'J', being a nannie!, why, pj's

I thought I would try pink today, can't see too well anyway so may as well have a pretty post. I have spent so much time catching up on blogs I am following on occasion that I have completely forgotten what I was going to post about!! Its no good cannot see the pink so its this one. bla bla bla.....

So I will talk about my grandson instead....

Well had a really relaxing Bank Holiday Weekend, we had husbands grandson come to stay and for simplicity will refer to him as J or my grandson (aged 6 years) from now on, as he calls me Nanny or Nan anyway, which is something I am just getting used to still. Up until this weekend he used my christian name and referred to husband as Grandad. Its one of those complicated family scenario's which i may find myself mentioning or may not I am not sure yet.

However, the reason he has decided to call me Nan/Nanny is because he has a half brother whom we have never met (his father is not with his mother anymore ... my stepson) and his brother has only two nan's and it appears in the pecking order of life the more nannies you can acquire the more important you feel. Which bizarrely has appealed to my sense of humour !! It has however not appealed to my mother's sense of humour as my children (aged 18 & 16) have never been allowed to call her grannie/nannie or anything similar and when J announced that he was going to call her Grannie as she was old enough to be a proper one and that he called his younger Grannie's Nannie, she was not best pleased, I must say that I am still proud of myself that i kept a straight face and don't think I will ever forget the expression on my mother's face. I did however support him in his decision and spent the afternoon encouraging him to read to or draw a picture for Grannie! I am a nice person honestly.

It was a lovely weekend filled with the wonderful conversations that only a six year old can provide....

why?

.....being a major part of each one... so this weekend I have explained why it gets dark at night, why it gets light in the morning, why the dog doesn't sit at the table to have his supper and why free range eggs yolks are very yellow, why the walls in the houses around here have flints as well as bricks, (which by the way took a very long time) and why sometimes its much better to ask Grandad complicated questions!!!!!

We rarely have the pleasure of his company despite the fact that when he comes he always asks for his pj's that he keeps here for overnight stays... this time it involved a quick dash to tesco's to get another pair and I am reliably informed that no 6 year old worth his salt or whatever the saying is needs a pair of Ben Ten PJ's! As the pair we keep here did not even begin to fit which proves how rarely he gets to come. I love him a great deal as when his father was little he spent a year living with us for very complicated reasons so it was like having his dad at a similar age. At the time I became a parent very quickly before mine were even born and with a couple of hours notice, he arrived on our doorstep to 'live' rather than 'stay' at weekends. All those years ago I did a great deal of growing up in a very short time but i would not have changed it for the world.

I cherish the time our 'J' visits whether it be for half an hour or for the four days/nights we had him this time. I worry about the complexities in his little life and we love stories and bubble baths and special big boy toothpaste! We made guitars from tissue boxes and elastic bands and went to a car boot sale and the local village fete, the latter being an odd experience for a little boy who normally resides in a very big city. He was not impressed with the games on offer at all and announced to all that the 'wack the rat' was not a rat but a stick with a bit of leather on it and that the books on the book stall were all second hand!

He was also extremely stoic about everyone asking who he was and where he was from, people are so unintentionally racist it amazes me still. His dad's mum (another nannie obviously lol) (my stepson) was adopted from Hong Kong when she was six months old. So when people ask where he comes from I say P.......... his city on the south coast and that shuts them up.

I also watched the Big Friendly Giant by Roald Dahl three times and read the same book 11 times!! Fortunately I kept all the children's books from when they were small and boy am I pleased my hoarding tendencies have come in useful.

I am exhausted and bendy EDS is major flaring but we had the best time and I just hope that we see him again sooner rather than later. So this blog entry is to say thank you to the little man for lighting up our lives and a thank you to his mum whom I don't know, for letting him come to stay. He had better come again soon anyway elst he will grow out of his Ben Ten pj's..... Possibly the loveliest thing he said was after a bath with warmed pj's on was... 'I feel all at home and my brain is as happy as a strawberry' bearing in mind he adores strawberries his brain must have been in a good place. Bless him.

Well that's my post, as must go and read the knitting blog where the woman who knits so much better than I and blogs about it! provides me with the inspiration to continue knitting which at this end is not going well, I appear to have the equivalent of writers block only with knitting but hey ho,here's hoping I will be able to understand the pattern in the book I bought in haste it seems from Amazon late one night! Wish me luck.