Lillyana Marie Eve Jensen is five days old. And I believe that, using Kaiya’s emphatic question as inspiration (see yesterday’s post), Lilly is saying, “What the……?

Imagine that she spent nine peaceful months in her mommy’s tummy, floating in warm liquid, floating….floating….floating. Suddenly, much to her surprise and consternation, and through no choice of her own, she is flung into the light, into a chilly operating room, hearing loud voices and other noises. She is being handled by these odd creatures wearing blue gowns (though of course she didn’t know they’re blue because she still sees in black and white and anyway she can’t see more than six inches in front of her face, but you get my point).

Now, suddenly, she feels hungry and cold and gassy, and plus she has this bow on her head. Why do I have a bow on my head? Mommy has waited a long time for a girl…..

Yeah, I’m sure of it. She is saying, “What the……?”

The Jensens are all getting used to each other. Three-year-old Austin seems to be quite taken with her, though he likely expects that she will go away soon and he will be happy to walk her to the door. He likes to spend a lot of time bumming around with his grandmother, away from the baby’s cries. Maggie and Mark just have that glazed-over look that is part terror and part sheer unadulterated exhaustion.

They will be just fine. She is the second newborn in our family in the past few months. Faith Naomi Gloor was born at the end of November. She, too, undoubtedly was shocked to be born, but she and her parents have fared nicely.

I have been remembering when I gave birth to my son 33 years ago. I recall when the doctor handed him to me I looked at him like he was a stranger instead of someone who had been a part of me for nine months. Suddenly I realized that his mouth looked exactly like his dad’s mouth, and I understood he really was part of us. It’s an amazing feeling.

But I also remember when we got home after the few days in the hospital. His dad left to go to the store, and I had this strong sense of terror. Don’t go! I don’t know what to do with this baby. I don’t know how to be a mom! There were no classes on motherhood. There might be now, but at that time they handed us the baby and the Dr. Spock book, and threw us in the deep end.

He survived and so did I.

Being a parent is a glorious job – the hardest and most important job any of us will ever have, and the most rewarding. The good thing is that our children are resilient, and for the most part, forgiving. And generally they just simply love their parents, no matter what.

The Jensens know all of this because they have a child already. But right now they just want four hours of straight sleep. That will come. Give it a few years.

I have spoken ad nauseum about my grandparents, but you might as well give a big sigh and pull up a chair. I’m talking about them again.

I never met my maternal grandparents, so my Grammie and Grandpa were my only grandparents. My dad’s mother and father. They came from Switzerland in the mid-20s, from a small town near Zurich, in the German part of Switzerland. Germans are known to play their cards close to their chest when it comes to emotions. They work hard, they are honest, but there isn’t a lot of sentimentality. You buck up. No hugs. That description fit my grandfather to a T. My grandmother, on the other hand, didn’t get the memo.

My grandfather was a wonderful man, as gentle as they come. I never heard his voice raised in anger. In fact, I barely heard his voice at all. He was quiet. He worked hard and he was kind to us. But when we said goodbye, it was with a handshake.

My grandmother was a different story. She was full of life and laughter. She teased us. She hugged us. She shared her stories with us. She gave us quarters to go to the bar next door to get strawberry pop to have with lunch. Don’t tell your mother, she would warn us, knowing full well that my mom knew what she was up to.

She was short, probably not 5 feet tall, and, well, shall we say plump? Oh, what the heck. She was overweight in the days when people didn’t worry so much about it. “You wouldn’t want to have a skinny grandmother, would you?” she used to say to us. And we didn’t. No way, Jose. We loved her just the way she was.

And we thought she was probably 150 years old, if a day.

I started thinking about this the other day as I watched my sister Jen play with her 3-year-old grandson Austin in our backyard. They were playing soccer. He would kick the ball and she would run and try to get it before he did. It was hard to do, because he would barely tap it so that it was always Advantage Austin. It suddenly occurred to me that my grandmother was probably only about our age when we were in our formative years. She was born in 1897, so in 1960, when I was 7, she was only 63. Only three years older than I am now. Honestly, she seemed so old. Her hair was white.

The thing is, I can’t imagine my grandmother running around kicking a soccer ball with her grandkids. She wore a housedress with an apron every single day of her life. She wore sensible shoes with heavy nylon stockings. Times were so different.

