Grandkids!

BIG ANNOUNCEMENT.........drum roll please......... Everybody listening?.............

Daughter #2 and her hubby are expecting again! Their first child is a mere three months old, so they are still in shock mode, but they're adjusting. So that means that Grandchild #4 is on the way! Woo Hoo!!

In honor of that announcement, I thought I would regale you all with a couple of cute grandchildren stories.

My grandson, Aiden, is 5 years old. In addition to being an absolutely beautiful child (shhhh! he would correct me if he heard that - "Mimi, boys are handsome, not beautiful"), he is extremely bright. Recently, as I was leaving his house, he walked with me out to my truck, asking if I knew what he wanted to be when he grows up. "No," I said, "what do you want to be? I was expecting the typical boy answer of a fireman, a policeman, a super-hero, something along those lines.

"I want to be an entomologist," he said, pronouncing entomologist very precisely and precisely right. That one stopped me in my tracks. I dropped down on one knee to eye-level with him and asked him if he knew what an entomologist does. He looked at me like I had just asked the dumbest question and told me, "It's a person who studies bugs, Mimi." Oh. Well, now I knew because I sure didn't know before he told me. (Seriously, I had to look up how to spell it! Probably could have just asked Aiden!) Meanwhile, his three-year-old sister, Olivia, was running circles around us in the front yard wearing her fairy costume with wings attached, screaming at the top of her lungs, "When I grow up, I want to be a pink Power Ranger!"

Last Sunday after church, Hubby and I went to lunch with Aiden and Olivia and their parents. We were all discussing a house that my two sons and Hubby have been remodeling to "flip." When the house gets to a certain livable condition, my two sons will move in and live there while finishing the work. Apparently, Aiden had been present when my sons were discussing this possibility earlier in the week. He asked if we were talking about the house that Caleb and Eli were going to move in to. His daddy told him that was right, it was that house.

"But, who's the other one who is moving in with them? There's three of them," Aiden wanted to know. We were stumped. His daddy suggested to him maybe he meant Maverick (Eli's Chocolate Lab.) "No," he insisted, "it's another human."

We still don't know who he was talking about, but what a kid! Another human! I love talking to Aiden.

Olivia has her moments too. She and Aiden were in the den one day recently, playing with their toys while Hubby was trying to get some work done (he works at home, remember?) Aiden was running up and down the stairs, Hubby had already spoken to him about it twice, so on the third time, he spoke more sternly and threatened him with serious bodily harm if he didn't stop it. Olivia sidled up to her granddad, and slipping her arm through his, she laid her precious little head on his shoulder. Looking up at him with her big brown eyes, she told him, "Granddad, I love you."

"I love you too, Baby Doll," he said.

"Granddad, you're so handsome," Olivia cooed with her head still resting on his shoulder.

"Well, thank you, Baby Doll. I think you're very beautiful." By this time, Hubby should have known something was up. But he was clueless.

"Granddad?" Lots of batting of the eyes at this point.

"Yes, Baby Doll, what is it?" says clueless Hubby.

"Don't ever talk to Brother like that again." Serious as cancer now, but still with that sweet little munchkin voice.

Hubby thinks he must have misunderstood her, so he asks her to repeat what she just said. She repeats it, doesn't miss a beat. Still thinking he can't be hearing what he is hearing, he has her repeat it a third time. And again she repeats it, with the same sweet conviction as the first two times.

Hubby came wandering into the kitchen shaking his head, still trying not to laugh out loud as he related to me the orders Olivia had just given him.

The girl is a force to be reckoned with, I tell you.