Grandma, grandbaby and street fairs

Our small community has this wonderful street fair every Friday in the summer.  It is a great time to see people, hear wonderful music, and just hang out.  Since we live close to the street fair, we have margies on the patio with friends then walk downtown to enjoy the scene.  Our children joined us this time with our darling little grand daughter.  

Now many of our friends have not seen our grand daughter for a long time and as you know she is now 2 and full of energy.  I was so excited to 'show her off' to all the people that I know.    First of all, there are only a couple of thousand people at this street fair!  Second,  there is a children's section with air castles, air slides, cotton candy etc.   How a little one sees all of this sitting in a stroller is beyond me, they must have 'toys this way' radared in their system.  For the minute we arrived, Grandma and Grandpa (Pops) were ditched for the children's play area.  So much for my grand plan of showing her off.

This brings me to my memories as a new mom with my children in tow, visiting my mother.   She would have scheduled us to have 'coffee' with all her friends, for she wanted to 'show off '  her grand children.   Oh how I would roll my eyes.  You can imagine the feelings of my children as they sat on these lovely couches, eating cookies while grandma and her friends chatted. I,  on the other hand, was trying to keep the crumbs from being a permanent design on the couches.   The children could only manage a bit, so it was up to me to entertain them, while not destroying the many breakables that were in these lovely homes.  Now trips to the local zoo with my mother and her grand children were just splendid and so were the trips to the many parks.
Since we lived far away, I now understand the feeling of showing off ones grandchildren, as they are the apples of our eye. We tell our friends about the stories we hear, and  listen to their stories of their grandones so of course when you can show the children off, you go for the chance.   Hopefully, I will not put my daughter through the adventure of keeping knick knacks all in one piece at my friend's homes.  Maybe we will have more friends to our home when they come to visit-  already baby proof.  :)