Observations

The Gruenbaum Guarantees

We all spent twenty‑ish years under the same roof, breathing the same air, tripping over the same shoes, and negotiating the same dinner table politics. You’d think that would produce six carbon‑copy humans. It didn’t. What it did produce — according to my second son, who has always had a running comedy routine in his head — is a set of “Gruenbaum Guarantees.” Not rules, not traditions, not even expectations. More like… tendencies. Family traits that show up often enough that you start to think they might be genetic, even though the real culprit is probably twenty years of shared kitchen counters and car rides.

Here are a few of the classics.

Pretty Good Banana Bread

If you’ve met us, you’ve probably eaten our banana bread. Hockey boys, exchange students, neighbors, hairdressers, the folks at Leslie’s who tested my pool water — the bread has fans on four continents, which is more than I can say for some of my luggage.

The recipe calls for six bananas, which means it produces enough loaves to feed a mid‑sized village. When the kids were in school, the ratio was six small loaves to one big one, mostly so teachers could get their cut. And if that ratio happened to give me some rounding flexibility, I didn’t complain.

Bottom line: we make good bread, and we hand it out to people we like. Or people we should like. I don’t always check the list too carefully.

We Are Active

This one starts with me, which feels both accurate and slightly unfair to admit. Work flexibility helped. When the kids were young, walking was something I did with intention — part of the time spent praying for people, moving through the neighborhood with actual purpose. Somewhere along the way I traded that habit for audiobooks at 2x speed. The results are shorter-lived but more immediately satisfying. I’m working on feeling worse about this.

Judy’s path was longer. Early marriage meant aerobics and swimming, then injuries and life made consistency harder to hold onto. She’s building it back now, with retirement on the horizon and a swimming and weightlifting routine that runs four to six times a week. She figured out what I already knew: the time to start is before you need to.

The kids took the general idea and ran with it — sometimes literally. Three of them have finished half marathons or longer. When my daughter ran her full marathon, I walked alongside her for a stretch, then finished the course on foot while she pulled ahead at a jog. I stayed well clear of the official finish line. Found her eventually, along with Judy, her husband, and a small crowd of people who had done the harder version of what I’d done. My youngest has entered powerlifting competitions. My son and his fiancé have built their life around walking and yoga.

For the ones where the activity level is harder to gauge, I take comfort in the dogs. Two of my kids have them — my oldest has two in the house — and dogs, whatever else they do, require daily walking. I’ll count it.

We Read

My wife sticks to her genre lane but is rarely without a book on the nightstand. My oldest son doesn’t always have one going, but when he does, the pages smoke. And a perfectly normal question when we all get together is “what are you reading?” or “any recommendations?” — asked with the same casual expectation as asking about the weather.

The Gruenbaums are readers. It snuck up on us, but here we are.

We Clean Our Plates

This one took time. Not every kid arrived at the table as an enthusiastic eater — the crockpot and mashed potatoes were traded for the oven and a near nightly pan of roasted veggies. Adulthood expands the palate. The ratio of protein to greens on our plates isn’t what it used to be, and honestly, that’s fine.

These days there’s almost nothing they won’t eat. My wife might actually be the pickiest one of the bunch, which she would contest on principle.(Her list of “won’t eat foods” is definitely the longest.)

A vegetarian is marrying into the family soon. She is fully welcome. She is also fully expected to clean her plate — though given that she uses more hot sauce in a single meal than the rest of us do in a whole year, I’m not particularly worried about her appetite. The girl commits.

My standard remains: clean plate, and if there’s bread nearby, use it to mop up the juices until the plate is almost clean enough to put back in the cabinet. Almost.

We Are Planning, Going On, or Dreaming About a Vacation

This one is universal. We may not travel every year — pandemics have opinions — but someone in the family is always in research mode. I like a cruise ship with daily excursions. Others prefer hiking destinations that require actual exertion, which I respect in theory.

My wife has planned two land‑based trips to Alaska that never made it out of the planning phase. We did eventually cruise there, so I count that as a win. She does not.

Our youngest is in Portugal right now. Another is in the “let’s give my parents some grandkids” phase, already dreaming of the day travel becomes possible again — ideally with parental support. My son and his fiancée are planning a trip to India after the wedding. And another son is a camper who still jumps at a big trip when the calendar cooperates.

If we’re not packing, we’re planning. If we’re not planning, we’re researching. It’s a cycle. We’ve made peace with it.

