The Joys of Grandparenting: Reflections from G-Ma and G-Pa

Hi, I'm Matthew Greger, and I'm Nancy Greger.

We have this podcast called We Should Probably Edit This, but we won't.

Our podcast is about us, our relationship, our 37 years of being married, raising 3 children, And hopefully we can share something that would be inspiring, honest, truthful, as our tagline says, unfiltered, unscripted, and unapologetically us. There you go. We should probably edit this, but we won't.

And we're on.

Yay, we did it!

I'm Matthew Greger.

I'm Nancy. How are you?

All right, so what's our subject in this session?

This episode, is it grandchildren?

Yeah, it's about grandchildren, your favorite topic of all things.

They are my favorite topic. I love my humans, my small humans. They're the best.

So what's it like? What's it like being a grandmother?

It's fun. It can be very tiring at times. We have 4.

Oh, the cat must be eating again. I hear the ding of the chimes.

Just forget it. It's called life, and we're not pausing because we hear something, right?

Because we should edit this, but, but we won't, right?

Um, so we have 4 grandchildren, um, and I think we, with exception of the last one who's 2 years old, we have seen all of them when they were first born, and that was really great. We were grandparents very early, um, because most people look at us and don't— are amazed.

No, we just look good, that's all, for being grandparents. Come on, has nothing to do about having them early.

Kind of both.

Um, we got 4 now, and the oldest It will be 11.

11.

And look, look how we look.

Well, you know, lotion does wonders, uh, moisturizing does wonders. But so yeah, so when our first granddaughter was born, I would say to you, it was an amazing feeling. It was like look at this small little human. Um, and it made you appreciate it more, I think, because I wasn't her mother.

Um, so you didn't have to deal with the new mother things. You didn't have to deal with the new mother things, although we did hear all about it, and it was part of our life because in the beginning they were living with us.

Correct, correct.

So in some ways it was you were kind of connected a little more.

I would have been connected no matter what, right?

But I mean, like, when we had our own kids, they were there with us, right?

Grandparents weren't around for our kids, right? And so for us to have our first granddaughter and live with us, uh, with her mom and dad— she just didn't live with us. Her, her mom and dad, uh, and her, they all— we all lived together, and we had a fairly decent-sized house that, that was accommodating.

They had the lower level and we—

but she was just a lot of fun. And she would come up in the mornings from downstairs and she would say, hi, Gma, hi, Gpa, uh, because that's what we're called.

Well, let's switch to that topic for, for a minute.

What's that topic?

That— no, the topic of what should we be called, how, how we got our names.

I didn't— I think Grandma is too hard, um, when you're little, and I wasn't—

well, I also think it's too old-fashioned to be Grandpa and Grandma. Now you seem like you're going to be really these old people, so we want to be a little more hip too.

That was probably the only reason we were looking to be a little bit more hip, so Gma and Gpa made sense, especially with our son who was really into rap and, you know, rap music.

But not only that, but also the G, because we're Greger, correct? It also worked in that favor too. You have grandparents and your Greger, so G-ma and G-pa. It just seemed to, seemed to work.

It seemed it worked really well, I think, and it was easy for them to pronounce. Um, I, I mean, I called— so I had one grandmother who was called Abuelita because I'm Spanish, so she was called Abuelita. Which is grandmother in Spanish. And my other grandmother, who was also Hispanic, but I didn't call her abuelita. I would call her grandma. Um, and I only had one grandfather. My other grandfather died even when my father was a baby, so he was grandpa. Uh, he wasn't abuelo. He was grandpa. Um, what did you call your—

well, both, both mine were called Grandma and Grandpa. Um, it just that, you know, you had, um, I don't even think we, we, we— they were never around very much in the same room, so we didn't have to distinguish between them. So they were just Grandma and Grandpa to us on both sides. And I had both my grandparents on both my mom's side and my father's side for, for most of my child ages.

Okay.

You know, until I was, um a teenager for my mom's dad when he passed away. And then, um, and my other grandfather lived for, for quite, quite some time.

Yeah.

But yeah, so it was just Grandma and Grandpa for that.

Yeah, I didn't— well, not that my grandmothers were always in the same room, they weren't. It was just one grandmother called them, right? Yeah, one grandmother spoke English pretty well, the other one did not. And so it was always, you know, abuelita. And besides the fact that on that side of the family, there are 9 grandchildren, and the first 7 of us were girls, and we were all 1 year apart. And at some point, we all lived in the same house together. So there was a lot of girls. And Abuelita was, was what we always called her.

