Kristy Kelly: The boring nana
Last night I attempted to put a three-year-old to bed. I’m particularly fond of this little angelic cherub, as she’s my tiny tot sidekick who regularly gets me into trouble with her mother. Having a toddler best friend is a unique experience every grandparent should have. If nothing else, the hilarity will keep any grandparent feeling young and alive.
This child is super serious about her bedtime, her bed, and her pillow. I’ve never met a child who will be right in the middle of what effectively amounts to a nuclear explosion in my living room and then announce to the world that she is tired and going to bed. She grabs her blanket, her pacifier, and crawls into my bed. While I assumed I would then go behind her and clean the chaos and destruction in her wake, she informed me it was my bedtime too. So, I did what any self-respecting middle-aged woman would do—I went to bed.
Hilariously, she didn’t want to sleep in her Nana’s bed; she just wanted to put her cold feet on me and tell me every thought she’s housed in her rapidly developing brain since birth—all of which were said with a pacifier in her mouth. (If you have opinions on pacifiers, I’m not interested in hearing them.)
It took multiple attempts, but finally, I understood that she was upset because her mother took apart her bed. They’d recently moved, and apparently, her mean old mommy didn’t put her bed together properly. This offended my little buddy so much that when I asked her if she wanted me to go to her house and fix it, she informed me that my job was to put her mommy in time-out. Her Pop-Pop would put the bed together for her.
It would be lovely to say I handled this whole conversation with poise and decorum, but I absolutely did no such thing. When I couldn’t stop laughing at her three-year-old outrage over her lack of a toddler bed, she put both her little hands on my cheeks and told me how unacceptable my laughter was. At least, that’s my assumption—it sounded more like screeching and pterodactyl sounds.
The next morning, I carried her sleeping little self to where her mother was in the spare room and went about my morning routine. Imagine my surprise when, as I’m standing in the shower with my hair white from soap and bubbles, I hear a tiny little voice telling me she’s stinky and needs a shower. She’s as serious about a bath as she is about her bedtime. Finishing the absolute quickest shower I’ve ever taken in my entire life, I hurried to give her the shower she clearly desired. Once again, I misunderstood the assignment. Because I was done with the shower, she no longer had a desire to get in it.
According to the tiny tyrant, our next activity involved coffee and apples. Why apples? Your guess is as good as mine. So we sat down at the table with our coffee—mine caffeinated and hers chocolate milk—and got ready for my day. She grilled me about everyone I would talk to, meet, or write about. When I was done filling her in on all the details, she told me that I was boring.
With that, she hopped off the chair, went into the spare room, grabbed her little pink blanket, and went back to bed.
So that’s me—the boring Nana. But if boring means spending time with my little buddy, I wouldn’t have it any other way.
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