The Complaint Department

Over this past weekend, we had the unexpected happiness of welcoming a new granddaughter to our family. She wasn’t supposed to make her arrival for another ten days, so instead of all the proper preparation of the grandparents to take care of the nearly three-year-old big brother, we got a crash course, as in “Hey, mom, can you come?”

How one child can wear out three adults (perhaps it’s our ages?), a granddad and two grandmothers, is something the world already knows about. A grandchild does wear out three grandparents. This one is currently involved with Thomas the Train and Chuggington on the screen and trains, trains, trains elsewhere. I could say it’s in his DNA. As far as his paternal side is concerned, railroad men abound.

Sunday evening, it was just the two grandmothers in charge and we came up short in our grandson’s eyes. He wanted to watch Chuggington during supper. I knew nothing about the TV system in my son’s house (see paragraph one) and the other grandmother could only get so far, then Chuggington wouldn’t download. It was a system fail of the biggest kind. 

What were we to do but hope for an early bedtime for us all. 

Come Monday morning, his dad was expected home to take him to school. We let Dad get son up, thinking that having not seen his parents in two days and having heard that he was a big brother now, the first words would be happy ones. Ah, no. Instead, he lodged a complaint against me.

“MoKa wouldn’t let me watch Chuggington.” 

That was it. His first words to his dad. Of course, I had to defend myself as his dad breezed to the right channel and found Chuggington for breakfast.