Missing My Girls (and Blogging about It)

I just found an awesome new--well, new to me, at least--blog to follow.  I may be the only Catholic woman/ wife/mother/blogger who spends WAY too much time sitting at her computer reading about the lives of other Catholic women/wives/mothers/bloggers (my list of blog sites stored in "Favorites" on my laptop grows continuously) who has been in the dark about this must-visit site called Camp Patton.  It is absolutely hi-lar-i-ous, and you don't have to be a Catholic, or a wife, or a mother, or a blogger (or even a female, really) to enjoy Grace's posts on the ins and outs of being a busy mom to three kids under the age of 3...or is it 4?  Anyway, she's the extremely funny wife of a wise-cracking OB/GYN intern...or is it resident?  (I guess I have to stalk the Pattons a little bit more before I know their whole story and can give you the full scoop.)

I know the word "awesome" is extremely overused these days, but the term can really be applied to this blog.  Like Mama needs coffee, this one hooked me right in after I found it on Conversion Diary's Friday blog party called "7 Quick Takes."  I think Grace over at Camp Patton and Jenny over at Mama needs coffee would make really good friends.  Cyber friends, at least.

Meanwhile, my little blog has added a couple of new followers lately, which completely tickles me.  I'm up to 27 now!  Woo hoo!  I've got a little ways to go before I'm in Grace Patton's league; and truthfully, I know I never will be.  I think this whole blogging business (which I contemplate giving up on almost daily lately) is really a young person's game.  I'm a bit of a dinosaur, a good 20 years older than most of the gals whose blogs I enjoy reading.   Too bad blogging wasn't a "thing" yet, back in the days when I had four little boys aged four and under, and eventually a fifth.  I tell you, I could have spun some mighty funny yarns.  I've posted some stories recalling those long-ago days here and there on this blog, but the details have gotten a bit fuzzy over the years.  How cool it would have been to write them up, when the details were still fresh, and post them on a blog!

Blah, blah, blah...sorry, this is getting boring, isn't it?  Blogging about blogging...I'm sinking to new lows.

In other news, my husband and I made it back home from our two-week stay out in Colorado last night, after a very long and not-so-fun day of non-revving (flying non-revenue stand-by, that is--a perk of being an airline employee, or being married to one, that can seem extremely un-perk-like at times).  I won't bore you with the details of a day in the life of two weary travelers; I was going to, but after typing up four or five yawn-inducing lines, I thought better of it and deleted them.  (You're welcome.)

ANYway...we're home, which is both a good and a bad thing.  We love being in our own house and sleeping in our own bed, and all of that jazz.  Home is good.  But we really miss our little playmates, our 21-month-old twin granddaughters Bonny Babe and Cutie Pie.  I tell you, it's bad how much we miss them already.  For the past two weeks, we were their willing slaves.  If they said "Jump!" we gladly asked "How high?"  And when we said "Jump!" they did their own version of that action--which involves all kinds of crazy body motions, but feet actually leaving the ground isn't usually one of them.  (So we did say "Jump!" a lot, for our own amusement.  Does that make us bad grandparents?)

After all that playtime together, we wondered if they'd miss us, too.  So when we called our son last night to tell him we'd finally made it back home, we were elated to hear that at breakfast yesterday, the girls appeared to be wondering where we were, saying "Papa?" and "Gray?"  (Yes, I'm "Gray."  I was shooting for "Grammy," but I'll take it.)

Aside from the twins, we also miss our newest little granddaughter, Little Gal.  I took lots of pictures while we were out there, and this one of my oldest son dressing his newborn daughter gave me a distinct feeling of deja vu.

So I pulled out an old photo album last night and found this snapshot of him when he was about her age and size.

It's the circle of life, illustrated!  The circle of life is one of my favorite topics to explore on this blog these days, now that I'm the Gray Lady.  (That's my husband's version of the name with which my granddaughters have tagged me.  Nice, huh?)  I just wish the quality of this picture was better.  I sure would have liked to have had digital photography back when I was a young mother--as well as the whole blogging thing, but I guess I've covered that already.

Okay, time to wrap this up.

For years and years, people have been wondering when I'd ever "get my girls."  Well, I've got them.  And not just the three aforementioned wee ones, but their sweet mother as well.  I had a hard time saying good-bye to my daughter-in-law after this visit, as I always do.  And after a lifetime of being perfectly content with my role as a mother to all sons, I was struck by the thought that maybe I'd missed out after all.  When my daughter-in-law's mom arrived the night before we left, I realized just how unique and precious that mother-daughter bond is, especially after a daughter has become a mother herself.  I was feeling that maybe I was going to become a bit irrelevant over the coming years: my sons' wives will be the most important women in their lives (as it should be!), and their wives will always be closer to their own mothers than to me (again, as it should be!); but where will that leave me?

Well, I think my daughter-in-law must be a mind reader or something.  As we got in the car to drive to the airport yesterday morning, my son handed me a little gift bag from his wife. And inside was a small rustic wooden sign with these words painted on it: FIRST MY MOTHER-IN-LAW, NOW ALSO MY FRIEND.  If I said there weren't any tears when I read that, I would be lying.

And on that happy note, I think I'll say good-bye for now!