Dancing into the BRS Weekend

The Birthday Girl Today Doing What She Loves Best

I haven’t been blogging for the past couple days because I had the august pleasure of spending them up in New Hampshire with my newest granddaughter – the BRS. However I couldn’t let today pass without commenting on the birthday of my Favorite Panamanian. I’m diplomatic enough not to crow about the number of years involved but she wears them with an infinite amount of grace and beauty that still astounds me. People refuse to believe we are basically the same age which I conveniently take to mean how good my wife looks rather than my decrepit state.

The New Fam Getting Ready to Head Home

We usually spend her birthday apart since she’s annually safe from the howls of the New England winter down in Panama. This year however the BRS’ imminent arrival dictated an early return. The BRS took a page out of the FBR’s book showed up exactly four days before her grandparent’s birthday – in this case – my wife’s. I’ve always considered birthdays very important and didn’t want to diminish my Favorite Panamanian’s but it was hard to compete with the exciting news emanating from our son’s home. An easy way to make my wife happy is to take her dancing which is what we did Friday night. I met her on a dance floor more than 36 years ago and she never misses a chance to get out there. Her father, when I asked him for her hand admonished me that I had to promise to take her dancing. I’ve tried to be true to the promise I made all those years ago.

A Baby Very Lucky in the Mom and Grandma Department

We danced to almost midnight which wasn’t planned since we had an early morning trip to spend some more time with the BRS as she came home for the first time. It was a bit of subdued trip north as I dealt with the aftermath of my Friday exertions but we were both excited to see the newly formed family again. They were in the midst of a photo session when we arrived with the BRS tolerating the indignities with a calm assurance that I’m sure she inherited from her mother.

We acquired a key to their house and did some grocery shopping in preparation for their return home. They’d left a few days earlier than planned as the BRS was impatient to debut. We also bought some balloons and were in the middle of putting them up outside the house when the ABFA’s parent also showed up with some balloons which ended up on the mail box. It’s going to be so much fun sharing grandparenting with these two. I also created a banner welcoming the BRS home for the first time which ended up over the garage with what I felt was an inordinate amount of supervision from my wife.

One of the biggest questions would be how Riggins would react to this little addition to his house. That question was answered almost immediately as he cautiously approached the baby, sniffed her a couple times and gave his approval. The ABFA’s parents had brought a BRS occupied blanket home from the hospital for him to sniff ahead of time. He was very good with her throughout the weekend although he did commander a blanket my son had laid out to swaddle the BRS in. The fact that he did this just after coming in from a rain soaked walk was less than welcome (wet dog smell) but overall he was great with her.

First Meeting

Both of the new parents looked a little shell shocked after their first night at home with their daughter. They are both educated and had gone to real lengths to learn as much as possible ahead of time. But, as any parents who have been through it can attest, the reality is so much more intense. Babies, and the BRS is no exception, have their own ways of approaching life and parents just have to roll with the vagaries. The BRS, just like her father was as a baby, doesn’t like to have her hands swaddled and is proving ingenious at freeing them up. On her first night home she also shocked her parents by actually turning over, something they thought they’d have to wait weeks for.

Happy Abuela

Overall she’s a very good baby who does prefer to sleep with her head on someone’s chest. The competition to be the lucky chest can be pretty lively. This is great until the early morning hours when everyone except the BRS and the selected chest are awake. My son and the ABFA have all the required gadgets and will eventually figure out how to get her to sleep in the bassinet or die from exhaustion. I’m betting on the former.

Riggins didn’t try to get between the parents and their new charge but he did scare the hell out of me on Saturday night. I got up in those early morning hours to answer nature’s call and was trying to sneak by my son’s bedroom where I could hear parental ministrations ongoing. All of a sudden Riggins, who was also in the room sounded off like the lost hound of the Baskervilles. Once I peeled the crown of my head out of the ceiling where my jump had propelled it I slunk into the bathroom apologetically. My son reported that he’d also been scared half to death by Riggins’ explosion but the BRS hadn’t even taken notice. Already regal.

My wife is staying with them for this first week to help out any way she can but that also meant we’re going to be apart for today’s birthday again. I know she’s doing exactly what she wants to do though as anyone who’s ever seen my wife around a baby, much less a granddaughter, can attest. She got a bit of excitement Sunday morning when she learned we had forgotten to pack her clothes for the week. She’d put them on a bunch of hangers and stuck them in our downstairs closet Friday night. As I chronicled earlier I wasn’t in the best of modes on Saturday morning and forgetting the clothes quickly became my fault. I kept repeating back to her, “Wait a minute. I forgot your clothes”.

This meant I was sentenced to a rainy Sunday afternoon at TJ Maxx and Marshall’s where a number of wife’s Christmas presents, in the form of gift cards, were spent acquiring a new wardrobe for the week. I figure the Friday night dancing and Sunday shopping (without complaining) were the best birthday gifts I could possibly give her. There was no way I was going to exceed the best gift possible the ABFA and our son provided on Thursday.  

I had a long and miserable drive home Sunday night to a once again lonely house. My son got me into the Netflix series Altered Carbon over the weekend so I binged on that while sorting through some more grocery shopping, cooking, and laundry. The FBR checked in on her new cousin over the weekend a couple times and didn’t seem overly impressed but that might have been because the New Jersey cousin was dealing with the remnants of a very tough cold. Her mom reported she was on the road to recovery on Sunday when she didn’t slow down for the entire day since she finally felt better. Her parents looked almost as exhausted.

The FBR Was Back Riding the Dragon