At 30,000 feet, we look pretty similar. Even at 10,000 feet, you can still see the family resemblance. But zoom in close enough — the reading choices, the preferred adventures, the way each kid approaches a problem — and the differences show up fast.

I wouldn’t want cookie-cutter kids. And they would revolt if anyone told them they’re just like their dad.

They’re not wrong to revolt. But they’re not entirely right, either.

When we gather, we don’t compare step counts or race times. We talk about books. We talk about travel. And there’s usually banana bread on the counter, waiting for the moment someone decides they have just enough room left for a slice.

Maybe it’s DNA. Maybe it’s twenty years of modeling, nagging, and hoping certain things would stick.

Either way — similar enough to recognize, different enough to keep things interesting.

The Voice (Or: How I Learned to Nag Without Technically Nagging)

This is a further explanation of one of the titles included on my “semi-retired” business card. (Reminder Wrangler)

Somewhere after the last kid left for college, I developed a second voice.

Not a concerning one. Not the kind that tells you to do things. More of a guest narrator. A color commentator for the small, unresolved frustrations of domestic life. Specifically, my wife’s share of them.

It sounds exactly like my wife. Except sassier. And with slightly more self-awareness than she’d probably volunteer on her own.

Here’s how it works. The dishes pile up. Judy is, by longstanding treaty, the designated dishwasher. When the stack starts achieving architectural ambitions, I don’t say anything. I just wander past the sink, tilt my head, and murmur — in a voice that is not quite mine — “I wonder when the dish fairies are coming. You’d think they’d have been here by now.”

She knows exactly what’s happening. She’s been married to me long enough to read the subtext, which is: the dishes need doing. The Voice is just the delivery system. It’s a nag wearing a disguise, and the disguise isn’t even that convincing. But somehow it lands softer than the direct version, and we both know it.

The lamp incident lasted several months. We had a lamp behind the chair. The recliner ate its cord. I asked about a replacement — once, twice, roughly fourteen times over what felt like a minor geological era. When I finally deployed The Voice, it came out as: “Boy, I wish I could remember to buy that lamp. Andy hasn’t mentioned it today, so I guess he doesn’t want it anymore.” She smiled. She did not immediately buy the lamp. But the smile was acknowledgment, which is honestly most of what you’re after.

Then there was the peanut butter and jelly incident. These are the ones that make me regret The Voice’s existence.

I had made warmups — real food, intentional food, food that required actual effort and lived in the refrigerator with the reasonable expectation of being eaten. Judy opened the fridge, considered her options, closed it, and made a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. I watched this happen in real time. I said nothing in my own voice, because my own voice would have had an edge to it that the situation didn’t technically warrant. So The Voice showed up instead.

“I know there are perfectly good warmups in there,” it said, with Judy’s cadence and Judy’s calm, “but the peanut butter and jelly is really speaking to me today. And honestly — Andy probably won’t even notice. He loves to throw uneaten food away.”

She laughed. I felt seen and also slightly ridiculous, which is more or less the emotional signature of a successful Voice deployment. The warmups, for the record, were eventually eaten. By me.

The bedtime reading situation is its own category. We both read before sleep. When she stops first, there’s an announcement — delivered with genuine tenderness but also the logistical clarity of a boarding gate closing — that I should probably wrap it up soon. When I stop first, I roll over and go to sleep. If I’m feeling spirited, I’ll glance over my shoulder and say in The Voice, “Don’t read too long, you know how it keeps me awake,” then pull the covers up with the serene expression of a man who has made his point.

I get sassier as the day goes on. Judy has documentation. By 9 p.m., The Voice has loosened up considerably and is operating with real creative confidence.

My wife is a kinder spirit than me — she has accepted this fully. Not just tolerated it. Accepted it. She even has her own version of my voice, which she deploys occasionally. Her renditions are, I will note, significantly more complimentary than mine. Her version of me seems to be a wiser, more generous person. I’m not sure who she thinks she married, but I appreciate the optimism.

Her responses track pretty cleanly to guilt level and degree of offense. Snoring gets a genuine “I’m sorry.” The dishes get something like, “They are piling up — I wish the dishwasher would come back from vacation.” The lamp gets a smile and a “Yes, I should get to that,” delivered with the calm of a woman who has decided to manage me rather than fight me.

