A Day With Kaitlyn Mae

07/18/2004

A Quality Kaitlyn Day

Grandmother sits down to write this missive, Kaitlyn Mae, before the happy/sad, bittersweet memories leave me. I must also tell you about the three baby robins over my garage. Yes, one has something to do with the other but you get ahead of me.

You are a little over seven months old at this writing and yesterday your parents brought you to visit for an entire quality day. I don’t know if they had quality day as part of the plan but it turned out that way and I’m much happier for it.

You are now crawling all over the place, Kaitlyn, and your personality begins to emerge. At least as grandmother sees it and what the heck, I’ll write it now and later on down the road we’ll see how right I am.

For now a little background. It seems that for the entirety of your life, Kaitlyn,-and I’m knocking wood with all ten knuckles here-you have been extraordinarily healthy. And I do mean extraordinarily in that your mother, just between you and me, Kaitlyn, is a bit of a hypochondriac. She always has been but I’ll be honest and say it’s more of a personality aspect than an obsession. Still she regularly checks the baby boards and pays close attention to your doctor visits. Yesterday she told me she was worried that, get this, the spring water they buy to make your formula should have fluoride in it.

I was still pondering that bit about buying spring water to make your formula much less the part about the fluoride. We’ll cut that reminisce short right here Kaitlyn, and continue with the background. So you’ve been a very healthy baby and I know you’ve only been alive seven months at this writing but my one major motherhood memory from the one and only baby I gave birth to was that by your age your mother had been sick so many times that I equated giving birth with disease.

Your mother developed pneumonia when she was six months old and had to be hospitalized. Before this she had been sick at least one week out of every month of her very young life. Sickness that required hospital emergency visits many times.

I don’t know why, Kaitlyn, as your mother is a big-boned healthy adult woman but it’s how it was. I did not breast-feed your mother because the liberal women’s libbers to whom I stupidly reported disdained those maternal activities that would tie a female to her child like she was nothing but a …., well, a mother. You, Kaitlyn, were breast-fed. It’s why God made boobs but don’t tell the men that, Kaitlyn.

You seem also to be keenly curious and there’s nothing better on the earth Kaitlyn as curious members of the animal kingdom grow up to be healthy adults of their species.

Now about the baby robins. I must say I’m amazed. Because that mother robin picked the oddest, and most perfect, place to build her nest. I even told my husband that it seemed a stupid place and he agreed.

The nest nestles in the “S” part of my rain spout right below where the top of the spout affixes to the rain gutter. The gutter runs the horizontally across the length of the roof as designed, then rain spouts are placed into the gutter so that the water may run across the roof gutter and empty down into the affixed rain spout, then eventually out onto the ground at, ideally, a spot designed to effectively carry away the water from the house. The locations of the rain spouts are usually at the sides of the house. One of ours is to the direct right of the garage.

First, the material on which the nests rest is aluminum, hardly a natural wooded setting I’d think a mother robin would choose. I cannot even imagine the amazing engineering required to build that nest out of slippery twigs. I’d think the twigs would be falling off that slippery aluminum, making it impossible to get the nest to any size. However, Kaitlyn, the mother robin managed to build an entire impressively sized nest. At some point the finished nest got high enough that the eves of the house helped hold it in place. Still, it looked to grandmother to be a fragile thing but goodness I’m no expert on architecture. Mother robin had no velcro to hold her nest to the rain spout but somehow it worked.

One day while tending the gardens I stopped and re-considered mother robin’s architecture. There was no way a squirrel-rodent could get up there. And the entire nest was completely under-cover. Though she built her nest on a rain spout, mother robin’s nest would never be rained on.

Yesterday I walked you over to see the robin’s nest but of course you didn’t understand that you had to look up and were likely wondering why grandmother wanted you to regard an aluminum rain spout as a thing of great curiosity. I even scratched on the rain spout at a point as far up as my arms would reach. Still you did not respond and hey, I’m not sure fingernails running across aluminum pipe would be such a joyous sound either. My noise did, however, cause the robins in the nest to all stick their heads out of the nest. Three featherless little puffballs, their open beaks then trebling any other part of their body, thought the scratches were their parents’ legs landing on the spout. Their response was an open and ready beak. They must hatch knowing how to do this.

