A Guest Post From Grandma Goat About Her Recent Visit With Us In Raleigh

Baby Time

Having visited Abbie, Jim and the boys for a few days this week in NC, I realize that I’ve lost all sense of time. I’m now ready for bed when Cooper goes to sleep and wake up when he makes his first peep in the morning (sometimes more loudly than others.) I enjoy napping when both Sully and Cooper are down for their afternoon naps.

It feels like I’ve been in a time warp as I’ve lost touch with my own schedule and quickly blended into “baby time”.

Yesterday, on my walk with Cooper this different sense of time was contrasted to what we may want to call “normal time.” Cooper was delighted to sit and watch a mother duck sitting on her nest of eggs. He squealed with pleasure as he caught his first glimpse of the lake below where we were perched on the hillside. He noticed every coo of the dove above us and laughed and laughed each time a butterfly closely flew by. At one point we played with bubbles of which he never tired of trying to catch and pop each one.

As our walk continued, Coop asked if he could get out of the stroller and walk. As we walked on the sidewalk by a line of parked cars, we practiced the colors. He stopped at each car and pointed as I called out the color. He stopped and pondered a white truck for a longer time and was totally oblivious to everything else. I was about 4 feet ahead of him pushing the stroller, when a young woman came up behind Cooper in her swim attire. She asked Cooper, rather sternly, to keep moving so she could get by. I also asked Cooper to move forward, however, he was deeply contemplating this white truck like a deer in the headlights and didn’t appear to hear either of us. The young woman then sucked through her teeth and told Cooper to move on or at least give her room to move by. As I was walking back to help with this intensifying situation, she squeezed herself around Cooper breaking his dazed stare at the truck. He was so stunned that he fell over landing on his hands. Now I had seen that she hadn’t touched him but my “GiGi radar was out” and I joined Cooper in the drama that had been created. The young woman was aghast as Cooper was flailing and screaming like she had killed him. She kept assuring us that she hadn’t touched him. I then picked him up and said, “Don’t worry Cooper, she’s obviously in a much bigger hurry than we are. She’s not on baby time.”

Today it’s time to head back home to Virginia and I know that I have to switch gears to a faster pace. I find myself reflecting over the past few days. I leave my grandsons and their Mommy in “baby time” with a keen sense that Cooper and Sully are teaching us to be in the present moment. I recall how Cooper explores every little thing in his environment as though it were the first time over and over again. I watch Sully calling out for us to give him attention even though it may not fit into our scheduled birthday party for their Dad. I’m even going to miss watching “Doodlebops,” with blue, pink, and yellow characters on TV with Cooper each morning. I think we could all use more “baby time” in our hectic lives and plan to try to be more mindful in my own life – thanks to my teachers, Cooper and Sully!