Grandma's Visit

My dear mother just left to go back home after a nice, long 11 day visit. It was wonderful having her here, and this morning I was deeply missing her when I had to get up with Aiden at the early-morning hour of 6:45. She spoiled me terribly while she was here because she was sleeping in the nursery and would get up with Aiden at 6:45-7:15 every morning, get him dressed, feed him breakfast, change his diaper and play with him all the while I was sleeping because I never heard him cry over the baby monitor. Every morning I told her to get me up but she would proceed to do it all herself again the next morning. It's like she liked spending the time with him or something. :)

While she was here, we accomplished a lot of stuff that needed to be sewn. We made a thank-you blanket for our Ward's Primary piano player who will not be able to play for us any more due to arthritis. I'd like to say we hemmed Thomas' uniform and whatnot, but she did most of it. She did make me feel better though because she told me she hems all of my brother-in-law's pants because when he asked my sister to do it, it sat there for a few months until he asked my mom to do it. Nothing gets done in my family until it's been put off for long enough and my mom says, "Alright, it's been long enough. Let's get this finished." And then it takes twenty minutes to do it.

And we also made a T-shirt for Aiden, proudly displaying the fact that his Daddy is a Police Officer. I laugh everytime I even think about it.

We tried to go out to the Gulf, again, but alas, this was not the visit for her to see the Gulf, apparently. We got all packed up and on our way, and we're about halfway there and realize that Thomas and I both forgot our cell phones and seeing as how there's really nothing but back roads between here and the Gulf but Perry, Florida in between, we stopped off at Perry to buy some canning supplies and headed back home. I really have no idea how we both forgot our phones, but we did. Maybe next time will be the time we actually make it out there. Everytime my mom comes, we tell her we're going to go to the Gulf and go to this delicious restaurant that catches all it's food for the day in the morning, so the seafood is nice and fresh, but we have yet to make it out there.

We went shopping quite a bit to buy stuff to can. We canned 3 pts of tomatoes, 2 pts of pears, 9 pts of peaches, 4 pts of oranges, and 9 pts of bread and butter pickles. I feel much more confident in the canning area and am so grateful to have had her here to get my feet wet again and remind me of the whole canning process. Now I have a canning bug and am constantly thinking of things that I could can. I think my next venture will be fruit cocktail. Wish me luck.

Aiden ate a lot of new foods and now has an adorable Buddha belly, thanks to Grandma. Which was nice for me because since I am very much the first time mommy and scared of the unknown I wasn't trying a lot of new things but my mom blazed right through that because she's gone down this road a time or two between five kids and ten grandkids. He ate his share of bread, broccoli, bits of chicken salad sandwiches, beef stew, corn, sweet peas, fresh green beans, mushrooms, fresh peaches, strawberries, french fries (without the gag reflex this time, thank goodness) to name a few.

He also mastered the chum bag we bought for him. My sister-in-law, Michelle, had told me about it a while ago, and finally while at the store I remembered it, and I wish I had bought it when she first told me about it. It's amazing. But also with all this new stuff in the feeding department, he has figured out that he can feed Zelda. He has put his chum bag over the side for Zelda to lick a few times already, and then proceed to suck on it himself. I'm sorry to say that I didn't catch him in time a few times to stop him, and that is gross.

Mostly while my mom was here, we just hung out and let Aiden play with Grandma, which he took to immediately. We went down to the garden a couple times to pick beans and radishes, and walked around the property where he encountered his first turtle!

He also learned the wonders of "This Little Piggy" and "Patty-Cake" and "High-five, side-five, low-five, cut the pickle" from Grandma. I have tried to do this since she left, but he just doesn't think it's as funny coming from Momma and it was Grandma.

Dropping her off at the airport was heart-wrenching. I'm not good with saying goodbye to my family, but it the blow was softened because in a hopefully-short six and a half weeks we will be going out to Utah to visit.