Global Babysitting

I’ll admit that when my children were growing up I would often think about my future days as a grandmother. I envisioned Sunday afternoon dinners at the house when all of the kiddies would gather around the table with me. It was that way when I was growing up; the Sunday ritual of my grandmother surveying her tribe. Yup…that’s what I thought would happen. But things change, times change.

I was reading recently about the type of grandmother I am. I fit into the category of “global grandparent.” There’s actually a book about this new phenomenon, “How To Be A Global Grandparent.” My grandbaby lives on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean and so my experience is different.

As a child, my number one babysitter was my grandmother. When my parents needed someone to look after us, there were no questions asked. We were off to grandmother’s house. Well, getting Miss Chloe to my house so that her parents can go out for a romantic evening alone is not likely to happen! They’d have to take two days just to transport her back and forth. But with our work schedules and my husband’s airline employee benefits, grandparent babysitting is still a global possibility for us! Thank heavens!

We recently had our first babysitting experience. For a belated anniversary present we promised my daughter and son-in-law a nice dinner out with babysitting service provided. Now the actual babysitting experience was not out of the norm. Before they left, the nervous parents showed us where all the supplies were for feeding time and bath time. My daughter even left an instruction sheet on how to bathe an infant! Like I had no experience!!! After five or six, “oh, and don’t forget to do this..” the nervous new parents FINALLY left!

Then it was just the three of us! We were in heaven! Two middle-aged adults cooing and making faces for an obviously quite entertained little one. There was her feeding and then her bath time. It all seemed like old times, and everything came back so easily and naturally.

What seemed a bit unnatural about the experience was that the day prior we had taken an eight-hour overnight flight from New York to Amsterdam. The Dutch language on all of the baby products made me quite cautious with lotions and powders. The metric measurements on everything required some math and some thought! Although I am getting a little better on the weekly weight and length reports. The first time my daughter told me that my granddaughter weighed almost 3700 grams, I thought she must me a huge baby! Well, the math said that she was a little over seven pounds, but as a global grandparent, I had to do the math!

The world is becoming smaller and smaller every day, and global grandparenting will no doubt become more common place. I just count my blessings every day that we have airline benefits so that global babysitting can occur! I think it’s now one of my favorite activities.