Heero's Knock-Out Party

There is just something special about turning six. In Heero's case, the past year marks his transformation from a little boy reluctant to climb ladders and sleep in the dark into a regular kid who swings a bat, dribbles a soccer ball, shoots hoops, and rocks kindergarten.

A short six months ago Pa-pa and I were attending his preschool graduation. It was during that ceremony that I got the first inkling of Heero's future plans. We listened as we heard from children who aspired to be police officers, fire fighters, and all the career positions you might expect from a group of four- and five-year-olds. Then, toward the end of the program, we heard our sixth grandchild tell the world what he wants to be when he grows up. Apparently, Heero wants to be . . . a boxer.

I thought of Muhammed Ali. I thought of Rocky Balboa. I imagined that sweet little boy standing up there on the stage sporting a designer mouth guard and wiping blood off his face with his forearm. In my mind I watched him dance around the ring, delivering his own well-placed punches while dodging those of his opponent. And, of course, since he is my grandson, I imagined the referee counting to ten, declaring the opponent OUT, and raising Heero's sweaty little arm up in victory amid the deafening cheers of an arena full of devoted fans.

So when his sixth birthday rolled around this past week, I could see my mission clearly. I must do my part to help this boy realize his career dream. Yes, this was a no-brainer. I must buy him boxing gloves. A tip from his mama clued me in on the color red. Even the casual observer will admit that he already looks the part.

The party where Heero acquired his gloves was a knock-out in its own right, building on a LEGO theme. There were LEGO favors for all his friends and cousins, as he models below.

Other prize-winning aspects of the party included a pinata shaped like the Number 6, a LEGO version of the Twister game, and a magic show performed by the birthday boy himself.

Rounding out the fun, in addition to all the candy treasures that flew out of the pinata, were pizza and, of course, the obligatory cake.

To cap off Heero's birthday week, I got to be his guest at his first school Grandparent's Day, where we wove a yarn spider web, combined our artistic efforts to "Draw a Grandma," and picked out two books for him at the school's book fair. (It is good, I suppose, that we are encouraging reading and other skills as a back-up plan just in case the boxing thing doesn't work out.)

And so, I close with a birthday wish for this amazing all-grown-up boy who, until just six weeks ago, was my youngest grandchild: I have loved every moment of my time with you this week. You seemed to jump into this world landing on both feet and have kept things interesting ever since. I hope you are always this ready to embrace new adventures and punch through any obstacles that try to get in your way. It won't be possible to win every fight that comes along, but I will always be among your biggest fans and you will always be Heero to me.

"We Can Fix This"

A couple weeks ago, I commandeered daughter Cookie's kitchen island for Operation Homework and enlisted kids from grades 2, 3, 5, and 7 to take down the enemy before the bedtime ambush. Although it was a maneuver I had grown rusty at, our mission garnered some modest success over the week and a half I was there, and we enjoyed a lot of good fun and conversation in the process.

On one night in particular, Bootsie (who had celebrated her ninth birthday only a few days before) was going head to head with some grammar, generating some discussion of sentence subjects, direct objects, and the like. Her assignment involved some parsing and diagramming, and she was having a little trouble determining the roles and relationships among nouns in a given sentence. I watched as she wrote an object in the subject spot.

We talked about the different ways verbs work, and how some nouns denote "doers" while others designate "receivers."  She realized her mistake, erased it, corrected it, and looked thoughtfully up at me.

"You know," she said, "some people just say, 'Oh look. You did that wrong, didn't you?'"

"Really?" I asked, thinking she might be referring to me. "What would I say?"

A few seconds of thoughtful silence, and then this: "You would say, 'We can fix this.'" She caught me off-guard.

Right off the top of my head, I can't recall many times when anything anyone said made me feel better than these simple, sincere words from this new nine-year-old. I love that someone might see my efforts in this positive way. I like the thought that someone might look to me for hope, for reassurance, for ways out of tough spots, for companionship when problems need solving.

