Being A Grandparent is Fun!

Being a grandparent is fun! You finally get your chance to see your children truly understand what it is like being a parent. EVERY grandparent knows what I am stating is absolutely true. Every incident or life scenario that you describe to other grandparents, that your grandchild or their parent's (i.e. your children and their spouses), is validated with smiles, laughter and more often than not a complimentary story about their own grandchildren.

I just read my daughter's wonderful description about those first exhausting months with her newborn son, our grandson Graham, and how just when you are at your wits end the child begins cooing, smiling, playing in the bath water, and now laughing on his own. He is now making is own fun. It makes it ALL worthwhile to get up in the morning and put forth the effort. It is the inner joy, the giggles in your head, and the outright laughter that far and away supersedes any of the drudgery and frustration that you encounter in the day-to-day raising of a child.

The reason for this writing, however, is that I saw that my daughter's posting that stated, "(that she) guesses 7:00 am is the new 'sleeping in"...:)". How accurately amusing that was to see. Julie and I had a good laugh over this. It brought to my so many aspects of raising a child, but I will leave this posting with only one. Parents have their many "celebrations" of early childhood, and many will mark one or another as the most truly significant. Empirical data might suggest that the majority of parents will agree that a successful culmination to potty training would be the "golden milestone" in child rearing.

I disagree. As truly magnificent as that step is, the one that surpasses it, in my mind, is when a child can get up in the morning, go downstairs, carefully pull a bowl and spoon out of the cabinet, reach for and pour their favorite cereal and milk (and return the carton to the 'fridge') and begin to eat their own breakfast, all without having to wake his parents. THAT is TRUE freedom! AND it buys the parents another 30 minutes of gleeful and sleep filled bliss!