Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #598122 in Books
• Published on: 2007-10-23
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 128 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Viorst has her house exactly the way she likes it, with all the fine things that she denied herself when raising three rambunctious sons. But that order is delightfully disturbed when her youngest son, Alexander (the inspiration for her famous picture book), his wife and their three young children return to the nest while their house is being renovated. Her account of the three-month stay, replete with disruptions, awkwardness and wonderfully affectionate moments, is a sweet and mildly humorous testament to a family whose loving bonds are powerfully evident. Viorst intersperses familial anecdotes with musings on modern parenting and its problems, including various approaches to accommodating three generations in one house. Merlington's tone matches Viorst's text perfectly, conveying Viorst's defiant defensiveness about and gentle amusement at her own foibles, particularly her penchants for order and her almost complete inability to repress the sharing of helpful advice. This charming minimemoir doesn't break any new ground, but it doesn't have to.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

About the Author
Judith Viorst has written many books for children, including the classics Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day and its sequels, and If I Were in Charge of the World and Other Worries. She is also the author of Just in Case, illustrated by Diana Cain Bluthenthal. She lives with her husband, Milton, in Washington D.C.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

From CHAPTER ONE: They're Here!

We are normally a household of two -- one husband, one wife -- with our children and grandchildren spread near and far in homes of their own. This summer, however, we're sharing our house for ninety (that's ninety) days minimum with our youngest son, Alexander, and his wife, Marla, along with their Olivia (five), Isaac (almost two), and Toby (four months). I am trying to think of this time as a magnificent, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity not only for strengthening family ties and intimately getting to know the grandchildren but for furthering my personal growth while also achieving marital enrichment. I've already resolved to let go of my perhaps excessive commitment to neatness and schedules, and to live in the moment instead of planning ahead, though I'm well aware thatmany accommodations and even some major transformations may be required. Am I up to the task? Will this really be good for my family, my marriage, and me? And how do I stop my grandchildren from eating on any piece of furniture covered in velvet? I'm about to find out.

I have to admit that Alexander and I had a testy moment before they moved in, which they're doing -- I ought to point out -- because they're renovating their house, which is, like ours, in Washington, D.C. I had a small suggestion about their renovation plans but I wanted to make my suggestion tactfully. "I know that you and Marla are incredibly competent people," I began, "and quite clear on what you want to do with your house. So feel free to stop me right now if you think I'm being at all intrusive, because I don't want to be the slightest bit intrusive, but I've got a little suggestion that I honestly believe --" Alexander felt free to stop me right now.

"Mom," he said, "those preliminaries of yours? They're SO much more annoying than your advice. So please, just skip them and get to the advice."

I'll have some subsequent testy moments to mention. But right now I'd like to describe our living arrangements.

Ours is a big Victorian house, with a wraparound porch and a balcony overhead. There's a living room, dining room, library, kitchen, and bath on the first floor, and a bedroom, two bathrooms, and two offices (both Milton and I write at home) on the second floor. Our third floor -- composed of three bedrooms, one bathroom, one tiny treadmill room, and a central sitting room -- is where our three sons grew up and where they sleep when they and their wives and kids come to visit and where the Alexander Five are now living. Over the years we've equipped that third floor with a vast array of child-oriented amenities for the benefit of various visiting grandchildren: toys and games and puzzles, drawing paper and crayons, and large and small stuffed animals and balls, as well as diapers and baby wipes, three different types of car seats, a crib, a stroller, a bouncy seat, a booster seat, a rocking duck, and a potty for those with an interest in toilet training.

What aren't there, what have never been there, and what never will be there are play dough, painting supplies, and containers of glue, on the grounds that no matter how washable such materials claim to be, I don't intend to check out those claims in my house. There are limits to any woman's potential for further personal growth and these, I'm prepared to concede, are some of mine.

Now I've said that the Alexander Five are living on the third floor, but of course they're living in our entire house, though I did have a few secret fantasies about putting up a gate -- like a baby gate, except to restrain the whole family. But my mother long ago taught me that when you're going to give you ought to give with both hands and I'm hoping to try, within reason, to follow that rule. So here are the grandchildren, dribbling their drinks in our hallway, playing with mice (the computer kind) in our offices, trying on my jewelry in our bedroom, pushing the TV buttons in our library, and tossing the pillows off our couch in our living room, while their mother and father are trying simultaneously to subdue them and deal with the crises coming over their BlackBerries.