So here I sit, a full, unprecedented twenty-four days late with birthday-blog wishes for this sweet kid. Although busy may be a reason, it does not hold up as an excuse. There is a problem here, and I must fix this. Now.

Happy birthday, Bootsie. In the chaotic whirlwind that blew in with a new baby brother, you slipped quietly from eight years old to nine. In spite of that, though, there were presents and cake (twice) and lots of good thoughts that were just for you. You got toys, activity kits, and costumes to feed your creative spirit, and I was glad to arrive while the celebration was still ongoing and fresh. I can't wait to return in a few days for Halloween.

Your great-grandma and I are proud to see that you are hand-stitching quilt blocks from these squares of fabric she gave you.

Don't get frustrated, though, if you find a row of stitching that is crooked or coming loose. Don't worry if the pattern doesn't turn out quite like you intended. As you are finding out, everything doesn't always come together smoothly, especially right off the bat. Some of the things you want to accomplish take a lot of time.

So be patient with yourself, and stay positive. Like all of us, you are bound to make a few mistakes along the way. But when that happens, just remind yourself, "We can fix this"-- and then try your best to do just that.

Packee

I had forgotten how it feels to hold a newborn baby. After all, nearly six years had gone by since the last new grandkid, and my mind had moved on from nursery rhymes to The Hardy Boys and from first steps to dance steps. By every indication, it seemed safe to dispense with the baby toys, the high chair, the toddler bed.

But as it turns out, the sweet song of little people in my life plays on. At the bottom of this page of music, a repeat sign has magically appeared. Baby Packee, born at 8:37 a.m. on Sept. 30, is adding another verse and his own variation to the familiar melody of the past twelve years. I have just returned home from a ten-day stay with him and his family as we all adjust to a family dynamic so dramatically (but joyfully) changed.

Baby Packee joins four adoring siblings who at present clamor and compete to hold him. Below, on the night he was born, Zoomie gets the honors as Sooby, Pooh, and Bootsie look on.

Since then, everyone has had plenty of turns, including me. This photo, taken right before I left to come home five days ago, pretty well verifies that I still have my knack for baby-holding and assures Packee's place as suitable subject matter for "Googie's Attic."

A few friends have asked me how I chose "Packee" as the blog nickname for this seventh addition to Googie's cast of characters. In the case of his siblings, I have always added a double-o to the first letter of their real names to form the nicknames used to reference them in the blog. So when it happened that this baby's first name begins with the same letter as that of his brother "Pooh," I had a hard time coming up with another name beginning P-O-O. (Think about it--the options are not too promising.)

So I decided to include the double-e pattern from the names of his cousins Beenie and Heero and to position those letters at the end of the word. Since the baby's real-life initals are P.A.C., I determined I could add a "k" and call him "Packee." Not only does this honor his real initials, but it also honors a TV character I loved as a child in the late 1950s--Packy Lambert. Packy, played by Roger Mobley, was in the cast of the Saturday morning TV show Fury, a series about a beautiful black horse living on a ranch in California.

Our little Packee is three weeks old today. He arrived five days before his sister Bootsie's ninth birthday, which was pretty well eclipsed by his arrival. I am late with her birthday blog, I know, but maybe she will be so busy with her new little brother that she won't notice.

How To Wait for a Baby

The self-help book market abounds with advice for families who are expecting a new addition. Indeed, many writers have turned their first-hand baby-related experiences into volumes of "how-to" instructions in an effort to help others conquer the challenges that arise when a whole new person suddenly sabotages their comfortable family dynamic.

How To Help Your Baby Stay Asleep While You Run Your Vacuum--I'm sure there's a book for that. How To Trick Your Baby into Loving Strained Peas--there has to be one for that, too. How To Potty-Train--now, that's a big one. Anyone who has ever had a baby or even looked at one from across the room recognizes these as essential survival skills for parents, grandparents, and others who find themselves caring for a tiny human being while trying to maintain some vestige of a normal life.

