Gimme My Grandchild!

Nora the nanny from Honduras is a blessing.

When my daughter returned to work and was forced to stretch the blissful motherandson connection to encompass a job and other humans, Nora scooped him up in a flurry of Spanish and electric energy. She also possessed a seemingly magical ability to get him to nap for long stretches in a wildly pitching swing.

My daughter could relax - only a mere text and five minutes away. And I was content, spared from absentee grandmother guilt, selling books in Vermont. At first.

It started with a pet name. "Muneco," loosely translated as "little doll," Nora called him, accompanied with dozens of staccato kisses and strings of Spanish syllables.

"Hi, my Bubbadoos," I crooned during my first visit. There was a certain gleam in Nora's eye. I felt sized up, immediately conscious of needing a new haircut or an entirely new wardrobe.

"Mi Mmmmuneco," countered Nora. She had Tripp in her arms and was swooping him in a figure 8 motion I'd seen his mother use.

"How's my little Bubbadoos?" I said, reaching out for him.

But Nora swept off to the kitchen with Tripp in her arms, indicating his mother's frozen milk in the freezer, the trick bottle with its three parts, while firing information about naps and diaper changes.

"I got it," I said. Now gimme that baby! I thought.

After more kissing and cooing of Spanish endearments, I was allowed to take possession.

"Thanks Nora, " I smiled, "You can go now." 

Hows it going? Katherine texted.

Perfectly!

Nora usually gets him to nap for a few hours. 

Good for her, I replied. Gotta go.

I changed Tripp's diaper, having memorized the exact place his mother fastened the velcro tabs. I changed him out of an outfit of Nora's in which he resembled an infant jockey into a new onesie and a pair of little jeans.

I gave him a bottle, burped him twice, and placed him in his swing. Waaaaa! wailed Tripp, surprised at first, then furious. I increased the speed, gave him his binky. WAAAA! he squalled.

Bzzzzt! buzzed my phone. Everything okay? 

Just getting him down. Can't talk. 

Text me when he's asleep. Nora...

I tried music, adjusting the swing's arc, playing nature songs, adding a blankie. Purple-faced, Tripp thrashed.

"Okay, Bubbadoos, let's go out in the carriage, I said, determined not to be bested by Nora. We walked the neighborhood and I sang and smiled and replaced the binky as needed, and eventually Tripp's eyes blinked closed. He's asleep! I texted my daughter. (Ta da!)  We walked for three hours. Three hours in the fresh air. Three hours out of the swing.

"Can I say something," I asked my daughter a few weeks later.

"What?" she demanded.

"I'm sure it's nothing," I said.

"What is it, Mom?"

"I just noticed... it just looks as if Tripp's head is the tiniest bit flat in the back where he's been lying in that swing."

"Are you saying my son has a flat head?" 

"No! No! Not at all. Just maybe you could ask the pediatrician when you take him next time. Just a suggestion. I'm sure it's nothing."

As it happened, I was along for the next visit to the pediatrician.

"Everything looks good, Mom," said the pediatrician. "Any questions?"

"Someone in this room, " Katherine intoned, "Someone not me - "

"Nor me either, " said the pediatrician quickly.

" - thinks the baby's head is flat in the back."

"From lying in his swing," I added, "napping."

"Actually, you are both right," the pediatrician responded. "Baby's skulls are malleable and while it does look a bit flat, that can easily be remedied by turning him on his side, and not keeping him in his swing for extended periods."

"Ha!" Katherine and I said simultaneously.

A few months later I went into Manhattan for a new haircut at a pricey salon, a cut that cost me two week's salary. There was a chic new blonde streak on one side and razored layers.

"Oh, I like you haircut," Nora commented.

"Thank you," I said. Now gimme my grandson!

"Nice streak, Cruella," whispered my daughter at Tripp's bedtime as we we both gazed, enthralled, at the peaceful bundle of baby.

*

Babysitting

I step across the threshold, a grandmother bearing gifts. The floor is covered with hundreds of tiny planes. "Big boy panes," or larger versions of these Disney designed toys with names like Ripslinger, Skipper, and El Chupacabra cover an end table. There are planes named Dusty and Rochelle and Leadbottom, the personalities and peculiarities of which are known intimately by my grandson, Tripp, nearly three.

"Whipslinguh," "Skippuh" and the others fire his imagination. I'm inclined to dislike Disney products and detest commercialized TV in general, but I know to keep my bias in check. I refrain from commenting on the dopey painted grins. Just last weekend everyone went to the Cradle of Aviation Museum and Tripp was so overcome by the sight of a NASA artifact, he sank to his knees in reverence.

"Which one is this?" I ask, holding up a red-winged plane painted with colors resembling the British flag.
"Bulldog," Tripp says promptly.
"What about this guy?" I point to another light blue and white one that looks like a VW bus with wings.
"Fliegenhosen!"
"Lederhosen?"
"No, Fliegenhosen!"
"Weinerhosen?"
"No, Fliegenhosen!" chuckles Trip, as in, "You'll never get this, Beauma."


Tripp flashes me his little imp grin and shyly waits to be given his "pesent," a set of small trucks.
"I open it?" he asks politely.
"Of course," I say, pausing to lift his baby brother, Oliver, from his high chair, where he has been pawing tiny gluten-free Os into his mouth.
"A wainbow!" says Tripp, busy with the fussily tied ribbons of different hues around his package.
"Yes," I say.
"I am a wainbow!" he announces and parades about the room with a rainbow ribbon hat.
"My trucks!" he says a bit later after we have the package unwrapped.
He races them and lines them up and races them some more, and gives them names while Ollie jounces between my legs.

Ollie is easy. I plop him on a blanket with a bucket of toys and he plucks them out and mouthes them, while Tripp and I build "sings" - garages for the new trucks and runways for the interminable planes with Legos and blocks. We undo the knot of rainbow ribbon and make a belt. We stuff the belt into a jar.

I offer breakfast.
"Ready for some scrambled eggs and toast?" I ask Tripp.
"Yeah!"
However, once served, Tripp pokes them sadly with a spoon and whispers, "No sanks."
"What do you mean, no sanks? You said you wanted eggs."
"I don't yike them."
I try cereal. "No sank you," and raspberries - a polite shake of the head.

Your son doesn't eat. I text my daughter. Try Nutella she texts back. Nutella is not a food, I reply. Served with fruit and waffles it is! she responds.

We agree on apple slices "wisout the skin."

We build towers and topple them. We sing the ABC song, first in English, then in Spanish. We count to twelve in Spanish and English. I sneeze like Donald Duck and Tripp says Gesundheit! We read books, and squash several containers of homemade play dough into one big pile and mash it and bash it and mark it with a T.

I give Ollie a bottle - one that has been assembled by Tripp, with three incomprehensible components not unlike a NASA spacecraft - and after turning on some Mozart, lift Ollie into his swing, where after a slight whimper of protest he naps.

"I wonder if Ollie sometimes gets into your stuff," I say to Tripp, "Now that he's learning to crawl a bit."
"It's hard," he sighs.
"It's because he loves you so much and wants to do what you do."
"Yeah," Tripp agrees.
 Then we fly the "panes" around the room, making whispered chuffing and engine sputtering noises gently, so as not to wake Ollie, who is "seeping."


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