocent little faces!
I wave my white flag in surrender. Yes, I have met my match!
Three or four afternoons a week I welcome these little granddaughters at my door for an afternoon with Grandma. Sometimes I have only one at a time but mostly I have both at once.
Abbi, the older one, is 2 1/2 years old. I have been watching her three afternoons a week since she was three months old. I don't know how she has gotten cuter everyday but she has! Her bright blue eyes and blond hair are just beautiful. Now that she is talking and showing wisdom beyond her years, she's a source of constant entertainment. Most days she wants to have a tea party.
I make up the "tea" using milk and chocolate syrup. Abbi sips it and shivers and declares "it's hot". We can sit for an hour sipping, pouring and nibbling our "crumpets". Abbi can run me ragged in record time all by herself most days. We go from tea party to Candyland, to playing hide and seek in the house, coloring, decorating gingerbread houses or making cupcakes, finding hidden pictures in the Highlights magazine for her age, putting on make-up and painting fingernails, eating applesauce with "pink" sprinkles on it, to playing in the princess castle that stands proudly in the corner of my living room.
Baby Mackayla (Abbi calls her Baby Kayla) is 1 1/2 years old. She is our little preemie, born at 1 lb 14 oz. When I first started watching her we used her feeding tube to give her formula every three hours. I got to be pretty good at keeping her entertained the 45 minutes it took to feed her while connected to the pump. Once she started eating on her own, I shifted gears and now keep a ready supply of Mac and Cheese, and other finger foods to have ready. She still has the feeding tube in her tummy but it's only used at night to give her the extra fluids she didn't take on her own during the day. We hope it can be removed sometime soon. When I have Mackayla by herself, she is an inquiring, sweet little toddler. She will sit on my lap and look at books, play happily with toys, explore the kitchen cabinets, push all the
buttons on the DVD player, stereo and laugh a lot. I look at her and remember her many months in NICU and how her dark eyes would look at me, melting me into a puddle. I still adore those dark eyes. She got them from her daddy, our middle son.
Now, add these two little sweetpeas together at Grandma's and Papa's house. Oh dear! My house turns into baby-central. Suddenly my floor is literally covered with toys, crackers, little girl shoes and carseats, diaper bags and pink coats and hats. (Abbi insists most things in her world are in the color Pink! The suddenly calm atmosphere when there is only one girl at a time becomes a whirlwind of squealing, running, demanding little girls. Abbi and Mackayla go into the pink princess castle/tent and I watch it shake as they rattle it with their hands and voices. They scurry in and out of the tent and the little princesses delight in having each other to play with. For my part, I have to intervene when Abbi decides all the toys are hers or when Mackayla loses her balance and falls over. And, of course, there is a potty chair I'm still trying to bribe Abbi to use (she tells me she just wants to play and uses the potty chair only at her house) and the diapers for Mackayla that she will only let me change if she is standing up! By the time my husband gets home from work and our grown kids come by to retrieve their precious little one's this Grandma is waving the white flag for the day. Dinner is often not even started and a path from the front door is walked only at one's own risk. I think I've even sat at the table propping my head up with my hands and staring off into space as the family starts to gather after their days at work. Yes, I have met my match with these little dolls! I raised five children but I was younger when I did that. Luckily enough I recover fast, getting a head start by falling asleep on the sofa sometimes. By the next day, I'm ever so anxious to watch out the
window for the arrival of the little girls again! Their little faces just make my day and delight me through and through. When the few days go by when I don't see them I go into withdrawl. What a blessing it is to be Grandma!
I was so surprised to find a package on the porch today addressed to me!