There's all kinds of different names that you can call your grandparents. So I'd love to— we'd love to know what some of your favorite names are and what you called your grandparents, or what do you expect to call yourself when you are a grandparent, right?

I, I will say that I— we did meet a couple just recently who had probably the best names I've ever heard. He was called— he wanted to be, and he is a grandpa— he wanted to be called Papi. No, Pops. Pops. Um, and he made us guess what his wife's name— what his wife was being called. And I couldn't— I couldn't guess for anything. And then he told us that hers was Lolly.

And together they were Lollipops. Lolly and Pops.

I fell out. I thought that was the greatest names you could come up with that was inventive and unique. And oh my goodness, the merchandise you could do on that, on that name for Lolly and Pops. But so it's always interesting to see what people call themselves. I think so. My grandchildren's other grandparents are called Gigi and Poppy, right?

Right.

Um, I don't know why they called Gigi. I think her— well, her name is Liz, so I could see where Gigi could kind of work. I don't know, they're Italian, so maybe it comes from— but yeah, I would have thought Italian would have been a different name. Nonna is what I thought Italians were called. But in any ways, um, but it's funny because the grandchildren still mix us up. I will still be called—

everyone depends who visited them last because they'll have that name in their heads.

Or some— I'll still be called Gigi from time to time, and then I'll say, no, I'm Gima. And then they'll say, okay, that's right, you're Gima. Uh, I don't think they mess up your— I think they pretty much call you G-Pop.

Never, ever, ever— they've, they've called me Poppy before.

They called you Poppy before?

Theo has. So I don't know. But anyway, so, so, so, okay, so that's the names. So let's get back to like the names, what it's like to be—

so, so when Hadley, our first one, was born and we had the the privilege of being part of her life for the first couple of years. Um, it was a lot of fun. I thought it was a lot of fun. I was still working though, so I wasn't home. So, um, her mom was a stay-at-home mom, and so when I would come home, it was always— it was always great to see, um, Hadley and have her have dinner with us. And on the weekends, we should sit on the dinner table with the little bumba or whatever that seat that sat down on the table and her little feet just kicked out. Yeah. Um, it was always a lot of fun. Definitely a lot of fun to have her around and watch her see things. I have some pictures when we did Christmas and we did gingerbread houses and she just looked at her house, was like, I'm gonna eat it. And she was so, so happy. So I— it was great, um, for that. Um, I enjoyed it 100%. I don't think there was anything about being a grandma that I don't like. And the best part of it now is they don't live close by any longer, you know, they're far away, but they're in a warmer climate now, so that's nice.

So that's nice to get out of there.

It gives us an excuse to go, to go away for the wintertime. But we're usually good for about 4 days, um, yeah, with them because now they're probably good for about 4 days with us too. Since— yeah, because now, and, and when they come to visit, you just let things go.

And yeah, that was kind of tough.

You can't really worry about it. That stuff for you is not tough for me because I can remember when our kids were little and we would go visit grandparents because both of our parents lived in Florida at the time. And when we would go down to Florida, it always surprised me the difference in the attitude towards the dynamics, the dynamics to them. You know, my mother could care less about anything in the house that they could possibly break. She could care less. And as a matter of fact, I think they broke something. Was it— was a cookie jar, and it was the top of the cookie jar, and they— the top broke off somehow. I don't know, might have fallen. She didn't even give it two looks about it. And she had had that coffee, that cookie jar for a very, very long time. But it didn't faze her in the least. And it didn't faze my father in the least. He would be like, whatever, you know, the mayhem, the hystericalness, the invasion. And when we would come, not only would we bring our three kids, but we also brought the animals.

Yep, the cat and the dog. That was a different episode when the cat got strangled almost. So you can find that one.

My in-laws, not so much.

Um, yeah, I don't know, I don't know why. I mean, I'm, I'm trying not to be that way. I, I was much better with every trip that they've come to visit. I've just let go more and more, you know. It is what it is. Messes are going to be messes.

It's going to be messes.

It's, it's, you know, it's funny how you, when the kids are all gone and you're on your own, you know, you, your house is just different. And then when they come back to visit, you forget sometimes what it's like to have kids and, and young adults around the house.

The thing that would annoy me the most isn't my grandchildren, it's my adult children leaving shoes because they're big. Shoes drive me crazy. Or things just being dropped in one place. And this isn't my grandchildren. These are my adult children that do.

