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The traditional facebook announcement from my daughter

I believe it was Emily Post who said that the proper way for a lady to announce her pregnancy on Facebook is to write an article about abortion rights.

Pregnancy is painful, difficult, and dangerous. No one should be forced into it.
Never. Really.

A human rights attorney and journalist, she argues here that “Pregnancy isn’t like organ donation, it is a kind of organ donation”.

It’s a thought-provoking and novel argument. I love it, and I hope everyone will read it.

But now that her news is out there, my husband and I have a problem. Soon we’ll be grandparents for the first time. To say we’re wildly excited is an understatement. The Hub had to restrain me from shopping for a condo across the street from the expecting parents. (I still think it would be a great idea—their apartment couldn’t possibly hold the amount of baby stuff I really want to shop for…)

But our real problem is this: what to call the grandparents. Us.

I remember when I was pregnant with her, the first grandchild on either side. We asked the Hub’s parents what they wanted to be called, and his father had a surprisingly difficult time answering. “It’s not that I mind being a grandfather,” he finally admitted. “It’s realizing that I’m sleeping with a grandmother.”

For me, the naming issue is complex. I’m not my mother-in-law (“Grandmom”), my mother (“Grandmother”), the traditional “bubbe”, or “granny”. But I’ll have to come up with some preference and soon, or the child will take things into her own little hands and I’ll be forever “gommie” or some such shudder-making inspiration. So I turned for help to the one source that never lets me down: the internet, or in this case, Amazon via Rosie Amber’s Friday Five Challenge.

I put in “grandparent” and was absolutely gobsmacked to discover that not only was “grandparenting” its own subject category, but there were 535 matches. Only… I followed the links for  Books : Parenting & Relationships : Family Relationships : Grandparenting : “grandparents”, scrolled down, and… They all kind of sucked. There were books (lots) on how to babysit your grandchild, books on how to tell them your family stories, and how to care for their spiritual needs. Screw that! Four minutes in, I spotted “The Big Book of Grandparent Names”. I have to admit, it sounded promising. But it cost $11.34 and the blurb read simply “Book by O’Keefe-Moore, Jeanmarie”. That’s a little TOO simply. Back to search. But with time running out and little to show for it, I was about to give up when I saw it: Good Granny/Bad Granny. Oh, yeah… the book I never knew I always needed.

Rosie Amber’s Friday Five challenge is to take ONLY FIVE MINUTES to browse an unfamiliar category and select a book based solely on the cover art.

1519544Book blurb:

This mischievous gift book celebrates grandmothers who, to their families’ absolute delight or utter dismay, love to spoil their grandchildren rotten. Each spread features two illustrated scenarios: on the left, a good granny (enforcing 6:00 PM bath time), and on the right, a bad granny (letting the kiddies run through the sprinkler instead). It’s the perfect present for grandmas gone bad (or, okay, good) and the families that adore them.

BUY LINKS:

AMAZON US | AMAZON UK

My Analysis: See, here’s the problem with being the perfect grandma. I don’t knit, live too far away to babysit, and my own mother’s approach was to teach the kids to play poker, cheat at pinochle, handicap the ponies, and play the slots. Those are big shoes to fill. But in a quick “Look Inside” at Good Granny/Bad Granny, I read,

“…do you have to be an old-fashioned, well-behaved grandmother? You know—the kind who cooks only healthful, nutritious meals; makes sure this child has rich cultural experiences and educational toys; behaves in a dignified manner at all times; and is available at any hour of the day or night to babysit? Or should you be a bad grandmother and do whatever you know the child would love—things parents would never let him do: trips to the racetrack, raids on Kentucky Fried Chicken, and videogame marathons?”

At full price, it’s a bit expensive. But a used print copy will give me something to leave lying around to annoy the kids with. And I can use savings toward that condo across the street from them.

grannybook1

I wonder how long it will take for the baby to learn to say “Bad Granny”?

BUY or PASS:   BUY [Plus a question—what are the grandparents in your life called?]

Here is Rosie’s Friday Five Challenge. It only took five minutes and a couple more to write up, and was a ton of fun. I hope you’ll consider joining in. All Rosie asks is that you link back to her original post here so we can all join in viewing your challenge results.

AUTHORS – You often only have seconds to get a reader to buy your book, is your book cover and book bio up to it?

Rosie Amber's Friday Five Challenge. Get yourself a cuppa and give yourself 5 minutes.

Rosie Amber’s Friday Five Challenge. Get yourself a cuppa and give yourself 5 minutes.

My Friday Five Challenge is this….. IN ONLY FIVE MINUTES….

  1. Go to any online book supplier,
  2. Randomly choose a category,
  3. Speed through the book covers, choose one which has instantly appealed to your eye,
  4. Read the book Bio/ Description for this book, and any other details.
  5. If there are reviews, check out a couple,
  6. Make an instant decision, would you BUY or PASS?
  7. I’ll be back next week with another Friday Five Challenge, do feel free to join in.