I am surprised that I have not tried my own hand at writing for this lucrative market. My credentials certainly qualify me to do so. I have been a Googie now for twelve years and three months. I have a grand total of six grandkids, who all arrived over a six-year period. Somehow, Sooby is already twelve, and Heero, the youngest, will be six in just over a month.

And then, there's Packee, our imminent seventh, due yesterday. Apparently, he has failed to check his watch and will now be late to the party. This lack of consideration is making us all crazy. We are all so anxious, we can hardly stand it. Yesterday I forgot to take Pooh to soccer practice. The day before that, I took him, but it was a day too early. Today, Zoomie had a meltdown because he lost a piece of candy. It occurs to me that we could all use some advice on how to wait for a baby.

Or, maybe, we have some advice to offer, After all, Packee's four siblings and I waited all day yesterday and today. During that time we did come up with some coping strategies that may be worth sharing. Here are some of the things you can do if you, too, find yourself waiting for a baby.

1. Play charades, being sure to narrow the subject field a bit. Sooby, Bootsie, and I had the best luck with "nursery rhymes and fairy tales." If I do say so myself, I did quite a stunning job with "Hey Diddle Diddle" (but we won't talk about the "cow" part, okay?).

2. Look up techniques for the diabolo, a Chinese yo-yo your grandson can do tricks with. Pooh is pretty good at this, but he was having trouble with the diabolo wobbling too much. I am proud to say we found a trouble-shooting video on You Tube that fixed the problem.

3. Let the kids snuggle with you in your bed in the early morning, even if they are almost too old. Expecting a little brother is hard work, and they need a break. Bootsie and Zoomie took advantage of this opportunity.

4. Watch Kids' TV with them if it is a weekend night. You may, as I did, meet a new cartoon character. In my case, this was a mouse named Geronimo Stilton. Look him up--he is very smart, and his niece and nephew are cute.

I could go on, but you get the idea. The best way to wait for a baby is to spend the time with others who are also waiting and feeling the pain even more dramatically than you do.

That said, no one is more ready for this baby than my daughter Cookie. Yesterday she had a couple contractions in close proximity and went to take a shower because she thought it might be time. But it wasn't, so today she played the organ for a wedding. She has her own ways of coping.

Here is a photo of Cookie back at Easter time, already thinking about baby Packee. I'm sure that, right now, it must be impossible to think of anything else. I hope this delivery goes well and goes soon.

Because of previous plans and other obligations, I have come home now and will very likely miss being with the family for the birth. But already, I am jumping out of my chair every time a message dings into my phone.

It is even harder to wait for a baby from this distance. I can see that, in the coming hours and days, I may have to tweak my list.

The Fairest of Them All

When you grow up in a town that includes the state fairgrounds, you might, after so many years, begin to take the Fair for granted. You might develop a kind of ho-hum attitude toward it, and--worst case scenario--you might become so apathetic toward it that you don't bother to go at all during the Fair's traditional eleven-day August run.

That is, however, not the case with me. Even though I now live thirty-four miles south of my hometown, sometimes referred to as "The State Fair City," I can't recall a year when I didn't go to the Fair at least once. When I was a little kid, it ranked right up there with my birthday and Christmas as a highlight of the calendar year. For me, the Fair (which I honor even now with a capital letter) was big stuff.

The Fair is even bigger stuff now that I have six grandchildren to share it with. Ranking from five to twelve years old, they are all the perfect ages to enjoy the variety of entertainment and activity the Fair offers. Largely to humor their Googie, both families of children make it a priority to spend at least one day together scoping out freebies, indulging themselves with Fair food, checking out the goings-on, and getting their wristbands' worth of rides on the midway.

Although this year's event enabled us to once again enjoy some of our favorite Fair features, we got the chance to try out some new experiences as well. The photos that follow focus on some of the things we took on this year that we don't usually do.

