Time Well Spent with "My Three (grand) Sons"

For the past few days, I have had each of my grandsons, one at a time, spend the night with me. They truly are little "treasures" from heaven. When you only have one for the night, you really get to know them and their unique personalities. I laughed at many of the things they said, and even cried a time or two because of the intensity of their love for ME!

Owie, as he has asked me to call him, (he remembers that my Mom always called him Owie rather than Owen) is the oldest of the 3. He got to spend Thursday night with me. He is SO a "first-born"!! Everything I asked him to make a choice about, he would say, "what do YOU want Nonnie?" (Very often, First-Born's are "pleasers" and therefore, it is hard for them to decide what they want to do, or what they want...) I had to remind him many times that HE was my guest, and therefore, I wanted him to make those choices; what movie to watch, what flavor pudding to make, etc.

Speaking of pudding; I heard an "echo" while we were getting some groceries for the days the boys would be with me. I asked him if he liked pudding. He said, "Nonnie, there are only 2 kinds of pudding I like: Hot and Cold". My father used to tell his congregation the SAME THING about pies!!! I told Owie about that and he said he remembered hearing it from one of my siblings.

I purchased a table and benches that I have needed to assemble for several weeks. Owie and I got the first bench done. There was only one thing that night that bothered me about Owie...he GRITS HIS TEETH all night long while he sleeps~~!!! (I told his Mama and she said she has talked to the Dentist about it, and evidently it is common for that to happen as they start losing baby teeth - which is when he started doing it. So, I guess Nonnie "worried" for no reason at all!

Friday night, the boys had an activity at Church, so no one stayed with me again until Saturday. I picked Gideon up on Saturday afternoon. He is the "middle child" and as different from Owie as night and day. "G", as we often call him, is an aspiring artist and a problem solver. He loves to figure out the technicality of putting something together but really isn't that interested in actually doing the assembly. The challenge for him is figuring out HOW it goes together. I had already put one bench together with Owie, so I knew exactly how to put the 2nd bench together. Gideon helped, but wasn't real thrilled about it all until it came time to glue the wooden "buttons" on top of the screw holes. He really enjoyed being able to pound them gently with the hammer.

Being the middle child, he is also LOVES to pull pranks, etc. I found MANY things in the house had been moved from one shelf to another or beads from the top of the lamp hanging "inside" the lamp rather than outside... it was like playing a game. I NEVER saw any of his "activities" in moving objects from their normal place, so he was very excited that he was able to trick me with so many things throughout the apartment.

Gideon is a "lover"; actually, all 3 boys are, but Gideon constantly tells you how much he loves you and he will hug and cuddle anytime! When he woke up on Sunday morning, he ate breakfast and got ready for Church and then watched TV for awhile while I finished getting everything done that I needed to do before leaving. I noticed he kept leaving the living room and coming into the kitchen where I was working and he constantly would hug me or say he loved me. I could tell he was being extra "attached" to me and it finally dawned on me what was wrong with him. I said, "Gideon, are you missing your brothers?" To which he replied, "Yes." I told him in another hour we would be at Church and he would be able to be with them again. That seemed to calm his spirit. Since he is very much the "social" one of the bunch, it is rather surprising that he told his Mama, "when he is away somewhere, he wants to be there, but always thinks about HOME!" He was more than ready to don his back -pack and get in the car so we could get to Church! **(Just a quick Note: Gideon has a head full of beautiful blond curls. BUT, he is at the age where he wants his hair to lie flat; therefore he wets it all down and combs it as straights as possible. If the day is Humid, the curls pop out everywhere, regardless of what he does to them~~!)

My son and his wife welcomed their 2nd child/2nd daughter into the world late Friday night. Therefore, The boys parents, Nichole and Jeremy and I decided to leave right after Church and head to Grand Rapids to see the new baby. It is an 1 1/2 hour drive. We didn't stay real long and then headed back home 1 1/2 hours away. After arriving in Shepherd, they dropped me off at my apartment and then a few minutes later, Nichole came back to drop Silas, the youngest of the 3, off for the night. Silas just turned 5, but looks to be about 3 1/2 in size. So, it is very, very funny when "wise" things come out of his mouth. Silas kept me laughing the whole evening. These are some of the things he said to me that night:

While he and I were assembling a wooden waste-basket for the kitchen (which, I might add, he literally did 85% or more of the work by himself), I had been holding 2 boards at a right angle. I kinda dropped them and they shifted a little bit. Silas was putting in some screws when that happened, and said to me, "Nonnie, you got me "off course" a little when you did that. I said, Silas, you are 5. What do you know about being "off course"? He replied, "5-year-olds now about the word "course"! I almost lost it all at that point~!!

When we had completed the waste-basket, he was eating supper at my desk and I sat in a chair near him and we talked. I said something about one of "my girlfriends". He said, "Nonnie, why do you have a girlfriend? That sounds like a boyfriend!" I-yi-yi...I explained to him that when girls have friends they usually refer to them as girlfriends. When guys have friends, they usually call them "buddies" or "friends". He said, "yes, or they say BEST FRIEND". Okay - got past that one but was laughing in my head the whole time.

Girls are females and boys are bucks. (I asked if he was talking about deer or people and he assured me that he was talking about people~!)

When looking at family pictures on the refrigerator, he said, "I know my dad is your son-in-law; that is why you can't marry him"~ Yikes!!! I asked him if his daddy told him that. He said, "No, I just know it."

And one of my favorites: He noticed I had put a large picture on the wall above the Wall Unit, since he had been to my apartment the last time. He wanted to know how I got it up there on the wall. I said, "I have a stool I stand on." I told him it wasn't exactly where I wanted it to hang and I was going to have to re-hang it. He looked over at me as serious as a heart-attack and said, "Nonnie, I don't want to hurt your feelings or anything, but you have short arms". I looked at him for a minute and then realized he was meaning that I would not be able to just stand in front of the wall unit and "reach" the picture! What a HOOT!!!

He was very ready to leave this morning because he was going to have a "play date" with his best friend from Pre-School. What a good time we had; he, spouting words of wisdom and I, hardly able to contain my laughter!

So, all in all, I have realized that Owie is the quiet one, Gideon is the playful one and Silas has a wise soul in the body of a 5-year old~~!!