Saturday, May 5, 2007

Of Grandmas & Frustration

As it turns out, my children not only bewilder my husband and I, but their grandparents as well.

Late last summer, we had to fly back to South Dakota, as my grandfather had suddenly passed away. My mother-in-law was a wonderful resource to us, because we basically handed her our children said "Here ya go! They don't eat this or this! Ooh and No.2 can't lose that paci or YOU will go insane!" and left for two days.

My MIL bravely stepped into a role that even on the best of days I cringe when thinking of what lies ahead of me. I say this because in the 5 years that we have had children, the grandparents have maybe seen them a grand total of a month, and therefo
re don't really know the idiosyncrasies of said children. At the time, the oldest was just a few weeks past 5 and the youngest was about 18 months old and very deep into the mommy-separation anxiety bit. But the MIL is no shy woman and she and her husband jumped head-first into their role.

One day as she was settling the kids down for naps, my oldest asked if they could watch a movie. The grands aren't very technologically advanced, as they spend most of their days working on their farm, and still have just basic cable and a VCR, neither of which are used very often.

As Grandma was struggling to get the VCR to function, she was muttering under her breath and getting pretty fed up with the whole bit. My 5 year old quietly came up to her, tapped her on the shoulder and said, "...Grandma...are you twenty-five??"

With a puzzled look on her face she responded, "Well,
yes...in fact Grandma is a lot older than twenty-five! Why??"

To which my child replies, "We-lllll, because....um...if you are...there...there are these words you can say. . . if you're frustrated... you can use '25 year old words'"

By now my MIL is completely baffled. "Sweetie, what do you mean??"

"Well, when Daddy & Mommy are frustrated they say....some words....but they said you have to be twenty-five to say them."

D'OH!!!

Apparently my child does listen to my husband and I, and quite well as a matter of fact!! A few weeks before this, we'd had a bbq with some friends, most of which have no children. Being Air Force maintainers, their language is ...colorful to say the least. Our child, hearing some of this language from the friends and us later on, had attempted to expand his vocabulary with some of these words!! We promptly t
old him that there were just some words you couldn't say until you were a certain age. And of course he had to ask what age that was...so we said 25!

So, when seeing his obviously frustrated and overwhelmed grandmother struggling with the movie experience, he wanted to help her out as best he knew how. But he knew well enough NOT to say those "Twenty-five year old words" to Grandma and just...suggested she use them! Thankfully, MIL wasn't brave enough to venture into which words were considered acceptable for a 5 yr old and which ones were not, because I'm pretty sure any response she would have gotten would have probably caused her untimely demise as the eldest would have been more than happy to repeat those words in a 'matter-of-fact' manner!

It's never a normal day when you've got a 5 year old in your house, that's for sure.










Gma & the oldest drivin' the tractor in SD.

1 comment:

Todd said...

I've been known to use a 25-year-old word or two in my time.