Post #5: Guess who's coming to Nana's house

Because blogs tend to be written in current time, I am going to fast forward to my most recent grandmothering experiences. Along the way I will briefly catch you up to where we are now, but more detailed recounting of all the interim time will eventually be told in a relatively consecutive chronology of posts.

In June (2018) Stacy proposed a babysitting opportunity for me to care for Cooper while she attended a work meeting. There had already been several such babysitting challenges, starting with the first in Santa Barbara, CA, when Cooper was 6 months old. And more recently the spring of 2018 had contained a bonanza of Nana care scenarios — in Florida, New York and Hawaii, all in a one-month span.

I certainly must have passed the Nana care test because shortly thereafter Stacy had another proposal for me. Stacy emailed me, and this was the mission should I choose to accept it:

Hi Mom,

I will be traveling to Belize in mid-November for a WCS Global Marine Program meeting. I looked up on a calendar and found that Thanksgiving is the following week. As such, I am wondering if it would be a good idea to bring Cooper to the US and stay the following week after Belize in Boston for Thanksgiving.

Of course, this would mean dropping Cooper off with you for a week while I am in Belize, which I recognize is a big ask.

Depending on Jason's schedule then, he could join us for Thanksgiving week.

I realize this is a long way out, but given that it is a super busy travel time and plane tickets are very expensive, it might be best to organize sooner than later if it seems worth it. xoxo, Stacy

Well, that was certainly music to my ears, as our grandson had never been to our Boston area home. In fact, Stacy rarely came to her parents’ home since she had been living in Fiji for 10 years. The last time was 5 years prior, mainly because I had an operation so she arranged to visit her recuperating mother. Admittedly, we had indeed seen each other fairly frequently for family members living on opposite sides of the world, but rarely in the Jupiter home in the town where Stacy had grown up.

And the bonus this time was that Stacy wanted to stay with Cooper through Thanksgiving, a holiday that Jesse and I have most loved to host family and friends over the decades of our living in the part of the country where the grateful, gluttonous holiday originated.

So I replied by email:

Dear Stacy,

Wow, exciting, any time you have a suggestion for us to connect.

And of course we would absolutely love you all to be in Boston for Thanksgiving.

You certainly can leave Cooper with us while you are in Belize,

hmmm… but maybe I should just meet you in Belize for Cooper care.

I have never been there and have heard some good things about that country.

xoxo mom

So it should have been a no-brainer, win-win situation, right? Well, not exactly ...

I had many other thoughts that came to mind: So Stacy would fly all the way with Cooper from Fiji to Boston, then soon after fly to Central America. Belize is not exactly around the corner from Boston. Is that the best way to handle this? Maybe Stacy could go directly to her Belize meeting, and Jason could fly with Cooper to the US? What was the likelihood Jason would come for Thanksgiving? How might that affect our menu with a professional chef in the house?

But Stacy thought that it would not be a good idea for me to babysit in Belize as she expected to be very busy both days and nights, so not optimal for Cooper to be nearby. And even though chef Jason was temporarily unemployed in Fiji, he certainly might be working again by November and unable able to take that much time off.

Even though I was being asked to care 24/7 for a jet-lagged toddler being abandoned by his mother in a strange house, I was still excited to have Stacy and Cooper visit our Weston home, stay through Thanksgiving, and have the opportunity to introduce Cooper to local friends. But when I reviewed the dates on my calendar, I discovered that Stacy and Cooper would need to arrive in Boston on a weekend for which I had prior plans. For several months I had been planning a female family gathering in New York City, holding accommodations and theater tickets. Quite a conundrum. But November was still 6 months away. Maybe Stacy (or Jason’s) plans would change. Except for my sister, I held off mentioning my conflict to the cousins.

Yet by August Stacy’s plans were still in effect, and Jason was indeed re-employed and unavailable for international travel. Stacy would be arriving in Boston with Cooper late Thursday night, November 8, actually just about midnight, way past grandparents’ bedtime.

“Since it’s so late,” Stacy emailed me, “you can arrange a car service to pick us up.” I appreciated her understanding of our elderly sleep needs, but I wasn’t about to send an impersonal car service for their rare Boston visit.

“I’ll just go to sleep for a couple hours,” I told Jesse, “and set an alarm to wake up for the airport run.”

“Okay, then I’ll go too,” supportively offered Jesse, whose typical bedtime is even hours before mine. I appreciated that.

Stacy’s initial stay at our house would be brief, having booked to leave for Belize early Sunday morning. Essentially that gave me two days to get up to speed on Cooper care before his mommy departed. Knowing I had the prior girls’ getaway plans, Stacy kindly said she would understand if I went to the first part of it. But I really couldn’t see how that could work out, as I needed to be well rested and have all my Nana wits about me for this grandson care project.

So it was finally time to inform the cousins. I emailed all and explained how I was unfortunately going to be a no-show for our fall weekend of which I had been an integral part in the planning. They were certainly disappointed but nevertheless understanding, considering the rarity of this family visit. I offered my theater ticket to my niece Sophie, an NYU freshman, who gladly accepted.

Once Stacy departed Sunday morning, she would be away for seven full days until Saturday night. I had to gear up mentally and physically for a full frontline week of Cooper care, knowing we would be hosting a very active toddler with irregular sleep habits complicated by arrival jetlag. There was much to consider, starting with sleeping arrangements. From all current reports, in Fiji Cooper slept most nights in his parents’ bed, a situation of which I had mostly and judiciously discontinued remarking upon ages ago.

