You Know You’re a Grandparent When…

January 2, 2019

Diane Morrow-Kondos,

I’m pretty sure we fit the bill for all fourteen of the identifying marks of grandparents!

Your phone is full of grandchildren pictures, hundreds of photos ready to be shown to any unsuspecting sucker. Suddenly, you know they need to see the pictures of your grandchild for their life to be complete.
All the doors in your house have sticky fingerprints about two feet high. It’s like every room in your house was holding a two-foot person hostage and they were obligated to press their dirty hands on every inch of the door.
Your car backseat not only has the obligatory child safety seat but it also has a sprinkling of Cheerios, a copy of Llama, Llama Red Pajama and a stuffed dog. And if you’re not careful it may also have the odor of a forgotten sippy cup of milk or in my case, a banana that was thrown and somehow got under the seat and stayed there for two weeks!
When you pull up your Pandora app, it automatically goes to Disney songs. And you sing along with no shame, sometimes even when the grandkids aren’t with you.
Even though you aren’t really a shopper, you’re magnetically drawn to Baby Gap and Pottery Barn Kids. You may still be wearing outfits with shoulder pads and polyester, but your grandbaby is going to look good!
You know all the words to Baby Shark. Even though you may have no rhythm, you attempt the Baby Shark dance as you sing at the same time much to your grandchildren’s delight (if they’re under the age of five).
You care, you really care, about what the world will be like in 60 years. We won’t be around anymore, but our grandchildren will be, so we have to stop global warming, ban plastics and fund better education!
At least fifty percent of your social media posts involve photos of your grandkids and include at least one of the following words: cute, adorable, smart, precious. If you’re really a pro you’ll find a way to work at least three of those adjectives into every post. At times the politics on social media get to you and you think about deleting your accounts, but you know you owe it to the world to share the happiness of your cute, adorable, smart and precious grandchild.
Your friends schedule an intervention because they are tired of hearing about your grandchildren. You may listen, but you know they’re secretly jealous and you refuse to change your behavior, continuing to work a grandchild’s name into every conversation.
It’s difficult to plug anything in at your house because all the outlets are covered with plugs. The cabinets all have locks, and to retrieve a battery you have to have a combination for the safe. Your childproofed house makes the White House’s security look weak.
You worry. You thought those days were over when your children became responsible adults, but now all the “what ifs” are back and you want to wrap your grandkids in bubble wrap to protect your precious darlings from everything!
You think about remodeling. Your own children had to make do with garage sale cribs and sponge-painted walls, but your grandchild suddenly “needs” a designer nursery and a Pottery Barn chair with their name embroidered on the back!
You feel a sudden urge to bake because well, isn’t that what grandmothers do? I can’t smell the yeasty goodness of hot bread without thinking of walking into my grandmother’s Kansas farm kitchen. My instinct and desire for being a baking grandmother is not compatible with my need for being a Weight Watcher’s grandmother.
Your heart has grown ten sizes. Just like the Grinch, your heart has expanded and you can hardly believe a love like this has come along so late in life. It’s a love you never experienced and couldn’t have been prepared for; it’s the reward for growing older.