The honest version of what The Voice is doing is this: it’s nagging with the volume turned down and a laugh track turned up. It keeps us from having the same conversation with teeth in it. After enough years of marriage, you develop these little systems — ways of saying true things without making them into a confrontation. The Voice is mine. It is weak camouflage. She sees right through it every time.

And she still seems pleased she married a sassy husband — which, after all these years, I’ve decided to take as a win.

The Great Frost of March

This is a further explanation of one of the titles included on my “semi-retired” business card. (Mulch Magician, or in English, Plant Enthusiast)

I spent my Sunday losing a staring contest with the Oklahoma wind, and Monday wasn’t much of a reward. When the first half of March decides to play “Full-on Spring,” you can’t really blame the plants for being fooled. With the weatherman now projecting 90s by next weekend, these plants have a choice: adapt or audition for a “do-over” with a second sprouting.

I wasn’t about to let my winter efforts go in vain, so I staged a late-night botanical rescue mission. Here is the breakdown of the battlefield, from the most over-engineered to the “hope for the best.”

The Rose Fortress

In Texas, I rarely worried about the roses. In Oklahoma, the wind/temperature combo makes you forget how tough they actually are. My wife loves them – which is the only motivation a man needs to haul 5-gallon buckets into the yard at dusk.

To protect them without crushing the stems, I had to get creative:

  • The Frame: 5-gallon buckets (and one bigger bucket to help clear the most ambitious sprouts on the rose closest to the door) served as pillars to keep the blankets from flattening the bushes.
  • The Ballast: To keep the buckets from becoming wind-borne projectiles, I filled them with two gallons of water.
  • The Perimeter: I used bags of topsoil to pin down the flapping edges because the wind laughed at my initial attempt to “tuck them in.”

The Amaryllis Gamble

Last year, these were safe in pots. This year, I got bold and put them in the ground. Ten of them were just starting to wake up when the cold hit. I huddled them under a blanket weighted down by a garden hose, betting on their proximity to the house to provide a few extra degrees of life-saving heat. The azaleas nearby already had pink blooms peeking out; I’m just crossing my fingers they weren’t scarred by this weather curveball.

The Potted Survivors

These were the easy wins. I moved the geraniums and petunias into the garage and threw a blanket over them. Was the blanket unnecessary? Probably. But after keeping them alive all winter, I wasn’t going to get soft now that spring is technically on the calendar.

Casualties and Survivors

I lost a couple of rose blooms to the initial chill, but everything I was actually worried about — or my wife was, if I’m still pretending I don’t have a soft spot for the garden — is still standing. Tonight brings another freeze, though mercifully a shallower one. My buckets are full, my topsoil bags are in place, and my garden is currently under house arrest until the sun returns in the morning.

I’m ready for the do-over. I just want those blooms to be there to greet her the next time she walks out the front door – partly for the beauty of it, but mostly to prove that my over-engineered blanket-fort was a tactical masterpiece. After all, if you can’t beat the Oklahoma wind, you might as well out-anchor it.

Oklahoma Grit

After eighteen months in Oklahoma, I’ve learned that the wind doesn’t just blow; it’s auditioning. Every part of the country has its quirks, and while I haven’t seen the “worst” of it yet, I keep my “I survived the Blizzard of ’78 in Ohio” story queued up just in case a local tries to diminish my current suffering. Still, Ohioans don’t make tornadoes a backdrop for family pictures.

To prove I’m tougher—or perhaps just dumber—than my neighbors, I took my normal walk today. The chaos started before I even left the house.

The Home Front

Early on in our hot tub ownership, we snapped one of the lid hooks. Eventually, we just gave up on the back straps entirely. Today, I found the northern half of the lid fully flipped onto the southern flap. After hooking the remaining back strap, I should have reconsidered my entire walk. The mulch floaters in the hot tub should have warned me of the projectiles that awaited me.

Inside, the stove vent was putting on a performance. With the wind howling from the north, the roof vents were taking massive gasps of air. On a mild day, that vent rattles; today, it was auditioning for a chair in the Oklahoma City Symphony, shifting keys and hitting new, frantic notes with every gust.