We took a walk around the yard, Kaitlyn, and you were intrigued. I even sat you down on the grass for a while, wondering if it was okay to do that. You liked the red petunia and yes you tried to eat it. Soon enough you decided it wasn’t something you wanted for dinner. Same with the grass that you clenched and pulled up with your tiny hands.

I shouldn’t go into the dog story but honesty compels. Yes the sight of that big Belgian sheep dog’s entire head sticking out incongruently from a tiny opening at the bottom of the rear garage door did frighten you. Then it might have been me screaming at Jo-Ann to get back as I feared that she just might find a way to burst that door off its hinges. To run amok around the yard with the door still stuck on her, her head sticking up through that tiny hole. So I tried to save you from this horror, Kaitlyn, but I only caused you to cry with rage and dismay and frankly sweetheart, I don’t blame you.

I do the only thing I can do to calm you down. Which was to take you back in the house with your mother. In fact, you calmed down so much that you still allowed me to hold you so long as your mother was nearby and could protect you from my strangeness. Your mother handed me a HUGE jar of baby food. Pureed sweet potatoes. I had no idea babies ate such things.

Grandmother took the little spoon and began to feed you the stuff in the jar. I wonder how much of this you could possibly eat and your mother informs me you will likely eat the entire jar! I tried to be cool but dear lord this baby would eat an entire jar of watery sweet potatoes and I had no idea you ate anything beyond milk.

All I had to do was stick the tiny spoon into the jar and your mouth pursed perfectly and opened wide. Nobody had to teach you this, Kaitlyn. I’m sure you know what’s coming here.

Yes you did.

You looked exactly like those three baby robins with their opened beaks. All of you babies knew food was around and every one of you knew how to channel it to the perfect spot. Which would be your stomachs.

All of you, Kaitlyn, your baby self and the robins, are at the same point so far as food is concerned. You were hatched/born with the instinct and you all follow it through.

The robins will go on and continue with their normalcy towards food. They will not suddenly decide that worms are people too and become robin-vegetarian peta members. They will not splash worm manure on the other robins who would eat worms.

They also will likely not do that weird food thing, Kaitlyn, where young women decide that emaciated is too fat and refuse to eat or if they eat, they figure out how to bring it all back up. No, those baby robins won’t go on to this end, Kaitlyn, as they know that food is fuel and to go on living requires fuel.

I can’t tell you not to get caught up in that trap, Kaitlyn. As I recall your mother went through a period of time with food issues. It almost seems to be part of the human culture. Note I said “human” culture, Kaitlyn, as defined by Hollywood, as the birds sometimes have more sense than us.

Of course there is the other thing, Kaitlyn, being extremely obese. “Fluffiness” does run in the family, sweet granddaughter, but take grandmother’s advice. Forget the weird fake meals, the needles and pills. Find yourself an activity, a strenuous activity of some sort, be it vollyball, basketball, soft ball, aerobics, whatever floats your boat. Get involved in this activity and make sure it something you love. That will help control your weight, this regular physical exercise and nothing else.
Still, it was a lovely day, Kaitlyn, in that I got to spend so much time with you. You chased my cats, even insisting on crawling over to a big porcelain statue of a cat I have as home décor. Darn, you must have thought your baby self, that is a cat to end all cats. I had to run and put it up high lest you use it as a pull bar.

I slept next to you in your playpen and was right there when you woke up. We played peekaboo and at one point your feet were in my bathroom sink such was my quest to entertain your baby self.

The only toy I had was a squeaky dog toy ball but you and I played with it for almost an hour. I sat down on the floor with you and rolled it to you. You batted it somewhere but I always told you how accurate your throw was. The ball would squeak when I squeezed it and that process would cause a little puff of air to come out of a small hole at the top. Sometimes I would just squeak it for you and sometimes I would position the hole in the ball so that in pressing a puff of air would hit Kaitlyn in the face. You liked it, but you always closed your eyes with the surprise.

I never thought spending a day with a baby could be so much fun. Stay tuned, Kaitlyn, and I’ll tell you how those baby robins make out.