Not that I mean to sound critical of Alexander and Marla's parenting style, which, on a scale from one to ten, is fifteen. They are perfect -- well, they are practically perfect -- parents, my only reservation being that maybe they do not worry as much as they should. But although our different anxiety levels have made for many an animated discussion, this is, in the larger scheme of things, a quibble. For they meltingly love their kids, delight in their kids, understand their kids, but set limits, teach them manners, discourage whining, lavishing on them kisses and hugs and extravaganzas of praise along with, when needed, a "no" and a "stop that right now." There are certainly times when, sleep-deprived, stressed, and faced with three children screaming simultaneously, Alexander or Marla will say, "If they weren't so adorable, I'd kill them." But remembering, as I well do, my former Desperate Mother days, my "do that one more time and I'll break your kneecaps," I remain full of admiration for the way the two of them balance demanding careers and devoted parenting.

Copyright © 2007 by Judith Viorst

Customer Reviews

Tender and clear-eyed reporting
Judith Viorst, prolific author of scads of books - children's, poetry, popular psychology, and others - has returned, this time with an intimate, tender, and truly funny story of the three months that her youngest son Alexander, his wife Marla, and their three small - five, two, and four months - children moved into the big Washington DC Victorian family home, the empty nest of a contented Viorst and her sage husband Milton, while renovations were being done to their own house.

Viorst describes the moving-in, the getting-adjusted, and the myriad changes that five additional people bring to a two-person household. She loves them but it isn't always easy. She holds her tongue. She resists giving helpful advice. She stores the breakables and baby-proofs for real. There are sippy cups, diapering supplies, toys, and brightly-colored clutter where before there had been clean surfaces and carefully-chosen adult things.

Viorst enacts rules, forbidding glue, play-dough and the eating of chocolate on the velvet upholstery. On the other hand, she plays with the kids. She sits on the floor and shows her grandchildren how to build houses of cards. She lovingly admires and respects her daughter-in-law (and of course her son) and baby-sits with gusto.

There are moments of utter poignancy, for example when granddaughter Olivia queries her grandfather as to who he thinks is the prettiest, she or her grandmother. The answer is pure diplomacy, ("Grandma, because she's my wife") though it's painful at the time.

True to herself, she includes sensible and smart observations on marriage and family life along with commentary on today's "hyperparenting" compared to the way she and her husband raised their sons in the 1960's. (Playpens were OK, and, later, they could take any lessons they wanted when they were old enough to ride the bus to and from that lesson).

This is a delightful little book, probably ideal for fans of Viorst and for fans of grandchildren.

- Eileen Galen

How true !
As a new mother-in-law w/a first grandchild, I found this book
so useful b/c it helped me to laugh at myself and put
the conflicts w/my son and his new family in perspective.
A wonderful gift for any new set of grandparents, even if
they don't live in the same house for three months!

Self-congratulatory and annoying
I read this book right after my husband, our two young kids and I moved back home after living for 2 months with my mother (in a VERY small house) during some home reconstruction. I expected to find some hilarious anecdotes similar to some of the humorous events (retrospectively) that transpired during our stay with my mother. There were a few funny moments, but on the whole, I found her excessive praise of how PERFECT her kids and grandchildren are to be not only annoying but also unbelievable.

Viorst spends a good deal of time talking about the plights of parenting today, and the tendency for kids to be over-parented, over-scheduled, and/or over-indulged. She takes great pains, however, to emphasize that HER sons and their wives do not make those parenting mistakes. Well then, why bring them up? Why not just write a book about the problem of parenting today? She admits that she let her son and daughter-in-law read/approve the manuscript before it was published, and you can sense that in the writing. It simply lacks the hard-core honesty that would make a book like this a success.

I guess it's just not all that interesting to read a book about a family that is ostensibly so perfect. I expected to read more about the fault lines in the relationships and the experience that the love of family overcomes. Maybe I should write that book...