The Neighborhood Tour

Stepping outside meant facing the inevitable: the leaves. My front porch is a leaf magnet even in the spring, and I’m fairly certain I’ll have a month’s worth of sweeping to do before this settles. But the porch was nothing compared to the “growing pains” of our neighborhood:

  • The Porta-Potty Protest: In a growing development, these plastic monoliths are a necessary eyesore. Today, four of them were down. Whether they were tipped by a gust or threw themselves over in a fit of solidarity, they were unusable. Local gas station bathrooms are about to see a massive spike in construction-trade traffic.
  • The Playroom Casualty: Back in Ohio, our trampoline once tried to flirt with the neighbor’s by blowing over the fence. Today, I saw a plastic outdoor playhouse that hadn’t been secured. It had been tossed over a fence into an ugly, shattered pile—the kind of mess even the best cul-de-sac handymen couldn’t fix.

The Taste of Victory (and Dirt)

As I turned for home, I hit the perfect combination of angle, gust, and “dust availability.” I caught a mouthful of Oklahoma grit and can confirm I’ve tasted better.

The wind was so intense on the track that I actually clocked in way above my average speed. I don’t attribute that to being fast; it’s more about the physical memory of pushing into a full-frontal gale and then forgetting to slow down once the wind stopped attacking me.

I hate aggressive winds, but I suppose they are just the annoying younger siblings of the tornadoes I fear even more. If I have to tolerate the lower end of the weather spectrum to appreciate the sunny days, so be it. At least I’m still standing to see what blows in tomorrow. Hopefully, it’s just the breeze – and not the neighbor’s hot tub lid.

Sonic Indulgence: A Saga of Tea, Thrift, and Southern Syrup

Since moving South fifteen years ago, my iced tea consumption has gone from “occasional treat” to “questionable daily habit.” The problem is, down here “iced tea” usually means something closer to liquid candy – a tooth-rotting confection so aggressively sweet it makes a dessert menu look restrained. I have nothing against sugar. I have everything against ambush.

When I visit neighbors, and they offer tea, my first question is always about the sugar content. If the answer is “It’s sweet,” I politely pivot to water. You can always add sugar to a drink, but you can’t exactly perform an extraction once it’s in there. I have standards, and “liquid candy” doesn’t meet them.

The Evolution of the Brew

My relationship with tea has gone through several distinct incarnations over the last three decades.

The Heirloom Era:
We received a tea maker as a wedding gift over 30 years ago. After a brief mishap involving a hot stove burner, the smell of melting plastic, and some emergency electrical tape, we replaced it with a duplicate model that served us faithfully until last Christmas.

The QT Discovery:
When we moved to DFW, QuikTrip became my morning ritual after school drop‑offs. For under $1.50, I could custom‑blend my own Black Mango tea—mixing the sweet and unsweetened versions to get it just right. It was a glorious age of autonomy, right up until they dared to raise the price by a quarter. I’m a man of principle; I refused to be a slave to their financial whims over twenty‑five cents.

The Sonic Obsession:
Just before the world turned upside down in 2020, my wife started working from home. To justify picking up her daily Coke Zero, I began ordering a Route 44 unsweet tea with a squirt of blackberry (purely for balance, of course). It was the perfect middle ground—flavorful, but not excessive, and comically oversized enough to last the day.

The Art of the Deal (and the App)

As with all good things, the Sonic Era eventually got tangled in corporate fine print. First, there was the 2–4 PM Happy Hour. Then it became “Use the app for half‑price.” Now it’s a convoluted dance of tapping through a digital cart and hunting for the one coupon that actually works.

While my wife remains loyal to her Coke Zero, I’ve taken a tactical step back to protect my hard‑won reputation as the family miser.

Practice What You Preach

To appear properly frugal (and to further manage my sugar intake), I’ve developed a new system: The 50/50 Split. I mix half of a Sonic tea with a batch of homemade tea. It cuts the sweetness, it cuts the cost in half, and it provides daily evidence that I am practicing the thriftiness I preach to my kids and grandkids—right down to doing light kitchen chemistry to save roughly a dollar a day.

The Verdict

I’m not addicted to the habit; I’m committed to the principle. And if that commitment lets me feel just a little morally superior to my wife’s inescapable soda habit? I’ll just call it the ‘sweetener’ in my perfectly balanced, half-priced tea.

The “Same Dress” Dilemma: A Hockey Jersey Saga

In the high-stakes world of hockey, your social standing isn’t determined by your bank account or your personality – it’s determined by what you wear on your back. As a billet parent with my largely non-hockey brain, I’ve learned that jerseys (or “sweaters,” if you want to sound like you know where the locker room is) are the ultimate status symbol.

If you’re wearing the jersey of a legend, you’re a god. If you’re wearing a “so-so” player from a “so-so” team, you’re a poser. These are the rules. I didn’t make them; I just live in a house full of sweaty equipment and try to keep up.