Yeah, because they think, they think they're back home. Yeah, doing whatever they want to do.

Correct. And I'm like, yeah, yeah, no, see, they can get away with it, but you can't. Um, I don't— I, I'm really not over— I know that if they're coming and there's something that I'm concerned about that I don't want them to accidentally touch or break, I just put it away. Yeah, I don't— there's not that many of those, but there really isn't that many things around our house that's like that. And as a matter of fact, even sitting on our furniture and eating, they do much better than my adult children did.

Yeah, Noah and the wine on the nice—

on my nice Restoration Hardware couch that was white.

Yep.

Yeah. So those are the kind of things that when they— and I can remember when Remy was born. So when Hadley was born, she was blonde bald-headed baby. Blue eyes. And her— my son is very dark complexion, um, brown eyes, very hairy. His dad once had a lot of hair. If you see his dad, he's the spitting image of his father, except his father's a much older version of what he may end up being.

And hairless version. I did used to have a lot of hair.

You did. But I remember that So when the kids caused this to happen— yeah, when Remy was born, um, Hadley was— was she— they're 3 years apart, so Hadley was 3 years old at the time. And so Remy, Remy was born, and again, I wasn't there at the moment she was born because they went to a birthing center this time around, right? The first time around Hadley was born in a hospital. Second time around, she, Remy was born at a birthing center and you couldn't really have a lot of things, but I ended up watching Hadley while mommy and daddy and I believe Liz went to the birthing center.

I know you're asking for details that I don't remember. Yeah, you don't remember.

But I remember when, so when finally the baby was and we could go, I said, Hadley, let's go see your sister. And we walk into this, into the room, and Mommy's there. Mommy's starving, so Mommy's eating something. And they hand me Remy, and I looked at her, and this was like total opposite. I said, Remy had black hair. She still has blue eyes, but I mean, she looked like my side. You were— sadly, look like, um, Shelby's side of the family. Remy looked like my side of the family. And I remember seeing her, and then we— they introduced her to Hadley, and Hadley was just not interested in the sister. She kept saying, 'Gma, let's go, we've got things we were going to be doing,' uh, to entertain her while I was, um, watching her. So she knew she had an agenda, and so she had no interest in seeing her baby sister.

And Remy lived with us, um, not as long as Hadley, because then they got the apartment.

They got the apartment and they, they moved out into the apartment.

I think needed their own space away from us, the, the, the grandparents.

Maybe not so much you, probably me, because I can be, um, I can be very in-your-face.

Yes, just like— you mean, you mean you can't keep your opinions to yourself?

No, not so much opinions, at least I don't think I was opinionated, but I would be, I would be the, the grandparent who would get up and say 'What do you want to eat?' Yeah. And I could be a short order cook. I could make you eggs, bacon, waffles, whatever it is that you were interested in. I had no issues making that. And I think they didn't want for the kids to feel that they could easily go to either one of us and ask, especially if they said no already, and then they come to us, and then they would come to us and we'd be like, 'Yeah, let's do it, sure.' That's the one thing grandparents don't usually have too many nos in their vocabulary. No, no. And now that my granddaughter is the— so Hadley is going to be 11 and Remy is 7.

7, yeah.

Um, and so we just recently went down to Florida, and I love taking them to the store. And I did ask Mom if there was anything specific that we weren't allowed to buy. And she didn't really say no to anything, really. Um, but I remember one time I took Hadley by herself shopping, and we went to all the stores. We went all stores. And I would say to her, you get whatever it is you want.

And that was the year before—

that was the year—

that was her 10th year birthday. Yeah, I should have just seen her face when she was like showing some of the things that she bought. She was just so excited.

She was so— she got a jacket, she got some shoes, she got a shirt, she got so many things, earrings that she wanted. And I love that. And I will probably do that till the day I'm 6 feet under. If you say to me, let's go, I'm like, let's go. And I, even if it meant I'd go into debt, I'd go into that.

We'll see about that.

It's really hard for me to say no. I know, it's really hard for me to say.

But then, then when Theo came, came along, he was the only grandson. Um, he was also born in the birthing center up here. Yes, before they moved.

And they— but they had moved to another place. And I— we didn't see him until he got home. Yeah, we went and saw him at home. Um, and then again, here's a bald little boy, no hair on his head. He was bald like his sister Hadley was.

But now we could be getting some of these details wrong.

I mean, no, he was bald. Okay, he was bald, and he has brown eyes. His sisters do not.