If you have followed "Googie's Attic" through the Fairs of previous years, you know about our yellow T-shirts, which all of us except Heero (far right) and Beenie (far left--he is wearing a lookalike) still fit into. Wearing bright yellow, we do not do much at the Fair that goes unnoticed. We look a little like a flock of ducks, but--hey--two years ago, when the kids were four through ten, these shirts definitely helped us to keep the flock together. This may be our final yellow-shirt year, but you will be glad to know these trusty garments will be retired with honor, having served their purpose nobly.

This was the kids' first year to see the massive, majestic Budweiser Clydesdales up close and personal. Placards listing the horses' birth dates gave the kids a chance to brush up on their summer vacation math skills. Most of them found a horse with either a birthday near their own or one who was close in age.

 
It was also our first year to catch a hug from Sparky the Fire Dog, as Beenie, Heero, and Bootsie do here. A quick check on the website sparky.org reminds me that Sparky first began his fire prevention campaign in 1951, the year before I was born. Since then, he has appeared as an advocate of fire safety in coloring books, comic books, and videos.

Sixty-eight years may be an impressive career for a fire dog, but this year marks the seventy-fifth birthday of Sparky's cohort, Smokey the Bear. Here, Zoomie and Heero celebrate with Smokey, a Fair icon who still moves his arm up and down, points his finger at you, and delivers a recorded fire safety message with the push of a button, as Heero demonstrates.

This last photo shows Zoomie and Pooh visiting with my friend Kathleen, who is living a dream by impersonating Laura Ingalls Wilder, the much-loved author of the Little House on the Prairie series of children's books. Following her presentation, "Laura" encouraged participation from the audience and took time to answer impromptu questions. Sooby, Pooh, Bootsie, and Zoomie are familiar with Wilder's books as bedtime story material, so each of them--as well as their cousin Beenie--readily offered a question that Kathleen, in turn, fielded expertly.

What happened to Nellie Oleson (this "mean" girl was actually a composite of two real-life meanies)? To the Boasts (the Ingalls' neighbors)? To Pa (played by Michael Landon in the TV series)? To Mary (Laura's sister who went blind)? How many times in all did you move?

I was proud of the kids for their interest, attention, and willingness to speak out with their questions. If theirs are questions you wonder about as well, you may want to invite "Laura" to tailor a presentation for your group. (You can e-mail Kathleen Boswell at boswell@iland.net if you wish more info.)

The Clydesdales, Sparky, Smokey's birthday, and Laura Ingalls Wilder (plus the fact that everyone can now drive the bumper cars unassisted--this is BIG!) were just some of this year's Fair highlights. I can't express how much it means to me for these kids to share this much-loved institution of my own childhood.

When next August rolls around, it will be hard to top the novel experiences of this year's Fair--but there is this to consider: We plan to be pushing a stroller. It will be Baby Packee's first Fair, and that alone will make it special.

The Splash

You look at this photo and a thousand questions race through your mind. How can five children, holding hands and running toward the edge of the pool, possibly hit the water at the same time? Should they land at the same time? Will Zoomie (in red) and Heero (in blue) catch up with the rest of the group? Will Zoomie be able to keep a grip on his nose in the seconds to follow?

Will any unsuspecting swimmers be decapitated? Will the lady in the lounge chair behind the kids have a dry square inch left on her body? Is she thinking it might be about time to pack up her flip-flops and go home? 

Will the splash that is imminent make The Guinness Book of World Records? Do these kids have a future in synchronized swimming?

Let me assure you that the aforementioned splash was indeed huge--every time this scene was replayed during the course of last week. And luckily, no pool patron, either in or out of the water at any time, was harmed in the making of this picture.

Last week, all six grandkids came to Googie's house for a week of summertime fun. During the mornings they attended Kids College classes at our local community college. Sooby (who was busy talking to a friend during all of the splashing) attended a class in theatre arts; Bootsie designed beautiful creations in "Fabric Fun"; and Pooh explored the Oregon Trail. The other three boys attended the same workshop in Sensory Science, making tornadoes in bottles, making kinetic sand (one of the boys called it "Connecticut sand"), and constructing a primitive "lava lamp" from oil and water.

