Papa Don’t Preach

With Gramma: Educational play.

With Papa: Utter chaos.

My parents decided to come for a short weekend visit. When grandparents come to visit, I am instantaneously rendered irrelevant.

FREE TIME! Oh whatever shall I do with myself? Read a book, lounge around, do nothing… (Don’t worry, I’d occasionally check in to see if our elders had been bound and gagged by rascals.)

Stick around to make sure all generations survived the weekend – by parenting my parents?

Something happens to the frontal lobe of a person when they are bestowed with the title of grandparent. Any and everything a child does is precious and adorable – no matter how precocious or time-out worthy an action may be. I also think the karma of what they once went through comes into play.

Search and Destroy went wild with glee when Papa arrived to pick them up from preschool.

Later that evening I went marching into the kitchen. “Papa, we do not leave dirty diapers lying about the house.”

“They need to go in the trash Papa,” chastised Search.

He wasn’t quite so self-agrandizing later that evening when I shot down Papa’s brilliant plan to give each muppet a full size chocolate éclair a mere 20 minutes before bedtime. (How mature of me, I know – I would have killed for such a treat as a child. Yes, I later ate the éclair.)

As I got ready for the next day, I heard a clicking from the kitchen. I raced down the stairs – certain one of the boys had managed to outsmart the childproof oven and knobs in order to light the stove. And one had.

“Papa! Turn off the starter ignition! The house is filling with gas, can’t you smell that?” But he was busy looking for the lemon juice in the fridge (the large lemon shaped container center directly in front of his line of vision).

Luckily the food he was preparing survived, providing plenty of energy for the day. So much so that everyone forgot to nap.

“Hi Tricia,” my children greeted me when I arrived home from work. “I pooped.

Well that was new. I began asking Papa where the wee ones had picked that up, but trailed off when I caught a whiff of Destroy running by. He had apparently had a MAJOR BLOWOUT. All the way up his shirt and requiring an entire box of wipes.

“Why is he still wearing the same shirt?” I interrupted. “Oh my god! There’s poop all the way up his back!”

I turned to nab the stinky one.

With perfect form, Destroy took his baseball bat and swung. Hip Hop Mickey went <wicka wicka> flying across the room. Moments later 33 pounds of muppet was scaling the refrigerator.

Papa and Search were in hysterics.

“Would you please not reward him for playing ninja MLB on the fridge,” I pleaded.

“I tooted!” squealed Destroy. (And here I was wondering how long we had until the fart jokes began.)

Papa attempted to change the subject by prompting Search to tell me about their trip to the saloon.

The saloon? What the hell was he doing with my kids?

“I have gel in my hair now. Destroy got haircut in Lighting McQueen. I sat in the police car.”

Oh. Haircuts.

If this post sounds like many of the other adventures I’ve written, it does so to me as well. It appears 70 is the new 3.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ll be trying to calm two of the kiddos down from their playdate. The onus is on GrammaJ to calm down Papa.