Home Alone

This weekend we left Bella and Bubaloo at home and took a weekend away. We left them with their Grandma, a woman they had only previously met for a total of no more than four hours, who we flew into Ottawa from Toronto for the occasion.

I'd like to say that Wifey and I went for a romantic and much needed/desired solo getaway. But I cannot. We went up to camp to meet our new and returning camp staff to lead them through an orientation weekend.

Grandma was thrilled to have this time with the kids and created a weekend crammed full of activities. There was monopoly before breakfast, skateboarding lessons, swimming at the public pool, a movie, walking the dog at the park, and lots and lots and lots of junk food.

I came home to bags of cookies in my cupboard. Chocolate bars. A half-eaten lemon meringue pie and pineapple upsidedown cake. I even came home to a confession from my mother that she'd had a solo chocolate eating mission and had raided our cupboard to eat a bunny or two, or possibly three, left over from Easter. The kids ate more junk food with Grandma than they'd normally eat in a weekend of meals and snacks. Only they ate all of the junk food and meals loaded with veggies, too.

Grandma also got the kids to drink water. And lots of it. But the water they drunk and now are in love with is that flavoured bottled water. I detest bottled water for a number of reasons, and I don't want to hear from the munchkins one more time about how the water is "naturally flavoured." Since when is splenda a natural sugar?

All of this to say, is that I fell even more in love with my mother this weekend. The kindness and generosity she shared with our kids. The bond she built with them. Her intense focus on fun that wore the kids out. She's more laid back as a grandmother and has a better perspective on the world. It was great to sit back and admire her parenting around the dinner table after coming home from camp.