Thursday, December 22, 2011

Never a dull moment

The family and I headed out earlier this week to North Carolina. It's quite warm here considering that it's almost the end of December. This time last year it was freezing and over four inches of snow fell at Dad's on Christmas day. Great for photos, not so much for driving.

Today, the kids slept in and hooo boy - we let them! Once we were all awake (and I still say it was our radiating giddiness about their sleeping in that woke them) and ready to go, we headed over to Mom's for most of the day. After lunch, we went to visit my grandmother in her assisted living facility. Tucker and Sara were excited about going, more for the ice cream machine in the parlor (do people even use that word anymore?) than for visiting purposes but hey, it got them there voluntarily and in a good mood.

My grandmother has Alzheimer's so she has good days and bad days. Two things are guaranteed to perk her up - kids and men. And that's really as far into that as I care to delve. So when she saw my kids, she perked up a little but still refused to walk with us from the common room to her room or the parlor. Mom, trying really hard to be patient after repeated attempts to get her to budge, asked one of the nurses to help us convince her to move.  I tried first and had no luck. The first nurse tried and had no luck. I tried again. No luck. Richard suggested we walk away for a few minutes and then try again. Works for me. At that point, the second nurse walked over to try and darned if she didn't get right up and come along.

Interesting.

We visited with her for a while and then tried to get her to walk back to the common room with us. She was as reluctant to return as she was to leave. Not willing to push the issue any further, we got ready to leave. I picked up Sara and walked over to say goodbye. I'm not sure what about that got to my grandmother, probably nothing, but she perked right up and wanted to hold Sara.

Sweet, right? But the thing about Sara is that she marches to the beat of her own drummer and at that point, she'd been mostly ignored by my grandmother. Not with any ill intent, but Sara is firmly of the "I will not be ignored" school circa Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction. After trying to get attention and not getting it, she was a bit averse to getting what at that point was unwanted attention. And we all know Sara can be a bit stubborn. ::Snort::

So when my grandmother suggested that Sara sit in her lap, Sara buried her head in my shoulder and tightened her arms and legs around me.

That just made my grandmother repeat her request for Sara to sit in her lap. I tried explaining that Sara was heavier than she looked (which is true). But aside from that, my grandmother doesn't do too much moving around these days and I was worried that Sara sitting on her would hurt her in some way. Plus, Sara just wasn't interested.

We went back and forth for a bit over this - my grandmother would ask to hold Sara, Sara would shake her head no and clutch me tighter, I'd try to explain that we were concerned Sara would be too heavy.

Finally, Grandmother got tired of this and decided she wanted to go to the common room. You know, the one she had just insisted she didn't want to relocate to. So we walked her in and when my grandmother sat down in the common room, she started asking again for Sara to sit on her lap. This time, though, she asked Sara directly. It went a little like this:

G: Come sit in my lap.
S: No. I'll sit right here.
G: Come on and sit in my lap.
S: No. I'm too heavy. I might hurt you.
G: Come sit with me.
S: I'm sitting right here.
G: Come and let me hold you.
S: No thank you.
G: Come and sit in my lap.
S: That's okay.
G: Sit right here, honey. ::pats her legs::
S: ::sighs loudly:: o-kay.
Gets down and climbs up into Grandmother's lap.

5..4..3..2..1..

G: UNH! You weigh a ton!
S: I told you.
G: Oh! My legs!
S hops off and looks at me. Can we go now?
G: (loudly) She's heavy!
S: ::rolls eyes::

So, uh, yeah. Time to go.

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