A Weekend with The Nonni

Brodie and I celebrated our 10 year wedding anniversary on Friday. In honor of this special occasion, we went to Charleston (where we honeymooned!) for a long weekend - away from Lauren! The Nonni (my mom) came to stay with Lauren and agreed to be a "guest blogger" (as requested by WG2)...

The following are notes taken by the Nonni this past weekend...

L: Nonni, will you play with me?

N: Oh yes! We'll play and sing silly songs and read books and have lots of fun!

L: (turning to Mama) Mom, are you going some place?

M: Yes, Daddy and I are going on a trip.

L: Mom, can you go away now?

We were sitting on the floor playing with her Fisher-Price Little People school bus and Noah's Ark figures. I asked if she knew the song, "If You're Happy and You Know It." She nodded. I sang three verses and she pantomined along. When I began a 4th verse, she said with finality, "That's enough."

She wanted me to read an "I Spy" book to her. Knowing that she had memorized every word already, I suggest that she read it to me instead. She said, "No you tell me what the words are!" One of the pages showed a picture of a flip-flop. I asked her if she knew what it was called. She said, "A thlip-thlop." Close enough...

She brought her lovie "Ducky" into the living room and asked me, "Who...who...who is Ducky's Nonni?" I said I didn't know. She said, "I'll pick out Ducky's Nonni, " went into her room and came back with Ella Bunny and announced that she was Ducky's Nonni. She set both of them on the floor behind the loveseat. The she wanted to know who was Ducky's mother. Snowball (the white bunny) was assigned that role. Next came Henry (the bear) as Ducky's father, followed by Baby (the Prayer Bear), Kitty, a large fleece sheep whose name on the spur of the moment became "Chelly-La...no, Chelly-LA-la," another small sheep, and Olive the turtle. When all were placed in a row, they were pronounced to be "her family and her CHIDREN."

When I told her it was dinnertime, she said, "I'm not hungry." I waited awhile and then asked her if she'd like to help me prepare some snacks for an "Hors D'Oeuvres Party." She was only too eager to assist. An inventory of the fridge produced the following: string cheese, cream cheese (for a spread), turkey cold cuts, and pickled okra. To this was added one fresh cherry tomato because "I like TOE-MAY-TOES," she said several times. We spread the cream cheese on fresh-baked bread, then cut it into tiny triangles and set them on a tray. (The silver serving tray had not come back from the jeweler's, so we substituted a toaster oven tray.) We rolled several slices of cold cuts tightly then sliced them into Princess-size pinwheels. Next we sliced several okra pods into coins, as well as the string cheese. The quartered tomato was added as the touch of color, and all was ready for the party.

Princess Lauren, attired appropriately in her regal pink princess dress, fucshia underskirt, jewelled necklace, ballet slippers (Dora bedroom slippers), and princess be-ribboned hat invited everyone to join her in the castle for the party. Nonni was assigned the role of king, whose name was decreed to be "Mr. King." When questioned by the Princess about the absence of balloons and "ribbons" (crepe-paper streamers?) and presents, the "king" replied that those items were appropriate for birthday parties, but not for hors d'ouevres parties. Some discussion followed about the nature of parties where the principal function is just getting together with friends to laugh and talk and eat and drink.

The Princess devoured all items on the hors d'oeuvres tray and requested more pickles! The king promptly fetched them.

The Princess used her magic wand to cast a spell on the Royal Yorkie (Ellie) and turn her into a ship to take the Princess over the ocean, but since Yorkies are notoriously spell-resistant, the spell-casting failed and we were left with -----sigh-----a Yorkie.