The Babysitters Club

Well, I've been a bit too busy to blog for the past few days, but now I'm back home--after a week away in Upstate NY--and I'm sitting at my own little desk in my own little office in our basement. While we had a wonderful Christmas, visiting with relatives from both sides of the family, it does feel good to get back home. The hardest part about seeing the festivities come to an end yesterday was saying good-bye to our twin granddaughters (and of course their parents, too--our oldest son and his sweet wife). Those little girls were the stars of the show, that's for sure, and they were showered with attention by all of their aunts and uncles, great-aunts and uncles, second cousins, and last but not least, their great-grandparents on their daddy's side.

My husband and I got the opportunity to really bond with those two little girls at the end of our week with the family. The crowd had really thinned out by Friday, leaving just my husband and myself, our oldest son and his little family, our youngest son, and one of my husband's sisters along with her fiancee and youngest son behind at the Pearl family homestead. Our oldest son and his wife decided to take advantage of an offer too good to refuse from a more-than-willing set of grandparent babysitters, and they went on a well-earned overnight trip to Montrael (a sort of belated 2nd anniversary celebration), leaving Friday at about noon and returning 24 hours later. They stayed at a four-star hotel, got to nap (Heaven!), did some sightseeing, and ate out at a nice French restaurant. They capped off their trip by attending a Mass in French at St. Joseph's Oratory. The two overworked young parents were able to have a short reprieve from their exhausting (although highly rewarding) 24/7 job of caring for seven-month-old twin babies...which in turn gave the babies' Papa and Grammy a chance to step in and help out, for one day at least.

Papa and I had a ball taking care of those sweet little girls. We let them take a cat-nap in our arms in the morning (truly Heaven! We should have put them in their cribs, but decided "what happens at Grammy's, stays at Grammy's"!), fed them, changed them, burped them, played with them, read to them, sang to them, and put them to bed at night...then got to be the ones to pick them up first thing in the morning, when they awoke full of happy babbles and sleepy smiles. It was a complete joy for us! The only activity on the daily schedule their mommy had jotted down for us at which Papa and Grammy were highly unsuccessful was feeding them their rice cereal. We tried it three times; and with each go-around, Cutie Pie would begin to cry in earnest, and Bonny Babe would firmly clamp her lips shut--or if Papa was able to slip the spoon into her mouth when he saw an opening, she would spit it all out. Note to Mommy and Daddy: rice cereal is yucky! (Or maybe we were just doing it wrong!)

Here is what Bonny Babe looked like during her feeding, sporting a rice cereal moustache and beard. She's Santa Baby, in the flesh. She would be perfect for an ad campaign called "Got rice cereal?"

Bonny, the messy little eater--smiling like the cat who ate the rice cereal.

You've gotta love that face! You're smiling right now, aren't you? This adorable photo is my New Year's gift to you, so that you can start off the year 2012 with joy in your heart. Happy New Year!