Pieces of Me

The coronavirus pandemic has curtailed my travels and landed me in a new short-term career as a child minder. Four days a week I take care of our two youngest granddaughters. That’s the basis of the first installment of what I’m calling “Pieces of Me,” snippets from various times in my life. Please enjoy these while we await a vaccine and I am ready to board a hermetically sealed tin can again.

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Child Minding, March 2020

“I’m getting my butt wiped.”  

Thus spake two-year-old Callie. This is the level of discussion in my life during the Covid-19 pandemic.  

Four days a week I take care of our two youngest granddaughters while their mom and dad do essential work.  Today I had some essential work of my own — an international conference call of a nonprofit board that I sit on, and their grandfather filled in for me during the call.  He had a day off from his duties with our oldest granddaughter who turns eight tomorrow.  Her parents also do essential work.  

Glenn and I have both been retired for several years and until this, had enjoyed the freedom that comes with that stage of life.  We had already planned our semi-annual trip to Poland for my board meeting with a month in Italy afterwards.  The calendar also showed my planned May trips to Atlanta (college graduation) and DC (staying with a friend’s teenage son during her business trip), and Glenn’s car trip to the Indy 500 with his 90-year-old uncle.  That’s all gone by the wayside already.

The other day Glenn said it felt like we were back at work.  And when that alarm clock goes off at 6 am, it sure does. The alarm clock actually awakens me.  For most of my life the internal alarm clock that I inherited from Mom and Granny has awakened me 10 minutes or so before my bedside unit.  Perhaps it’s my age — almost 75.  Add to that, the daily challenge of two pre-schoolers adjusting to something they have no idea is happening.  They just know day care/pre-school is closed, and they get Gramma Suzi instead (for better or worse).  Oh, and there is the underlying stress of a pandemic that’s being so ill managed.  Even before my usual 11 pm bedtime, I’m exhausted.

Almost daily Glenn tells me how much he appreciates me, and I appreciate that though I’ve told him it’s unnecessary.  This is what happens when you’ve taken up with a mature man who had his own children “late in life.”  And those children are now two 30-something daughters, married with three daughters between them.  And then a pandemic strikes.  These adorable  little girls have accepted me as their other grandmother, and I have embraced them as my granddaughters.  They’ve given me what I never expected to have since my only child died in his 20s without children or a wife.

Diaper changed, the shrieking dynamo has now destroyed her sister’s Lego fort, and that means whining and tears from the kindergartner.  Thus is the level of conflict in my life these days.  And some days I am amazed that it’s not worse.  Callie has gone to daycare five days a week at the same place almost her whole short life.  Now it’s fruit basket upset.  

The privately-owned daycare center that Callie and Emma, 5,  attend has a structured learning and play program, caring, thoughtful teachers, and different rooms for different age groups (no toddlers on the second floor).  If this were a normal time, Callie would move to a new room shortly, and the daycare teachers would start her on potty training.  (How’s that for full service?)  My efforts at that have failed dismally.  Oh, she’ll say she has to poop, which can mean anything … then sits on the toilet and does nothing while I dispose of her dirty diaper.  She loves pulling off a yard of valuable toilet paper, flushing the toilet and “washing” her hands (playing in the running water).  

Glenn picked up Emma’s packets of review material at the daycare center and was pleased at the safety precautions in place.  So now, when Callie naps, Emma goes to school.  We work on a few math pages — the meaning of each number, what it looks like as a numeral and a word, tracing and writing each number, then finding that number of something — window panes, fingers, cupboard doors, hand claps.  And we are working our way through the alphabet — identifying letters and words beginning with them, tracing the capital and lower case print versions, practicing writing them.  We do at least two letters a day.  Next comes learning her address and parents’ telephone numbers.  Gone are the days of a single landline number to memorize.

More recently, we’ve added an occasional story time from a local library to our morning.  Many libraries now have online versions of what they ordinarily offer in their libraries — stories and activities for children. This week we’re also going to try a session offered by Phipps Conservatory, a tribute to Earth Day.  The story will be “On the Day You Were Born” plus singing and  “a themed activity.”  

The sun is out and the ground is reasonably dry after the weekend’s rain.  Hurray.  We can go outdoors and run and swing, blow bubbles and have a treasure hunt.  I think I enjoy this time more than the girls do.  I’m such a fresh-air fiend.  I’d really go crazy if I couldn’t go outside in this pandemic — coffee on my deck in Squirrel Hill, reading a book on Glenn’s porch while he fixes dinner, running around in a huge yard with my granddaughters.  That is what is keeping me sane during this insane, chaotic time.

