In praise of grandmas

What's the only thing better for a babygirl than spending some long-weekend time with grandma? Spending time with three grandmas!

Friday: Aquatic adventures with GG and Grammy

My own grandma, my mom's mom, was born in 1925, the same year Charlie Chaplin was born and The Great Gatsby was published. My wife calls her the quintessential grandma: a tiny 86-year-old lady with curly white hair, a no-nonsense outlook on life and a sharpness of wit that can make a roomful of relatives burst out laughing. Since the baby was born, we've all been calling her GG, short for great-grandma. She's had an interesting life, and she has absolutely earned the travel-rich life she now enjoys.

She lives in a condo complex with a swimming pool, so we decided to meet my parents there to take babygirl for a dip. We visited for a bit with GG, then all four generations of us grabbed our towels and ambled down to the pool.

It's a serious understatement to say that my mom loves her granddaughter. I made her wait a good long while for a grandchild, and now she's relishing the role of the loving, doting and protective Grammy. She and my dad come over to babysit quite often, and I get a kick out of hearing what they did to keep the kid entertained. (Evidently, she likes listening to ZZ Top and Tom Petty.)

I've always felt fortunate to have the parents I did. But as I watched my mom and my little girl laughing and splashing in the water, it was nice to be reminded.

Saturday: Fun time with Grandma Deets

I like to grumble to my wife about how often we see her family, but the truth is that they're all just fun people to be around. They're the kind of family you want a kid to grow up in. And as mothers-in-law go, I hit the jackpot.

Grandma Deets was already a three-time grandmother when Emilie came along, so she's had plenty of experience at the grandma gig—although it's been nine years since her last grandkid was getting most of his meals from a bottle.

On Saturday, she came by to help my wife pick out some May flowers for the backyard, then stuck around awhile for a glass of wine and some playtime with a fresh-from-her-nap baby. Grandma Deets scooped her up for cuddles, then walked her around the room for a few laps with a two-finger assist, then read her a story for as long as her limited attention span would allow (the baby's, that is).

Every kid should be so lucky to have grandmas like babygirl has.