The Seasonal Rainbow of Fabric

In junior hockey, there are two normal ways to acquire these holy grails of nylon:

  • The Auction Gauntlet: The team releases specialty jerseys for every possible occasion – Halloween, Military Appreciation, St. Patrick’s Day. If there’s a holiday, there’s a jersey. This weekend, it’s St. Paddy’s. The team colors are orange and black, so naturally, they’ll be playing in bright green. After the Saturday game, the “Popular Kids” see their jerseys go for a mint, while the newbies’ jerseys hit the minimum bid and hope for a pity-purchase.
  • The Billet Buy-In: At the end of the season, for a cool $250, we get first dibs on our player’s jersey. It’s like buying a graduation gown, but with more Gatorade stains.

The Top Prospect Jackpot

Then there’s the rare third way: The Gift. Our resident “Age-Out” player recently went to a Top Prospects tournament – a speed-dating event for scouts. Except nobody’s getting a rose, just a handshake and a business card. After the tournament, he told me he’d give me his jersey from the bottom of his locker. Frankly, I didn’t think I’d ever see it.

The other day, he came home, looked at me, and said, “I have a surprise for you.” He produced a jersey that can only be described as a sentient yellow traffic pylon.

I was thrilled. I asked the important question: “Does anyone else have this?” He told me only one other existed, and it had been auctioned off to a Super-Fan who owns 35+ jerseys and supposedly writes them off as a business expense. (He’s a recently graduated teenager; I didn’t grill him on the intricacies of the tax code, though I’m curious which IRS category covers “Luminous Athletic Wear.”)

The “Who Wore It Better?” Showdown

I washed my new prize and headed to our seats in the top row. (Pro tip: The top row is where the heat rises and the beer-spilling traffic can’t block your view.)

I scanned the crowd, like I had won something, until I looked to my left. There he was. The Tax-Write-Off Titan. He was wearing The Dress. We were identical. Two bright yellow beacons in a sea of orange and black. I looked at him; he looked at me. It was the classic “Same Dress at the Prom” nightmare, only with more ice and fewer corsages.

The Vanishing Act

Suddenly, he was gone. End of the first period? Vanished. Start of the second? Still missing. I had one theory, and it was solidifying fast: he couldn’t handle the competition. He’d seen me – the amateur billet dad – rocking his exclusive investment, and he’d retreated to the concessions to lick his wounds.

As it turns out, I’m not that intimidating. My player later told me the guy actually tracked him down to get a photo together. Apparently, he wasn’t offended; he just didn’t want us standing too close and accidentally directing traffic toward the goal.

So I’ve kept my status. I’m not a poser anymore. We’re not rivals. We’re not even a coincidence.

We’re a construction zone.

The “Pepper Incident” and Other Liquid Legacies

When I was growing up, my family was not known to waste much of anything. My kids realized long ago that the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree on that one. We ate our “warmups” (leftovers), and one of the biggest tragedies of my youth was the infamous “Pepper Incident.” My mom had chopped up a batch of peppers and froze them alongside every loaf of bread and pack of buns in the freezer. Whether freezer bags just didn’t seal as well back then or it was a secret plot to get me to eat less carbs, the result was a catastrophe. For months, every hamburger or hot dog bun I touched had a distinct, inescapable “pepper vibe.” It ruined the protein and ensured I wouldn’t become a fan of peppers for decades. In fact, it got so bad I started opting for plain bread—which, in those days, my father bought in “old” bags at a substantial discount. If we didn’t freeze it immediately, that bread was destined to host its own thriving mold colony.

The Mystery at the Dinner Table

But I digress. My mother’s efficiency didn’t stop at peppers. She’d often drain the juice from canned fruits because the recipe didn’t require it. What do you do with a cup of random fruit juice sitting in the fridge? You pour it into the Kool-Aid container with whatever flavor was already there.

Dinner became a game of Russian Roulette for the taste buds. I wasn’t one to hold back. After the first sip, I’d ask, “What exactly did you mix up for us tonight?” My mother didn’t mean any harm; she was just being efficient. But those flavor potpourris made an impression—one that would eventually haunt my own children.

Upping the Ante: The Bus Stop Games

When my sons were in elementary school, they took a shuttle bus to a pickup location near our home. To show them I was thinking about them, I’d bring a snack and a drink. The snack was the easy part. The drink was where I “kicked it up a notch.”