I think the thing that caught me by surprise most was the sheer amount of food six children can consume. It didn't take me long to learn that, when eating out at Steak 'n' Shake, the kids' menu is no longer an option. Thank goodness, though, for Sonic's half-price milkshakes after 8 p.m. Those gave everyone a chance to pick a special treat for just under $15.

At home we went through a large pot of navy beans and ham, a large pot of green beans with bacon and new potatoes, a large pot of chicken and noodles, a watermelon, three pans of cinnamon rolls, a big pot of corn on the cob, two blenders of banana-peanut butter smoothies, a 13 x 9" spaghetti casserole, two boxes of Texas toast, a huge bowl of fresh salad, a huge bowl of fruit salad--and those are just the things I can remember. It seemed like I was always planning a meal, grocery shopping while they were at school, cooking, or cleaning up the kitchen. That would be my only complaint if I had one--that and the fact that I sometimes forgot to factor in enough food for me and Pa-pa.

When we weren't eating, it was a week of Lego-building, superhero costumes, Barbie-dressing, and Ninja Turtle movies in the car while we were on the road. There was even a night when we reverted to our old habit of singing together at bedtime, with Pooh and me delivering our rousing rendition of "King of the Road" after everyone else had fallen asleep.

The pool picture offers a good visual metaphor for our week together, the week when all the grandkids joined hands and plunged into the otherwise ordinariness of my summer. The house is quiet now that they are gone, and I miss them.

On the Verge

I was not ready for this birthday. It might as well have crept up behind me and thrown a gunny sack over my head. Although I am usually more than excited for birthdays, this one totally blind-sided me.

I don't mean my own birthday, the one that came a month ago today and pushed me a notch closer to that next big decade. I mean the one that sneaked up yesterday and hammered me like a hurricane. Yesterday was the twelfth birthday of my first grandchild, the original Googie-maker. And as candles flickered atop a cheesecake in Kansas--and Sooby shopped for the first earrings for her newly pierced ears--I was here in Missouri thinking about her standing there on the threshold of her teens.

I don't know how to do this. With the six grandkids coming in a space of six years, I am used to thinking of "kid" things for us to make and eat and play and do. Now that one of those children is a beautiful young lady, I am anticipating the first major change in our dynamic. The teens open up territory I have not explored in a while. My step feels a little uncertain here.

The photo above shows Sooby a week ago tonight with her bag of early birthday presents from Pa-pa and me. Since her brother's birthday falls five days before hers, we often celebrate the two of them in one trip. Still, I have saved a few thoughts and wishes to share with her tonight.

Happy birthday, Sooby-Soo. Just last weekend your cousins and I were looking at a digicam video I took of you, Pooh, and Bootsie when you were not yet four. You were lying on the floor, giggling, with an orange bristle block on your belly button. I barely blink, and here you are today with a pretty new orange dress, a sweet smile, and--always--those gorgeous blue eyes. Where did those eight years go?

Pa-pa and I are certainly proud of you for your achievements in school, music, and 4-H, but the thing that touches us most is your kind heart, your thoughtfulness toward others, and your wish to do what is good and right. I used to cringe when you were always wanting to help in the kitchen, but now I welcome that help. You bake great desserts and can cook up a mean griddle full of bacon and pancakes. I imagine that is something that will just keep getting better as you check off those teen years.

As the oldest, you will be the one who blazes the teen trail just ahead of your siblings and cousins. When your new little brother arrives in a few months, you will be a great help for your mama and an able caregiver for him.

And, if the cause is not hopeless, you may be able to re-train me to interact appropriately with a teenager. I can't help thinking we are on the verge of a great new adventure. We have a year to figure that one out, and I'm betting we will be okay.