Kelleys Island

I am Grammy Care or Aunty Care to these four sensational kids. Gianna and Dom are my great niece and nephew and Jack and Ruby Kate are my grand kids. I spent last week with them on Kelleys Island in Lake Erie. I like my role. I like to have little kids soft pudgy hands to hold. I like when they climb on my lap and I can smell their summer warm sweaty hair smell. I like to have them telling me the important things in their world. I like how clear their eyes are. I like how they are uninhibited and can dance around with joy and abandon. I like to be goofy with them. Kids are just the best.

My grandson Jack and my son, Matt, picked me up at the Detroit airport. I thought they were outside in the car and I stepped off the escalator and marched forward to baggage so that I could get outside. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a little kid streak across the floor, screech to a stop in front of me and when I looked down it was Jack. I was so surprised and delighted that when I bent down with all my carry-ons dangling to give him a hug we toppled over onto the floor. Matt said we delighted the surrounding people who "aahed" over the scene.

We toured the Henry Ford museum in Detroit as our first stop and that evening met with my girlfriend Peg from Cleveland who was visiting family in Toledo for pizza with her brother and his family. The next day Megan, grand kids and I headed to Kelleys Island. Once across on the ferry, it was goodbye routine and hello vacation. No cable TV. No Internet. Limited cell service. A very nice house that we shared with my brother Tom, my sister Suzanne from DC, my two nieces Erin and Trish and Erin's kids. Later in the week Matt and Erin's husband Dave were able to get off work to join us. My sister Mary Beth and her husband Tom also visited for a day.

The week was relaxing and I found myself getting mellower as the days went by. Anyone who knows me, knows that I have a restless nature and am not a great "sitter". I found I enjoyed the simplest of activities! Playing Scattergories, making S'mores, picking wildflowers with the kids, taking walks, boating, laying in the hammock (always with three or four little bodies climbing in also), fishing, riding a golf cart around the island and, at night, watching the Perseid meteors in the most clear sky (and being able to see the Milky Way). But, most of all, just being with family and people you love and care about and catching up.

Highlights of the week: Ruby Kate had a stomach bug which got to three of the four kids. It didn't seem to cramp their style, but there were some "accidents" from both ends causing excitement (especially when on the boat out on Lake Erie). Dom, who is a year younger than the other two four year olds struggled to keep up with the big kids and he and Jack in particular had the testosterone going. No one could ever be "second", "slower", or have a toy that the other didn't want. Dom was talking in his sleep and his mom heard him say "Jack, don't take my truck." Wish my bad dreams were so simple! Jack walked in to the house and smelled Erin's delicious dinner cooking and said "That is the taste of my life." He and Dom would get into a spat, and Dom would start to cry and then Jack would crumble and cry. He can be bossy and tough one minute and sugar sweet and sensitive the next. When I said goodbye to him the day I left, he stopped what he was doing, looked up with tears welling in his eyes and said, "I am going to miss you." And if anyone thinks boys and girls are not different from day one, they are crazy! Dom and Jack could occupy themselves by throwing rocks, or on the boat with their pet fish - which were really dead minnows used for bait - by naming them, holding them, kissing them. Ugh. Gianna would not be interested in a dead fish. In fact, Gianna, as I have learned, is a real princess. Not the type you are thinking - she is the Disney type. Because her Grammy told her. She twirls and primps and dances and poses and is as girly as imaginable. And, considering how sweet and beautiful she is, maybe she really is a princess. I wouldn't be surprised if a movie comes out soon starring her. And lastly, but definitely not least, was little Ruby walking around like a drunken sailor looking, as Erin said "so darn cute." She has two upper "chicklet" teeth, as Megan calls them, which are wide apart and when she smiles, she wrinkles her nose up and gives you a smile that lights up the world. I nicknamed her "Alfie" for Alfred E. Newman but she is definitely one adorable little girl. She made Aunt Suzanne guffaw by sticking half her finger in her nose. She tried to put her toe in one day also. She is so happy and just always toddling around, observing the chaos.

Spending time with my beautiful nieces and daughter-in-law, my siblings, my son and nephew-in-law rounded up the week. Thanks to all for the great time, memories, laughs, listening and company. I love you all.