Exit Grandma

This morning when the alarm went off, Guitarman asked if I wanted to leave Wee Laddie while I went and took Grandma to the airport. I figured it was so Wee Laddie could get more sleep but Guitarman said, “That seems like a lot of extra dangerous driving.” Oy. I thought we should give Wee Laddie the choice, just in case. I mean, the kid definitely has opinions, and I’d much rather he feel comfortable with whatever we’re doing. So after confirming that Daddy was not going anywhere, he wanted to go to the airport. It went pretty well (read: nobody bawled) but was still hard. I figure that at least Wee Laddie now knows that Grandma is still really in the picture. Yeah, he talks to her often, but this was way more tangible.

On the way home I decided to stop at Media Markt to see if they have the “mouse woman” movie (“Flushed Away”) that Wee Laddie talks about all the time. They didn’t. Nor did they have the power cord I need to get for my photo printer. But we got a bathroom scale (and I’m down over 20 lbs since my most tubby!—I did the detox diet in mid-October, and was at like max weight then. I’d still like to lose another 20 or so, but I’m not going to harp on that here), a Bluetooth headset for my cell phone so I can legally use it in the car here and the “Der Kleine Eisbär” movie for Wee Laddie (Aunt Kathi had bought him the book and we have the audio of it… figured we might as well get the movie, too). My cell phone wasn’t working due to hassles of paying the bill on time (our bill has to go to NY and then come back to us here--they apparently HAVE to run it through the APO box, so we've been getting the bill about 2 days before it's due. Normally that's manageable, if not totally convenient 'cause we have to go pay it in person at a fairly busy shop on base, but this time with Allen out of town and me busy with Grandma, it slipped through the cracks) so I couldn’t call Guitarman to let him know where we were. That always goes over well.

Once we got home, we called Guitarman and arranged to meet him for lunch. I think that, as much as Wee Laddie misses Grandma, he is so relieved that his daddy hasn’t gone anywhere this time...he’s still a little schized out, but so much better than I expected. After lunch we went home for nap… it went reasonably well. I slept with him and was a little irritated when he woke up… I was wanting a bit more sleep. Too bad I nap better than my toddler!

Since nap wasn’t too long, we drove to Neumarkt to check out another electronics store. It’s much smaller than Media Markt and not much closer, so we probably won’t be going there often. But I did manage to be relatively coherent in German (only for one short sentence, but it’s something!). See, Wee Laddie had gone up a different aisle than mine and he ran into an employee there. He started saying, “Mouse woman. Mouse woman,” to the employee, who was understandably confused. He was asking Wee Laddie something and I said, “Er spricht Englisch.” (He speaks English.) And the guy jumped into English and asked if he could help us. So I managed to a) learn that “Flushed Away” has not yet been released in Germany on DVD, and b) not make a complete ass of myself… at least as far as I know. Baby steps.