The game was simple: “Guess What You Are Drinking?” At my disposal, I had various fruit juices, every Kool-Aid packet known to man, and a set of food coloring bottles. I’d create concoctions that looked like pond water (minus the floaties) but were guaranteed to be drinkable. This was before the pickle juice craze, so I kept it somewhat civil.

The heart of the game was “taste-budding out” the flavors dancing over their palates. I’d offer partial credit—when you’re mixing two types of Kool-Aid, a splash of pear juice, and blue food dye, you can’t exactly expect perfection. They participated because they knew I wasn’t required to bring a snack, and perhaps because of the unspoken rule: If you don’t drink today’s mystery, there might not be one tomorrow. (I never did mention that part to their mother.)

The “Fun Grandpa” Era

I’d like to say I made everything fun for them growing up, but I didn’t. Like anyone, I had my cranky days. But as I spend time with my granddaughter now—occasionally offering a capful of Gatorade as a “chaser” after her bottle of formula—I hope I lean heavier into the fun side of the ledger.

If you can’t be a perfect parent, make sure you mix in enough quirky and fun to help the natives forget the days you didn’t quite “nail it.”

The Grey-Parenting Manifesto: All the Joy, None of the 2 A.M.s

Ellie has been with us for nine months now, and as her 30-hour-a-week “intern,” I’ve become an expert in her particular brand of chaos. We’ve moved past the “laying on a mat” phase—which lasted roughly eleven minutes—and bypassed tummy time entirely. Now, we are firmly in the Beeline Phase.

If I’m holding an apple, she’s coming for it. She’ll spot it from across the room and begin a determined crawl—the kind that says, I have a destination and you are in my way. Somewhere in the approach is a binky-muffled petition for a bite.

Since she has no teeth, “eating” is a generous term. She presses her lips against a peeled slice and creates an impressive vacuum seal to extract the juice. Her expression the entire time says, Of course you want to share this with me.

The House Patrol

When she isn’t hunting fruit, she’s on patrol. Ellie is curious to a fault—the kind of curiosity that assumes every drawer, cabinet, and doorstop is hiding a state secret. She wants to hold my fingers as we walk through the house to visit her favorite “stations.”

If there is a doorstop in my den, it must be strummed like a fine Stradivarius. It’s the same expression she gives the piano: I want on that bench, and I have opinions. When she reaches the one door that’s always closed, she studies it carefully. She concludes I am definitely hiding something and files a formal complaint with her eyes.

The fact that she drags me along for all of it, I’ve decided, is the whole point.

The Great Parenting Amnesia

Watching her hit these milestones has triggered a specific type of grandparent guilt: I have absolutely no memory of my own four children doing any of this.

If you asked me when my kids started crawling, I’d tell you, “Uh… before they started driving?” I have no recollection of their first words or their eating habits. Did they burp? Probably. They’re alive now, so I assume they were fed.

Whenever my adult children catch me staring at Ellie in wonder and ask, “Dad, don’t you remember me doing that?” I look them dead in the eye and say, “Of course I do. I was just testing you.”

In reality, I’m blank. I have the converted MiniDV files sitting on a Google Drive to prove I held the camera, but it feels like someone else handled the first ten years of their lives while I was busy worrying about the mortgage.

The High Chair Tactical Maneuver

Feeding Ellie is not a meal; it’s a structural engineering problem. Her mother is far more tolerant of “free-eating” than I am. My strategy is a pincer movement: sneak spoonfuls of yogurt in while she self-navigates an animal cracker (or “koo-kwee”).

It rarely goes to plan.

If she decides the yogurt isn’t for her, she ejects it. If I try to catch the spill, she blocks it with an incoming cracker. The result is a yogurt-based adhesive that bonds dissolving crumbs to her face, the tray, and my sleeve. Cleanup is a battle. The second I remove the tray, she conducts a frantic audit of her bib’s crumb pocket to see what survived. Between her constant movement and a deep-seated hatred of the washcloth, cleaning her is a four-man job currently handled by one sweaty grandpa.

Why I’m All In

We moved to Oklahoma knowing grandparenting was on the horizon. With our daughter and son-in-law navigating career and education changes, the math solved itself: a volunteer grandpa is cheaper, closer, and—if I may say so—better.

“Grey-parenting” isn’t the same as parenting, and that’s the beauty of it. We handle the bottles, the bibs, the “good poopies,” and the doorstop concerts. But the 2 a.m. wake-up calls? Those go back to the professionals.