In our house we have a lovely, spacious upstairs bedroom which I consider Stacy’s/premier guest room because it is neatly and attractively filled with Stacy belongings, which either never got transported to her distant domiciles or those that bounced back to our ample residence when she was in transition, as well as her artwork and selected photos. Certainly Stacy and Cooper would sleep together in the room’s queen size bed on their arrival. I still had the waterproof sheet for mattress protection, for potentially overflowing nighttime diapers, which Stacy had purchased and successfully applied to relatives’ beds during their east coast visit last spring. Even supposed nighttime nappies (as Stacy & all the Aussies called diapers) did not necessarily retain all the overnight urination of a toddler who still soothingly drank his milk from a bottle (another topic of which I tried to keep my Nana opinions to myself).

But it was certainly not clear to me where Cooper would sleep once Stacy left us. So I ordered two more waterproof sheets (whose contemporary version I had actually found to be very soft and comfortable, rather than stiff and rubberized old-fashioned types). They were for the grandparents’ king size bed in our ground floor bedroom and for the double size sleeping couch in another upstairs guest bedroom. Just in case ...

What else would I need? Did I need to baby proof? Should I be concerned about Cooper sticking fingers in electric sockets? I asked Stacy. Maybe, she replied. Well, we have a house filled with countless sockets, but fortunately these days I did not need to figure out where to physically buy such protection. Somewhat like the old days, I “let my fingers do the walking,” but not through the antiquated Yellow Pages. I expediently and inexpensively ordered from Amazon a large packet of plastic socket inserts.

Then there was the issue of my house full of fragile, toddler-level, decorative items, of which I have way too many, accumulated from years of diverse travel accompanied by exotic and irresistible “shopportunities.” Stacy promised she would help to attend to that task upon arrival, so I did not go overboard in fragility elimination. Fortunately, from decades of dog ownership, I have an ample collection of room blocking gates. I determined that the fancy living/dining room combo overflowing with attractive but too easily breakable knick-knacks, would be considered “off limits” to curious toddler penetration, just like it has always been for our furry residents.

Nana's fragile-filled living room

Speaking of our furry resident, that was another concern of mine. Our two year-old English Springer Spaniel Oliver had little familiarity with young children. In fact, on the rare occasions that we were hosting little kids, the children of Jesse’s hand surgery trainees, Oliver had barked loud, long and rather worrisomely at them, acting decidedly different than his usual exuberantly friendly greetings to adult humans. It made me wonder whether Oliver viewed young children as some strange little species to be barked at and chased like squirrels or rabbits. On the positive side, Cooper lived at home with his dad’s old mutt Ginger who had made our grandson very comfortable around dogs. We would just have to see what transpired when our mini Cooper arrived late at night. And speaking of night, Oliver regularly slept in bed with Jesse and me. If Cooper needed to bed down with his grandparents, like he does with his parents, how would Oliver react to that scenario, I wondered.

Nevertheless, I enthusiastically informed family and friends who might like to see our rare Fiji family visitors. Here’s the schedule for the two-week visit, I informed them, recognizing that time with Stacy would be limited due to her week-long Belize meeting, returning just days before Thanksgiving. But of course, Cooper was the main attraction. I had immediate response from Jesse’s close female relatives (sister, niece and cousin) from New York and Connecticut that they would come for Cooper time. They all had seen Cooper & Stacy during their prior spring New York trip when Stacy work was based at the Bronx Zoo, the headquarters of her employer Wildlife Conservation Society. Stacy’s cousin Abby graciously hosted us at her reasonably nearby Armonk, NY home for several days while Stacy went to her daytime meetings. (You will eventually hear all about that in a separate blog post). Visiting relatives sounded great to me, as I was happy that other family members would get to spend time with Cooper. And these three women, who also included sister Barbara and cousin Claudia are very hands-on, kid-friendly adults who would certainly be an immense help in toddler entertaining.

But what about guests for Thanksgiving? That was of utmost importance to create the festive family ambiance. For the past three Thanksgivings we had congenially hosted my brother’s family, who had moved from 25 years of Florida living to relatively nearby Greenwich, Connecticut, making them ideal family guests. But they were often slow to commit, waiting to confirm the preferences of all three of their children.

“Since Stacy and Cooper will be with us for Thanksgiving,” I told my brother David and sister-in-law Tracy, “you really have to come back again this year. Just stay for one night. Stacy and Cooper are leaving on Friday anyway, & so can you.” Eventually, after my repeated cajoling, they finally sorted out their young adult kids’ plans and agreed to come.

For the past three Thanksgivings Tracy and I had combined culinary talents to address family preferences and provide a tasty and well-received feast for our small holiday group. I was fairly certain we could do the same this year, but I also recognized that Nana might be somewhat weary at the tail-end of our Cooper visit, even though Stacy would be returning a few days in advance of Thanksgiving. Although our dinner group would be fairly small, I made the unusual decision to contract a very capable service accommodator. Ivy had previously worked for us when entertaining large business groups, and was fortunately available. Guests check, help check!

And there was still much more to consider. Stay tuned for Blog post #6.