One Grandma Moment In Time

I have been meaning to write about this for quite a few days. I popped into Donald and Lisa's on Labor Day. Donald was doing exactly what I expected him to be doing.

Puttering around in his garage.

Lisa was taking the opportunity of the first time in weeks to really do a thorough cleaning of the house.

When I came into the living room there was Alexandra with a sleeping baby Elisabeth propped up beside her. You couldn't really call it holding her baby sister. Elisabeth had just kind of melted into Lex. Lizzy is such a cuddler that she quite often just molds herself to you if you happen to be holding her when she is sleeping.The point here, is that it was so cute to watch and no-one took a picture. Don't feel bad though for no picture. Lisa has taken at least 1500 pictures of the girls in the almost twelve months since Elisabeth was born.

So they're good.

After a few minutes Alexandra asked me to take Elisabeth because her arm was starting to hurt. I had seen that coming. I bet her arm was pretty numb and tingly by then. So of course I took little Sleeping Beauty.

I love holding that little girl.

Lorelai came to sit by me, and believe me, when Lorelai sits by you, she really SITS by you. To her way of thinking, sitting by grandma doesn't count unless every part of her cute little, three year old self, is touching as much of me as is humanly possible.

(Without actually sitting in my lap.)

She does it the same way if I am in a chair at the table. Her chair must be touching grandma's chair or it doesn't qualify as sitting by grandma. It's not always easy to get things done when Lorelai sits by me, but I wouldn't want it any other way.

Lorelai's intention that day was to convince me to play "memory" with her. I had plenty of time so I said yes.

Lorelai really likes to hear YES.

She dumped the game out on the floor, and I had to tell her that grandma was to old to sit on the floor to play memory. I told her we could go play at the table.

After a moment's consideration Lorelai said YES.

Alexandra wanted to play as well so Lorelai and I both told her YES!

We started to spread the cards out on the table. Within seconds I realized that there were way more cards than we needed. To have put them all down would have taken up half the table.

How long does Milton Bradly think a three and five year olds arms are?

The girls and I got to work picking out pairs of the jumbled cards. That's the problem with taking out unwanted cards for the game of Memory. They have to come out in pairs. And when they are loose in the box it can take a while to pair then up and then set them aside. Oh, and you also have to keep reminding Lorelai that no matter how much she likes all the pairs you are discarding, you just can't use all of them.

Good bye pair of duckies. So long ice cream cones. See ya later cute pair of alligators.

It was wrenching to discard so many and see the look of despair on Lori's face but we had to cull the herd. Alright, we are down to a manageable number of cards, lets place them (in an orderly fashion) face down on the table. Lorelai practically had a ruler out to make sure they were all the same distance from each other.

Trust me she gets that from her mother. We Sorensons aren't usually know for such orderliness.

Cards all laid out? Check. Everyone seated comfortably? Check. Lorelai very close, but not actually in grandma's lap? Double Check.

Alright lets start the game.

Now when playing a game of memory it is almost always best to go last. That way you get to see the most overturned cards by the time it is your turn. Three and five year old girls don't understand that concept. Especially the three year old.

Going first is of special importance to Lorelai.

The odd thing though, she was insistent on going first, however, she wanted GRANDMA to go first. Go figure. Of course, I was more than happy to go first. I planned to help them both with little nudges and hints anyway, with maybe a little more help for Loreali.

Did I mention that she is only three after all?

I went first. No Match. I made sure to have them pay close attention to what cards I had turned over. This was met with varying results.

Alexandra's turn. No Match. Not too happy but also the BIG girl. She handled the disappointment pretty well.

Miss Lorelai is up. No Match but close, close. The disappointment wasn't handled quite as well but assurances by grandma helped the mood. My turn again. I get a match. I actually hadn't meant to. I thought I was one card off and I was hoping that one of the girls would know where the real match was. ( I guess that would be reverse cheating) That little smarty pants Alexandra was aware of the same match and she was quite disappointed I had gotten to it before she did.

So much for trying to throw the game.

A few more turns. Alexandra gets a pair. Big excitement. Lori, to her credit is actually not too upset. I, of course, had told her that I just knew that she would get a pair on her turn. With just a minimum of help from me she did too.

I'm not completely sure how far into the game we were when Lorelai turned over two cards. They didn't match, but she knew which one she should have turned over instead.

So she did.

Triumph.

With just a small teeny weeny cheat Lorelai had her first pair. Lex didn't even complain either. I'm not sure if she was being generous or if she hadn't noticed Lori's flagrant flounting of the rules. It was at this point that one of the girls, (I can't remember which one) pointed out to me that when they play with Mama, they leave the cards turned up, if they aren't matches. I agreed that if they wanted to play that way we certainly could.

Same game, New rules.

It gets back to Lorelia's turn and suddenly there are matches to be had all over. (I had foreseen this happening) She gets one pair right after another. This is due to the rule that if you get one match you get to take another turn, and another, as long as you keep getting matches. If I had been really thinking I would have foreseen that and changed the rules to just one turn, even if you did just get a match.

I guess I was a little sloppy on the new rules.

Well obviously, Lori was the winner by a landslide. Lex had only one pair. To make it worse and despite my trying not to, I had ended up with four pairs.

The Good Big Sister thing was wearing a little thin for Alexandra. Sure it's one thing to be generous with praise for little sister when she is clearly struggling, but to have her beat your pants off? Well that is just plain asking too much.

At this point I realize it is time to enforce new rules. Those would be back to the old rules with the small change of even less cards. Again this caused some anguish for Lori. We simply could not get rid of the puppy or the flower so the skateboard and the sun had to go.

Game two starts out on a pretty even playing field. This time Lex chooses to go last. Believe it or not I was able to get her to understand the advantage of being last.

That made Lorelai first.

She actually got a match. That was quite exciting for everyone. We were all feeling the camaraderie at this point. My turn. I get a match.

The excitement builds.

It doesn't last long however. Alexandra does not get a match. Lorelai's turn. No match. Sombre times for all. I (deliberately) mess up a match, hoping they will notice, no good, neither of them were paying attention. I give them a pep-talk on the need to pay close attention to all the cards as they are turned over. Alexandra pulls an upset by not only getting a match on her next turn but by getting another match on her bonus turn.

Lorelai pouts.

With just a little bit of help though she gets a match of her own. We continue the game with me trying my hardest to skewer the results. This, by the way, is pretty frustrating. My helping can only do so much if I can't get Lori to pay attention.

Clearly this will be our last game.

Well, lets cut to the chase here. Lex wins the game. She wins by a lot. She even has given Lori a few of her pairs to make her feel better.

Apparently though, Lorelai will be happy with nothing less than total domination.

I manage to console her after a while. She wants to play again but by now I am completely exhausted. You try playing Memory with two little girls and not come away feeling battle scarred. Plus ,I had been there for close to two hours and even though he hadn't called my cell phone I figured Don would probably be wondering what had happened to me.

He knows it doesn't take three and a half hours to take my mother to dialysis.

The girls were sad for me to leave but it was time to go. I went and laid down by Elisabeth and gave her ten minutes of love first. Then I got up put my sandals back on and told them all good bye.

A little tired from the game, and verging on low blood sugar, but almost two hours that I wouldn't trade for anything in the world.

Nothing in the world can compare to the joys of Grandmahood.

The end.