Lizzie Moments – An Inspired Gramma
When Lizzie speaks, Gramma listens… At least most of the time. Yesterday, I got caught not listening. Elizabeth is my two year old granddaughter, who lives in Denver. She’s got about the most extensive vocabulary I’ve ever heard.
After a day of shopping, we’d started making our way back across town to home. Somewhere along the way, Elizabeth said, “Gramma I gotta go potty.” But, the traffic was heavy and I didn’t want to fight our way off the highway, so I asked if she could hold it a minute…. and promptly forgot I had to stop.
Oooops…
Lizzie didn’t repeat her comment about needing to potty until she was sitting in a wet car seat. “Gramma my clothes are all wet!” I blinked when I heard the words. We’ve been trying to potty train her and SHE’s doing a good job. She tells us when she needs to go potty and when she’s gone potty. She doesn’t like wearing wet clothes, and she hates it when her car seat gets wet. Now she was uncomfortable and we had about five miles left to drive home.
She complained most of the way home that she had to potty and she told me, but I didn’t listen. I felt bad. She was sad that she pottied in her pants and the world wasn’t quite as happy a place as it had been before.
Time to stop…
I don’t know about you, but this reminded me of the old saying that you need to take time to stop and smell the roses along the way. If I’d taken a moment to find a place to stop for Elizabeth to go potty, I might have had one more happy moment in the day with my granddaughter. I know the trip home would have ended on a better note.
The lesson I learned was to take the moments and enjoy the day, taking care of what needs taking care of, instead of rushing through space, ignoring important opportunities to “smell the roses”.
Leave a Comment