And We Like It That Way!

Cubbie and Nanny kiss at Cubbie's 5-year-old wedding birthday party (2005). She wanted to marry here Daddy and we did just that.

Little Red Riding hood was in a bit of a pickle: Too young to stay home and too precocious for daycare. I am back in school this week and my lovely wife, being the only income source, is hard at work putting the rest of us through school. It takes a fair amount of money to keep the House of Jack fed.

So we packed up the Cubbie, red bonnet and basket, and sent her off for one last week of vacation before first grade started. My Mother, now known as Nanny, is retired. My Dad, Papa, still works for MoDOT. Fortunately for me, Nanny, who is very busy playing nursemaid to the rest of the world, was able to watch Cubbie for the week. She went a step further, by packing up one Great-grandmother, Juju, and taking the whole gaggle over to the other great-grandmother’s house. I’m sure it’s been a wonderful time of menopausal, post-menopausal and precocious enthusiasm to last the whole year.

The last couple of days the greats were sent back to their homes, and Nanny and Cub are probably somewhere playing dress up at the homestead. This easily equates to spoilage, you can be sure. Nanny is a high-maintenance gal and she loves nothing more than exposing my daughter to vanilla-scented body butter, evening facial scrubs, and freshly-warmed bath towels. At my house, you just pick up a towel off the floor and hope it’s dry enough to use. We don’t have an hour for a night time bathing routines. So there will be some adjustments. We don’t have fancy hair soap with mango fragrance. No indeed. We are poor students; we wipe are rears with cardboard, and buy breakfast cereal in a bag. Our soap peels off your skin and many of our meals are from a box out of the freezer. And we like it that way.

It’s been almost a week now and we are missing our baby girl. She comes home today and I can’t wait. I rented her Rocky and Bullwinkle, season year, disc one. She’s been asking for it. I know, tonight, she will come up to me and ask for our special night time routine.

We pile our pillows, crawl into bed, snuggle down under the comforter, and we watch TV together until she falls asleep. I don’t always have time at night to play with her, what with my school and all, but I do always make time for snuggling together. It’s what we do. It’s our version of vanilla body butter and heater bath towels. And we like it that way.