Even Millie, the youngest?

Millie does not. Millie has brown eyes.

Brown or green?

Brown. Both Millie and Theo have the same color eyes, and Hadley and Remy have the same. Okay, though I think Hadley is—

we could be wrong.

Okay, Benjamin Shelby, catch us on this if we're wrong, let us know. Yeah, um, but anyway, so when he came along, he was a totally different dynamic, especially for them. Because when you, when you have the next— like, you didn't go have all girls and all of a sudden you get this little boy, you're like, what do I do with him? He's totally different. He's totally different. But he has a great— he's very kind.

Theo's a very kind and conscientious, kind and determined, determined, especially when it comes to sports and the balls. You know, it's like in his trucks and things too, with the cars. He's, he's like, um, basketball is his thing now. He's 5 years old and loves playing basketball, um, even organized basketball with the Y. You know, he's, um, he's, he's determined just to put in the reps. I'll put it that way.

Yes.

You know, if, you know, they tell us that we need to put in the reps to get better at whatever we're doing, and when you see, when you see, um, that little boy putting in the reps, you really realize what it takes to put in the reps. Yeah, because he'll just do it over and over and over and over and over and over again till he, till he perfects it.

Remy is my, my actress, my singer, my— I'm ready.

I think she knows the words to every, every song that they— especially all the Disney songs, for sure.

Oh my Lord, she— not on just the songs she can repeat the, the storyline. Like, she's right there. She is truly the actress in the making. Um, very dramatic, but just— that's just who she is, you know. Hadley, I think, is a little bit more reserved.

Well, the oldest child usually is. The oldest child is more cautious, I think. Ben, I mean, just like me, I was the oldest one, and I was the oldest, but I don't think You're just a different breed altogether. Well, you were also the only child for a while.

I was, I was the only child for 14 years.

You're right, right. So I was, I was for 3 years.

Yeah.

And at that time you don't remember that much. So as far as, as far as being the only one for 3 years, isn't that impressionable? You know, being the old, being the only one. I mean, you were the only one through your teenage years, middle school years. I'll put it that way.

Yeah. So That, that was—

that I don't know where I was going with this. I don't know.

But in any case, Hadley is— she's like you said, she's more reserved, but she's entering into her preteen years. So it'll be interesting to see as they evolve. And I think that that's, that's the fun part is when you go and you see them, because like I said, they don't live close by. So whenever we do go down, it's like months before.

Yeah. And for, for kids you know, between 2 and 11, you know, it's like, yeah, it's— there's a lot more that changes in a month.

Yes.

Than you realize.

Words like, ooh.

When you're there as a— when you're there in it during that time, you don't notice those things.

Yes.

But when you haven't seen them for a month in person, it makes a big difference. Yep.

And it makes a huge difference in their whole personality. And then we have the last one. Which is Millie. She's funny. Millie is number 4, but I have a funny feeling that Millie's gonna run the roost, and she's definitely not gonna—

that's because the last child, it's like each one is a different form of parenting, meaning, meaning you're, you're You're very— with the first one, you're very ultra-conscious about everything.

Yeah.

And you're, you're unsure, you don't know what to do. By the time the second one comes along, things loosen up a little bit. And by the time the third one comes along, it really loosens up. And maybe you've gotten your patterns and your rhythms in place too, that, that, that one actually does differently or, or something.

Um, but well, you've learned from—

yeah, we've learned from all the, all the others.

From all the others. Um, ours were spaced out a little, um, except for the last two. They're not spaced out, but my grandchildren are 3 to 4 years apart.

3.

3 years apart.

There was about every 3 years.

Yeah, yeah. So Millie, Millie— so we weren't around when Millie was first born, right? But we did go down because she was born in Florida. She was born in Florida, so we did go down not right away. But we did close because I think I went down in September, September to see her and a month later. Yeah. And I, and I, and she's typical, you know, at that stage.

When was her?

August.

Okay.

She was in August. And typically when they're that little, and our daughter-in-law was nursing, so you can hold you know, the baby when they're young like that, but they're going to need mom a lot more.

Yeah.

Um, but then we saw her recently.

We went down again in September, and she's talking, doing a lot of talking, mostly in her own language, except that she understands really well, except for one word, and she, she doesn't say no.

She sings it. No, you would say yes. Then I realized she watches Frozen ad nauseam and all those Disney shows, and there's a lot of singing involved. So I think Millie just thinks everything's got to be sung. You just don't talk it, you sing it. But she's— she's a—

she'd make a good Barbra Streisand movie then.

