April Showers Bring Grandbabies!

Grant County Journal
May 1, 2011
April Showers bring Grandbabies!
Written by Janet Warren

Drum roll please. Last week I told you I had an announcement, and I will hurry and tell you the exciting news now so there will be no more wild imaginings of what it might be. (I received a postcard from a reader wondering if I am pregnant…I think Loretta would have to scrape Mike off the floor if that was the announcement). Of course, now anything I announce will be anticlimactic.

The exciting news is that we have another grandson! Ethan Michael Warren was born to Jeff and Abby Warren on April 21 weighing 6 pounds 11 ounces, 19 inches long. Mike took off for Portland on the 22nd to officially welcome Ethan into the family. Abby did a great job, and last I heard Jeff was singing praises to the person who discovered that white noise quiets a crying baby.

There’s a little more to the story that I will fill you in on. When you ask Mike how many children he has, he will tell you seven with no additional explanation. When he married me, my children became his children. I, on the other hand, always feel the need to explain things, and I’ll tell you why. If you lined our children up in order, it would be like this: Jenni 32, Jodie 30, Mindi 28, Jonathan 28, Jeffrey 25, James 24, and Jeffrey 14. Who would name two of their children Jeffrey? You see what I mean…some explanation is required. Plus, when I say Jeff had a baby, I need you to know it is Mike’s Jeff, because my Jeff is only 14! Such is the blended family. And while we are on the subject, how am I supposed to explain Jodie’s stepchildren? I treat them like my grandchildren, but Meranda is 18 and Robert is 17 and I’m a little too vain to let you think I am old enough to have biological grandchildren that age. It was enough of a shock when I became a grandma at 41 with the birth of Tony, now age 12. I was thinking I might not get any more grandchildren, but after a 9-year wait, we have four more—Twins Seth and Noah, who turned 3 on April 30; Ivy, born April 5; and Ethan born April 21.

So after that big explanation, welcome to Ethan Michael! But there is more…as Paul Harvey would say, here’s the rest of the story.

For a long time now, April 21 has been a sad day in the Warren family. Mike’s brother, Chuck, took his own life on April 21, 1994. Five years, ago, on April 21, Mike’s first wife, Penni (Jeff’s mother) died unexpectedly at age 48 from a fatal reaction to a medication. Personally, I think Ethan being born on April 21 is perfect. No longer will April 21 be a day of sadness, thinking about people gone too soon. Penni loved babies. She would have been so excited about her first grandchild. In fact, I like to think of Penni as Ethan’s guardian angel. Surely she spent time with him before he was born. Perhaps she gave him some advice. I’ll bet she told him all about his daddy--that he loves the outdoors and he is such a hard worker. I imagine she told him about his mommy and how much care she took to bring a healthy baby into the world and how she thinks of Ethan as the greatest gift she has ever had. And I am very sure Penni told Ethan that he was going down to the Warrens, a family who takes care of each other, who loyally stands by each other, and that he would learn to love family the way they do. But most of all, I think Grandma Penni told Ethan to give his grandpa a big hug for her, and that he was going to be so lucky to have a grandpa who would always think he hung the moon.
By the time you read this column, I will have boarded a plane and flown from Phoenix to Reno to visit my parents, and then I’ll be back in Ephrata before my next column is due. I’ve missed y’all. Oh wait a second…I was in Arizona, not Texas. See you soon.