On Saturday, May 1st, I headed out to the airport to pick up my mom! We haven't seen her for 3 years and we were all so excited to be able to spend the next two weeks of school vacation with her. We would have loved for my dad to come as well, but long distance travel just isn't in the cards for him anymore. :( The first day we took it easy on her. The kids played games and puzzles with her, and ended up getting out almost every single board game and puzzle we own. She played them all. What a trooper. Then we went upstairs and she chatted with me while I hurried to clean a space in the craft/guest room for her. Yeah, totally planned to do that before she got here, but I had a list a mile long of things that had to get done before we left for Disneyland, and that one always seemed to get pushed back to the bottom because of more urgent matters. Finally, we moved the guest bed/mattress in there, got it all fixed up with sheets, blankets and pillows, showed her how to close the shutters to create near darkness even in the middle of the afternoon, and let her crash. Didn't see her again until just as we were walking out the door to church the next morning. 🙂
I told her that Chris' mom has a pretty good system for fighting jet lag when she comes to visit, and it seems to work rather well. Stay up as long as you can stand it the first day. The second day, stay in bed pretty much the whole day. If you are awake, of course you can read, but it's important to be in bed so the second you feel drowsy you can go back to sleep. By the third day, she is always ready to go and never feels too tired again. So we let Mom try it out and skip church that second day , and it seemed to work. She did take her regular short nap every afternoon, but was never so tired she was completely out of commission again.
Alexandra had never met my mom, and was a bit shy at first. I explained to her that this lady was Mama's Mama, and that's how her nickname was born. Alexandra would call out, "Mama mama!" whenever she wanted my mom to look at something she had drawn, play a game with her, or generally have her attention. She would start out in this cute sing-songy voice, but if my mom was talking to one of the other kids or me, and didn't acknowledge Alexandra right away, she would get louder. Finally, she would yell it, and then we would all turn and look at her. Hey, a house full of 7 people bigger than you, you do what you gotta do to be heard.
We had a fantastic visit and did lots of fun things, but that is for the next post.