Picking Up After Baby’s Visit

I am writing this post just a few hours after I dropped my daughter and granddaughter off at the airport. We had a delightful week, with lots of grandma and baby time. I have been very fortunate to spend almost four weeks of my granddaughter’s 8-month life with her—I saw her at two weeks, at three and a half months, at five and a half months, and now at eight months. Despite my gratitude for my good fortune, I shed a few tears as I drove home from the airport because I don’t know when I will see her next.

And then I launched into cleaning up after baby.

For this visit, I acquired a playpen and a booster seat for her, as well as a carseat. These accompanied the pack-and-play I purchased before her first visit in May. Now that she is eating a lot of big-people food and moving around independently, we needed places to contain her. We set up an Alexa Echo Show device with a Blink camera as a jury-rigged baby monitor. We moved the rocking chair near her pack-and-play. For a week, our house looked like it did when our kids were young. We have far fewer toys than we had then, but we now possess most of the bigger baby-gear items we had thirty-five years ago.

Picking everything up this afternoon was sad. Into closets went all the baby paraphernalia. The rocking chair is back in my office. Sheets and towels went through washer and dryer. A wet Swiffer cloth removed the dropped food bits from the floor. Now, the house once again looks like the domain of two stodgy retirees. It’s neater, but lonelier.

It’s very quiet this afternoon. A 20-pound baby fills all the space she is given. And leaves emptiness when she departs.

Do you miss your guests when they leave? I miss this young guest terribly.