Do you?

What, where everything's sung? Everything's good musical.

Good musical. But her and her Remy would be right on up there. But they're very, uh, all each their own personality, um, very different from even physically looking. They're all different. They have some— obviously they're siblings, so there's qualities in them that holds true, but from hair color to eye color.

What's your favorite part about being a grandparent?

I, I just, I just love being around them. I love— I don't have any problems getting on the floor, knock on wood, um, and playing, figuring out what they want to play. Theo's a little harder because he's so active. He wants to be outside shooting basketball.

I mean, I like, I like being out there with him.

We could be shooting basketball for hours.

I know, hours. I'm the one that taught him to ride the bike without training wheels. We were down there, I said, you can do it, you can do it, and he did. That's always fun. Then he went— once he gets it, it's just like he's gone. Yeah, he was gone from that. It's an exciting— just an exciting feeling for him and for you for teaching them.

So, but it was— it's fun. Each one has, like I said, their own different personalities of what they— of what they like. And what they like to do. Um, and you look forward to their becoming more and more their own people. Like, I can guarantee you that Remy and I will be at the nail salon.

She has different nails on all the time.

Remy loves those press-on nails, and I think I will overload her on those press-on nails. We went— when we went to Target recently We found them and they were like different styles and all, and she couldn't decide which one she wanted. And I said to her, I go, we'll take them all. And she just looked at me with a face like, are you serious, Gma, are you serious? I can take them all? I said, yeah, take them all.

This is the reason why we're going to struggle during retirement age. And she took them.

And but her face was like, ooh. And but I know that's what she likes, so I know when she's older Going to the nail salon is going to be right on up there. We are going to be hitting that nail salon. And they both are into like the lotions and cosmetics, and I'm gonna have lots of fun with that too. Lots of fun.

Maybe one of them will like to fish with G-Paw. I don't know. Ben doesn't. He said he'll come with me because he'll be with me, but he doesn't really care to fish. So I don't We— maybe Theo will. Maybe Millie will. Maybe she'll be my fisher.

She'll be your fisher person.

Yeah.

Well, you— we did take them fishing when they were little.

Yeah, on my boat. The— just Hadley and Remy.

Remy.

Yeah.

But they like the boat.

Yeah, they like them. They like catching fish. I think they like seeing the fish and doing it. I think that was a fun experience.

Touching it is a different story, and, and getting the fish off the hook. Is the difference.

That's what I'm for.

That's what you're for. That's where G-Pa comes in and says, I'll take care of it, I'll clean up the mess, it's okay.

But they—

I think they enjoyed themselves. I, I think they did. Who knows, maybe when we go down there, we'll take—

What do you, what do you want to do with your grandkids?

I want to do as much as humanly possible. I want to be able to travel with them. I'd love to take them to different parts of the world and experience different areas of the world. I know for me, when I was 12, I had the opportunity to travel with two of my cousins.

Yeah, that's also on another episode, and it's about the chicken. Gotta check out the chicken.

No, but I'm just saying that I was given an opportunity to travel to South America, and I was gone for the whole, the whole summer.

We were gone for the whole summer, and it was one of the most want to be gone.

Well, maybe they don't want to be gone, but we— I want to be able to do that kind of thing.

You know, you take a week out or whatever, and I'm not going to take them someplace.

We took the girls with us to a hotel in Old Saybrook when Theo was first— was first around. Yeah, we took the two girls and we went to a hotel. It was just a weekend.

Yeah, and we went to Harvey's Beach where it was like—

and the girls had a great time. And they got to do whatever, and we got to hang out with them and do all kinds of things with them. And I think Mom and Dad appreciated the fact they didn't have to worry about the two because they were fine. And it wasn't a week, it was just a weekend.

Yeah.

And it gave them that little bit of a break where they could eat and not have to run.

It's, it's definitely enjoyable having grandkids. It's a different, whole different feeling than when you had your own kids. And, and then like you said, 4 days and, and then you can go, you know, or you can give them back to mom and dad, you know. Um, but, and we get to have the best of, of it all.

We do. That's— I think that in essence is the best part. Yeah, you can enjoy them, you can love on them, you can spoil them, and then you can say, oh, here's your mom.

Yeah, well, on, on that note We should probably edit this, but we won't. Until next time, bye! And make sure to follow us, like us, and leave a comment and suggestion for the next shows coming up.

Yes.

Okay, bye-bye!