Grandparenting Tips?

 

What to do with the grandkids when it’s cold and rainy in San Francisco for two days straight? When their Mom is working virtually down the street, their aunt is off backpacking, their Dad back working in Portland? When you’ve exhausted the entertainment possibilities of the card games and board games and there’s no jigsaw puzzle to tap into? When instead of being in neutral territory, the kids are now in your house with your breakable things (our precious electric train set taken out once a year already broken when one of them tripped over a wire)?

 

At the moment, my collection of rubber squeeze toys— chickens, ducks, pigs— is providing some independent musical study, but at the expense of my nerves having to listen to the grunts, squeaks and squawks and concern about the noise for my upstairs neighbors. We’ve read most of the Christmas books hauled up from the basement and Calvin and Hobbes seems promising, but that would only be good for 20 minutes or so. We could revert to a video, but daytime TV is definitely stepping over the line of our lifetime screen values. Malik wants to return to the soccer game in the covered alley we invented yesterday, which actually was kind of fun and is protected by the rain. I snuck in a few minutes to share my pain on this Blogpost, but Malik insisted I set a timer before the alley soccer game begins. And I have 3 minutes and 54 seconds left. 

 

In short, we are in desperate need of sunshine, a sudden burst of creative projects from the kids or a divine spark of inspiration— “Hey, kids, want to go through 45 years of workshop notes in the filing cabinet and help me sort to save or recycle? Doesn’t that sound like fun?”

 

Wish us luck!