I wonder if our grandkids see us as old. Well, I don’t really wonder at all. I KNOW that they do. While I have myself fooled that my increasing amount of gray hair looks like highlights, I was given a reality check by my grandson. He was pointing out everyone’s hair color, and mine was gray. There you have it. He wasn’t judging, just stating a fact.

I’m not really going anywhere with this random blog, but I’m just reminding myself again how weird it is to see the years pass by and not really pay attention. And I’m also hoping that no matter how old I seem to my grandkids, they love Bill and me as much as I loved my grandparents.

This post linked to the GRAND Social

Since January 2, when Jen went back home to Fort Collins, I have been on call to be the designated babysitter for Maggie’s 3-year-old Austin when she went into labor and she and Mark had to go to the hospital. She wanted to free up all of the grandparents, aunts, and uncles to be able to be at the hospital for the birth. I am far enough down the food chain to not go to the hospital, yet high enough up the food chain to be trusted with their child.

I have been very responsible. I have taken my cell phone everywhere with me, except church. Cell phones ringing during Mass make the priests understandably cranky. Everywhere I went, my phone was tucked into my purse. About every six minutes or so I would pull it out and look at it to make sure I hadn’t missed a phone call. I placed it four inches from my head at night when I slept. The first thing I would do each morning was look to make sure I hadn’t missed a ringing telephone that was inches from my ear. I felt like the president of the United States with his black suitcase, aka “the football.” I had my own “football.” Maybe more like those little rubber ones you get in the 50 cent machines with the claws that the kids beg you to let them try but they never get anything good. Still….

As the days ticked by and we got closer and closer to her January 13 due date, my sense of responsibility grew stronger. Each night, I KNEW this was the one. I would get the call that very night. But I would wake up each morning, check my telephone only to see that there were no messages, no missed calls, and, yes, the phone was fully charged.

January 13 came and went. So did January 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22,23, and 24. No baby. Well, there was definitely a baby, but that baby simply didn’t want to be born. Finally

Maggie’s doctor conceded that perhaps Maggie had a point that being unable to get out of bed or even out of a chair was perhaps a sign that tougher measures were necessary, and scheduled her for a C-Section, happening right now as I post this blog. God is good.

And now I can’t find my phone…..

Have a great weekend. When next I write, Maggie will be able to see her feet.

Last year Bec and I did a bit of hiking during the Arizona spring, meaning basically March. Since the spring is short, we didn’t hike as much as we would have liked. We vowed this year we would start earlier – in January and February – and thus be able to do more hiking. We would wear a jacket if it was chilly, we determined. March is perfect hiking weather, but in April, though it’s still not blistering hot, the critters are awakening. Remember the rattlesnake episode?

As it turns out, our winter here this year has been very mild. No jackets necessary unless you’re going to hike sometime around 6 o’clock in the morning. Then it is still in the low 40s. But after 9 or 10, it is in the upper 60s or lower 70s. Perfect for hiking. And since the nights are still chilly, I don’t think the rattlers are awake yet. Hope not.

Anyhoo, we did our first hike yesterday morning. The area we hiked was very near the area of our rattlesnake encounter. Yesterday, instead of flip flops, we wore hiking shoes. Weird, huh? No rattlesnakes.

It was a beautiful, somewhat overcast morning. The clouds eventually burned off, leaving us with much sunshine. There weren’t many people on the trail, though we did run into a couple who, from the sound of them, are Canadian, eh? Bec and I tend to be direction-challenged. We blame it on our mother who wouldn’t allow us to be Girl Scouts as she didn’t have time to take us to meetings. Or at least that was her excuse. Perhaps she actually held a grudge against them because they sell cookies, thereby competing against Gloor’s Bakery. The Canadian couple confirmed that we were on the right path, and we went on our way.

The weather was perfect, we saw some beautiful scenery, and we had deep and thorough discussions about many things as we walked. We always do. The area where we walked is filled with saguaro, and saguaros on the hillside are about my favorite scenic attraction of all things nature.

We came across this funny sight.

It’s my assumption that the cap is an add-on. When the saguaros get their blooms in May, they sometimes look like they are wearing a hat, but that appears to be a real hat!

Saguaros don’t even begin getting their “arms” until they are 25 years old or older, so a cactus like this must be really old.

It was a perfect day, and a good start to our hiking adventures. Perhaps by next week I can manage something a bit less flat as my vertigo will be verti-gone! Didn’t feel it would be terribly wise to teeter at the edge of a Sonoran mountain yet.