If thirty-ish hours a week is the price of getting a second pass at the magic I was too distracted to notice the first time around, that’s not a sacrifice. It’s a pretty good deal—even if it means surrendering the occasional apple.

The Grass is Greener (When Someone Else Mows It)

As a homeowner for a number of years, I’ve done my share of mowing — push mowers, riding mowers, and as a kid, one with a turn radius so bad I had to convince myself it was a feature. With nearly two decades of Ohio lawns behind me, I still never managed the perfectly straight lines required to meet the standards of certain people I am married to.

Moving through Texas and Oklahoma over the last two decades, I’ve made my peace with the regional grasses — or at least stopped taking them personally. It doesn’t really matter if I have a beef with St. Augustine or Bermuda. Unless I want a yard full of wildflowers that the HOA would ban before they even bloomed, the grass has to get cut.

In Texas, I pushed a mower nearly every week and convinced myself I was good at it. St. Augustine has wide, flat blades that sprawl over the sidewalk and turn a “quick trim” into a full, sweat-soaked hour. Eventually, I had a moment of clarity: someone else could do this for money. I wasn’t great at trimming. I was worse at small-engine maintenance. And paying a crew for the season meant the yard got mowed while we were on vacation, without me making frantic calls and getting the “We don’t take temporary clients” rejection.

Oklahoma brought new grass and new logistics. Last year’s guy was ideal — $50 every two weeks, Venmo payment, maybe one conversation a month. Rain delay? We bumped the schedule. He went on vacation? Same. It was the perfect No Contact relationship: professional, low-maintenance, mutually beneficial. We understood each other completely and had almost no reason to speak.

He retired from the side hustle this spring — full-time fireman, finite Saturdays — and handed me three names on the way out. One was eliminated immediately for insisting on mowing every seven to ten days. Bermuda doesn’t grow that fast, and honestly, neither does my budget. The remaining two came down to one variable: the spring scalping charge. Bermuda grows low enough that a proper start to the season means shaving it down close to the dirt to clear out last year’s dead thatch. Both guys charged to scalp; one was discounted. That was the whole decision.

There was, however, one new wrinkle: my son. He recently bought a house on the street directly behind ours, and he has determined — much earlier in life than I did — that mowing is not for him. Whether this is genuine wisdom or a defense of his programming hands against mower vibration is still under debate. Either way, we were choosing together, which meant I had a co-signer on whatever call we made.

We will discuss the final decision tonight when he comes over for dinner. To scalp or not to scalp? Having gotten the scalp for the same $50 bi-weekly fee last year, I am hesitant pay extra. However, my bot friends say it is a good idea. Whatever happens, my son and I are going to get this decision done.

And if he decides to spend part of that Saturday installing a new ceiling fan for his dad, I’m certainly not going to argue with him.

The Head Wag

The whole family has been captivated lately by Ellie’s newest trick. As she prepares to trade crawling for the brave new world of walking, we are bracing for an onslaught of milestones. But for now, we are obsessed with the “Head Wag.”

It started a few weeks ago: a rhythmic, sideways nod that defies easy explanation. To the limited comprehension of the adults in the room, the cause remains a mystery. However, Ellie is a generous performer. If we provide a bit of encouragement—usually by making fools of ourselves with our own awkward head wags—she rewards us with an encore. Sometimes, just a sideways glance and a smile are enough to trigger that little face into motion.

In some cases, the “why” is obvious. In others, it’s a total enigma. Is she defragmenting her hard drive? Is she locking a memory in a little tighter, giving it a shake to ensure it doesn’t leak out of her ears?

That serpentine tongue is occasionally hard to explain, but I find myself wondering about the construction project currently happening behind her eyes. What steps does a baby’s brain take to become the adult brain that has to keep her entertained for the rest of her life?

This quirk isn’t happening in a vacuum. She is zooming through her first year, leaving the adults in a state of perpetual amazement. Our days are filled with a chorus of, “Where did that come from?” and “Did her mom do that?”

Our grandparenting journey will only get more crowded as the family grows. My hope is to catalog these individual quirks while holding onto the memories of what they all share. Perhaps, eventually, we’ll realize they aren’t “quirks” at all—just the universal language of babies being babies. My front-row seat might not be as high-octane as a Saturday at the hockey rink watching our boys, but it keeps me absolutely riveted to the adventure.