The next time Carter see’s his grandfather (my father-in-law) he will be 17 months old. I can’t say for sure what he will have mastered by then, but I know he will be a very different little boy by then.
My in-laws spend the better part of the year in the Philipines. Daniela’s step-mother is Filipino and her father has decided he likes the lifestyle and the weather too much to want to be in Canada for too long each year. This is bittersweet. I can’t say I desperately want to spend time with them as we are very different people (this is being generous)but they are now my son’s only local grandparents. My parents who live in Connecticut would do just about anything to live closer to Carter and to watch him grow. Anything except desert my brother and my grandmother. I understand this completely and I know that I’m the one that moved away but I just feel so sad for Carter. I remember missing my grandparents desperately when they were in Florida each winter. I was heartbroken when they missed my birthdays. Carter may never have any grandparents with him for a birthday.
We went to see my father-in-law today to say good by before he leaves for just over 10 months. Carter’s Lola will be here for a couple more months to get some medical procedures taken care of so Carter doesn’t seem to recognize him yet but always enjoys the bird noises he makes and today he was in a particularly chill mood. He showed off his newly developed “creeping” and he played with everything he could get his hands on while babbling on.
His Nono wanted to show him off to the neighbours so he loaded him into our Onya carrier and paraded him around. Despite all the things I dislike about my father-in-law, there is nothing I could be more grateful for than the fact that despite the fact that he is an old-school Italian a lot of the time, no part of him doesn’t accept Carter as his own grandson. He adopted both Daniela and her Brother as babies and sometimes I’m amazed by the lack of even acknowledgment that his children and his grandson are not biologically related to him. It seems to make everything else worth it for me.
So, today was Carter’s first long-term goodbye despite the fact that it went unnoticed by him.
Started in the Belly 