Time inches on …

Over the weekend Callie actually used the toilet for its intended purpose.  Jen texted a video clip with a largish mock diamond flashing over Callie’s lower body.  From her wet hair, it seemed she had just had her bath.  Now we’re using pull-ups instead of daytime diapers.  About every fourth trip to the bathroom produces a good result.  I hold the toilet paper roll to minimize waste, but she gets to flush the toilet.  Since she loves to play under the water, hand washing is the easiest part of this exercise.  For two, she’s pretty thorough.  Getting her to stop is when the tantrum starts — thrashing, squealing, fighting against me trying to dry her hands and remove her from the bathroom.  Throwing herself onto the hallway floor, the outburst continues until I suggest we find Minnie (any of her several Minnie Mouse dolls).  Up she jumps, off she runs to the toy box and the day goes on.  Callie has no dimmer switch — she’s off, then on.  

By contrast, Emma is the Drama Queen.  She shrieks and cries at the drop of the proverbial hat.  When told she can’t watch TV until she’s cleaned up her toys or finished her lunch, she puckers up and cries real tears.  Callie bumps her in a game of tag, and she screams as if she’d been run over by a bulldozer.  Or just tell her “no” for some reasonable reason, and you get her full range of emotions.  Unlike Callie, her emotions don’t turn around quite so quickly.  After the logic of the situation is carefully explained, she still needs some cajoling.  But she’s intent on being a good “big sister,” protecting Callie, explaining Callie, offering to play with Callie … until Callie wants the same doll she does or makes a mess and she’s required to help with clean up, then the drama begins anew.

For two kids with a three-year age difference, Emma and Callie do play pretty well together.  Right now, they are batting red balloons around the living room.  Smiles and squeals of delight dominate as Blue Pappy bats away any balloon that enters his recliner’s air space.  

Aside:  Pappy is a common term for a grandfather around these parts.  Because she has two, Emma needed to differentiate.  So she dubbed Glenn her “Blue Pappy” because he often wears blue sweatshirts and sports shirts.  Her dad’s father is “Orange Pappy” because he frequently wears orange tee-shirts.  Kid logic.

This morning the girls played with PlayDoh — Emma making “cookies” from the PlayDoh lid as well as a butterfly cookie cutter.  Callie actually asked for my help, so I patted small batches of colorful PlayDoh into flat pancakes and she cut out stars.  “I did it,” she’d squeal with delight after each star, then smash the PlayDoh into a lump and toss it at me, commanding, “Again.”  When Emma decided it was time to make greeting cards, Callie dutifully put away her PlayDoh and joined in.  Later they decided to play hide and seek, a favorite indoor game for days like today when the sky is ugly gray.  The hiding places are limited — Emma’s closet, under Callie’s crib, the pop-up castle are the most frequently used.  Instructed to count to 20, I do a “Words With Friends” puzzle or three on my phone, then loudly call, “18, 19, 20, here I come,” and set out to find them by loudly searching closets and beds and corners.  Twice today they were giggling in the overturned castle, once I saw Callie’s head sticking up from under the scores of stuffed animals in Emma’s bed.  The last time I found them lying side by side under Callie’s crib and refusing to get out.  I returned to my station in the living room, assuming they’d call out, “Come and find us” as they usually do.  Silence.  More silence.  Their mom usually comes up from her makeshift home office in the basement to have lunch with them.  She arrived today just as I realized how long the quiet had lasted.  When she asked where they were, I explained and she went to check under the crib.  There she found her two little girls sound asleep.  Nap time came early.  That also keeps me sane during this insane, chaotic time.

The end is in sight … sigh …

Jen told me the other day that the girls will return to the day care facility the second week of June.  It’s the old double-edged sword. I look forward to spending more time in my apartment — it desperately needs a good “mom-style” spring cleaning.  But I will miss the daily interactions with Emma and Callie, the chance to watch them mature and grow close up,  the little things that make me laugh:  Callie running away half naked and getting “butt cooties” in the swimming pool of plastic balls.  Emma leading us on a treasure hunt around the front yard.  Watching Callie eat the grits Blue Pappy made for breakfast.  Sharing an apple with Emma while Callie, who’s allergic, naps. Ever-curious Callie poking my amble breast and asking, “What’s that?”  Emma explaining to Callie, “I’m the big girl, you’re the little girl,” and pointing to me, “she’s old.” Depends on your perspective, Emma. Today you make me feel young.