The Gang's All Here

     My youngest of two sons moved back here to Michigan from St. Louis Missouri where he resided for the past eight years. He and his wife brought here their four children, all under seven years of age. Since moving here a month ago, they've added a fifth.

    So now we have both our son's families and eight grandchildren living within 20 miles of us. We're committed to helping as much as possible, but it's easier said than done. Just check out what we got when we just tried to get a picture of the older seven together.

    It's a challenge, though some of the more crazy moments seem more humorous when you can recall them later. My favorite occurred after five-year-old Davis put on a dinosaur costume that came with a long tail and “plates” protruding all along the back starting from his hooded pull-over mask.

    When Davis ventured into the living room he was ambushed from behind by his uncle Greg's dog, a Golden Retriever named Moose.

He knocked Davis down, then jumped atop him, grabbing his hooded face mask by a cloth plate on the back and shaking it loose from the little guy's head as Greg came over to break up the “Wild Kingdom” moment. However, by the time Greg intervened his Golden Retriever had made off with the dinosaur head prize in his mouth.

    Perhaps it was a teachable moment in more ways than one. One lesson: Don't walk past Moose while dressed as a Stegosaurus. Lesson Two: Maybe big dogs were involved in the extinction of the dinosaur species.

    We have done our share of babysitting ourselves, especially when mom and dad were in the hospital with the arrival of their latest son.

    One day, Wendy tasked me with finding two-year-old Lewis's missing binky. Wendy was sure he left it upstairs at our house. We neglected to shut the doors upstairs so Lewis was able to roam from room to room as I was printing out some coloring pages for the other grandkids.

    Davis claimed, “Lewis flushed it down the toilet. I saw him.” He sounded convincing enough that I brought Lewis upstairs, stood him in front of the toilet and asked if he threw his binky there. “No,” he said, even more convincingly though when I asked where his binky was, he threw up his hands and said, “I don't know.” I finally located it at the bottom of a bunk bed ladder.'

    Another time I took three-year-old Charlie along with cousins Owen and Luke to the library. While the three were inside the children's room at the library, I was just outside browsing bug books for Davis . . . .until I hear, “Grandpa! Grandpa!!” I hustle back into the children's section as some older kid on a computer is pointing me out to a distressed Charlie. When I got there, the kid reprimanded me, “There's no yelling in the library.”

    “I wasn't yelling,” I said with a smirk.

    “But he was,” the kid said pointing to Charlie.

    So much for my trying to find a book on bugs for Davis who loves them so much he wanted to bring a wounded ant into our house to rehab. Boys! And we have seven grandsons now with only one granddaughter. At least the comments I get from her are different from the ones I get from the grandboys.

    For example, she recently asked me, “Didn't you wear that shirt yesterday?”

    That's not something I'm likely to hear from any male in our family