Beauma Goes to Quebec City: Part Deux

When Tripp awoke from his nap, he let me know immediately that he was hungry. 


"Aaaa-AN!" he told me, babyspeak for "Where the hell is my food?"


"Hold on, buddy," I said, "Let's get you changed."


Tripp does not like to be changed, nor confined by an inept grandmother with vaseline on her fingers and a diaper in her teeth. It's sort of like wrestling a baby otter, but with me proffering shiny things like my watch or his mother's tooth brush to keep him from flipping his nakey butt off the end of the bed.


As we shared lunch, I played mama bird to my fledgling. I picked apart strawberries, peeled kiwi, bit blueberries in two, peeled grapes, diced bananas and shredded turkey.


"Dickum," proclaimed Tripp with approval.

Next, we played Stack the Plastic Containers of Coffee and Creamer.

We cleaned the carpet with mama's toothbrush, played Where's Beauma? (Behind the door.) Then, "Bu," said Tripp and it was time to read Baby Baa Baa, Moo Ba La La La ("And three singing pigs say la la la,") Truck Duck, and Carl's Crane. We read the books, stacked the books, toppled the books, then read them all again. And again.

We made faces.

And cracked each other up.

Then, we donned our outside clothes and strolled the Promenade des Gouverneurs boardwalk, waving to passersby; while Beauma made a few expensive phone calls, Tripp decided to inspect the grit inside these fascinating screw things.

When Tripp's mama heard about it, she was not happy.

"You let the baby play on the sidewalk?" 

"It's not a sidewalk, it's a boardwalk," I said. "There's a big difference."

"People spit on it, don't they?"

But, she didn't stay mad for too long, because we invented a game called EEK, the rules of which involved Beauma crawling into her room and hiding behind the bed, then squeaking to be found. The baby grabbed his mother's fingers and followed. 

"Eek," I hinted.

"Eeek," squeaked Tripp. And then he discovered me, and we giggled and played again and again. And again. 

We had a little Perrier break.

Then, the really exciting thing happened. We sort of knew it might happen, but still. We were just hanging out in the tonier of the two rooms, scruffling around on the floor, me just back from my single allotted hour at the gym, and I said to Tripp, "Go give your mama a kiss," and he WALKED over to her just like that, and licked her face or sort of nibbled her with his new teeth.

"Tripp!" We exclaimed. "Tripp, go give Beauma a kiss," Katherine said, and he toddled over a few steps, then a few more steps, and I got sort of teary, and sort of squeaked a few teary "eeks" to help him forget he was walking.

Katherine filmed her precious son with her I Phone, and she sent it to Tripp's Daddy immediately so he could feel all excited too, and not mind Beauma squeaking in the background all that much.

Beauma Goes to Quebec City: Part Un

"You've become a hotel snob," my daughter remarked in an accusing tone. We were ordering lunch in the terrace restaurant of the Hotel Frontenac in Quebec City, a mighty four-star fortress rising above the St. Lawrence River.

Perhaps I had made a disparaging remark about the lack of spa facilities, closed for renovation.


"Since you've been to the Breakers nothing is good enough," she continued, referring to my earlier stint as nanny to my grandson, Tripp, at the luxurious resort in Palm Beach nearly six months earlier. While Katherine organized events and off-site activities for 60 of her company's top employees, we kicked back in our suite, sporting our HOWL onesie and ordering room service.


"That's not true!" I protested. I watched my grandson in his borrowed highchair playing with brown paper cylinders of salt, and perused the menu. This time we were on a wining and dining scouting trip for the company's fall outing.


When the waiter bustled over to take our orders, I told him, "I'll have la salade Cesar avec les shrimps, s'il vous plait."


"Avec les crevettes?" The waiter repeated with that soupcon of disdain peculiar to the French.


Katherine ordered a junior club sandwich and fruit.


"Avec les shrimps?" she teased me after the waiter had departed.


"It says shrimps," I countered.


Katherine snorted and began to tear pieces of warm baguette into morsels the size of Tripp's pinky nail for her son.

My role as sherpa/nanny had begun stateside at 4AM that morning. I had been permitted a quick shower, and was then instructed to collect the luggage and proceed to the car. For a three-night stay, we had between us one baby, three suitcases, a stroller, a car seat encased in its own unwieldy cover, and 2 carry-ons each. Two flights, many hours, and countless verses of Eeensy Weensie Spider later, I was plucking organic O's from my hair and splattered with purple organic squeeze food. While Katherine strode majestically into the hotel lobby with the baby, I was responsible for piles of luggage, passports and tips.


We had adjoining rooms on the 12th floor facing the river. 


"Your room is sort of dark," my daughter noted, sailing through the connecting door into her own luxurious quarters with its five windows and fireplace.


We spent the remainder of the day unpacking and playing with the baby. Tripp and I sat on the floor while I read aloud from Dan's Dump Truck, and Brown Bear, Brown Bear What Do You See? Tripp dexterously flipped the pages of his books with the finger of one hand, while using his other hand to windshield wipe the rug. Holding two of my fingers, he walked the perimeter of our rooms, then crawled off to lick his mother's bathroom floor. 


Both he and his mother became a bit distraught at bedtime, so I suggested a warm bath.


"That was a really good idea, Mom," my daughter told me. 


"Well, I have done this before," I said. "Twice."


We tucked into a hearty petit dejeuner early the next day: croissants and oeufs benedict and cafes au lait and le petit bucheron ("the little lumberjack") for le bebe, as well as a large platter of fruit.

While Katherine made her coiffeur and otherwise readied herself for her day: a private tour of the Parliament Building, a visit to an organic farm to tickle her taste buds with foie gras and confit, a guided walk to Montmorency Falls, lunch at a trendy bistro, and her ascent in the Funicular, Tripp and I twirled like tornadoes to All Around the Mulberry Bush, jouncing with each pop!


"So, do you know what you're doing?" my daughter asked.


"I think I've got it," I said, jouncing. "Nap, play, lunch. Nap, play - or was it lunch, play, nap...?"


"I'll have my phone and I can always come right back," Katherine told me, and then she was gone with a flip of her hair.


"We'll be fine," I called after her.


The door had barely clicked shut when I had Tripp buckled into his stroller, snuggled in with his blankie and Mortimer the Moose. We walked the streets and observed the sights, practicing our Francais.

le cheval

le canon

 

Winnie

And then we napped.