When Ollie Met Cosette

From the day after Thanksgiving last year when we found out Marquee was pregnant, bringing my 2015 Grandbaby Total to two, I have been excited about the future relationship between those little cousins.

I have a lot of cousins, dozens of cousins - and that's just the first cousins - when you factor in the second cousins and first cousins once removed and spouses of cousins... I have a lot of cousins. Just. A lot. My cousins have been my siblings without the rivalry. They have been a source of wisdom for me. They have helped me understand family characteristics and idiosyncrasies. They remind me of family history. They have shared the happiest and saddest moments of life with me.

While I have a lot of cousins that I've been in contact continuously throughout my life, I also have cousins that I have only connected with through social media. Maybe we had seen each other at the occasional funeral or rare reunion, these cousins were just not around as much as others. This makes it really important to me that my grandchildren have a solid relationship.

The thing is... my grandchildren live about a hundred miles apart. Out of the grandbaby parents, only one out of four drives. Two of the parents work long hours and don't have a lot of free time. I haven't been comfortable driving for long distances for awhile. I pretty much leave the house to go to the doctor or the grocery store or the pharmacy and that's about it. Out of the three cars here, there have been times over the past two months (since Ollie was born) that we have only had one car working while the other car was in the shop. (one car is waiting to either have a lot of money thrown at it or be taken to the dump). So taking off for a road trip to OllieLand hasn't been very easy. Getting everybody in the same space was next to impossible.

Since Ollie's mommy has severe allergies, especially to cats, their doctor has advised them not to expose Ollie to cats until he's older. I know there has been some new studies in the media lately that indicates the earlier exposure makes them less likely to have allergies, but we feel more comfortable limiting Ollie's exposure to my kitties until he's old enough to take benedryl if he does have a reaction. I don't like it, of course, because I want to gather all my little birdies into the same nest, but I'm working hard to be patient. And of course, I don't want Ollie to be uncomfortable. There are just so many roadblocks in getting those baby cousins together!

Cosette was amazed at Uncle Cody!

Finally... last Saturday... we decided to get together to celebrate Mawmaw and Pop's birthday at a restaurant that was not so far away from us that the drive would be awful. Austin had to work so he still hasn't gotten to meet Ollie (and he's really bummed about that) but the rest of us, including Jim and Angie and the girls, were available for lunch. We went to O'Charleys... a decent but not terribly expensive restaurant. They were really good to give us an entire section of the restaurant so we could move around and pass babies and not annoy other diners. The pictures from that lunch are scattered throughout this post.

My Nana heart is content for now. It is HARD to split time evenly between babies. Part of the time Ollie was nursing... and since Austin wasn't with us I tried to hold Cosette enough that Tasha would be able to enjoy her lunch. (I barely ate a thing... brought almost the entire meal home with me!) Ollie is lighter but Cosette holds on better. I tried hard to just hold babies and not worry about the pain. I'm still paying for that! They're too young to interact much yet but they did notice each other... and... yeah. That's what happened.

In other news this week... I went to the dentist last Thursday and am returning today to see what treatment plan he has for me. Last week they did a lot of xrays and pictures and made molds. The dentist wanted to take the time to review it all and come up with a treatment plan that would be the most affordable and longest lasting. He's a sweetheart and plays the same Contemporary Christian radio station that I normally listen to in the car. That helps. He offered me pain meds last week but I told him I didn't need it yet.

I've started my Christmas shopping which feels AMAZING!

Ollie reaches out for sleeping Cosette

We cleaned out Austin's room and turned it into the Cat Room - with their litter boxes and food bowl in there and out of my living room. I'm trying to have all my kitchen stuff in one corner and have a play area for the grandbabies. I say "we" but Austin did the heavy lifting and my mom spent HOURS in there cleaning and organizing. I just pointed where things should go.
Austin also built my new craft shelf that has nine little cubbies in it. I bought six baskets to tuck things away and make them more easily accessible for me and the nieces and less accessible for Miss Cosette who will be mobile before long!
I'm having more trouble getting around which is frustrating (and painful). In a way I feel like I need to do all the things that I want to do before I can't get around . But then I do one thing or another and spend several days recovering.

I discovered Amazon Prime Pantry this week. If you're a Prime member you can fill a 45 lb box of "pantry items" for 5.99 shipping. I bought cereal, breakfast bars, gatorade (too heavy for me to lift) cat litter, advil, vitamins, burt's bees stuff, oreos, v-8 juice. My mailman probably hates me. I also ordered cat litter - under Prime it has no delivery charge.

AND... I guess that's about all for now! Hope you're having a great week! Love and hugs!

Pictures continued below....

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