WXYZ – A Household Staple

My home’s basement is not finished, and its walls are Pepto Bismol pink – I kid you not.  The cement floor is mostly covered by random pieces of carpet or old rugs I’ve collected, and nothing is the same color.  It’s simply meant to keep my feet warm when I’m down there.  There are shelves that store all of my random small kitchen appliances, books, shoes, and all sorts of other stuff.  It’s not a place anyone would ever go to just hang out, and color palate-wise, it looks a little bit like a box of 36 different colored crayons may have exploded down there, but its the very first place my grandchildren want to head to as soon as they come in the door to my home. They can’t wait to get down there.

Owen finds all of the old games and building blocks, Lyla goes through all of the drawers in my desk looking for treasures of old magic markers, scissors, construction paper, and trinkets.  Maci rides around on a small tricycle I picked up at a garage sale.  And Lyla realized the other day that if she stands on my small stool, she can reach to turn on every single light in the basement.  We’ve drawn all over those pink walls to mark their growth every few months, and all three of them are well acquainted with where the snacky snacks are hidden, and help themselves at Gummy’s house.

This past Sunday, Lyla found an old treasure – the small notebook where I kept track of the sweet things my sons said growing up.  I didn’t want to forget them.  Lyla and Owen love to hear about when their Daddy and Uncle Ian were young like them, so we read through them and laughed together, and I’ve been laughing frequently since then, and also marveling at the wisdom from toddlers!

Probably like you – we used to spell things in front of the kids so they didn’t know what we were saying.  My mother used to keep chocolate kisses up in the cupboard in a little dish, and would often reward the boys with a piece.  One day, Rory said to his Papa, “Hey Papa, let’s have some WXYZ,” to which my Dad responded, “Rory – what is WXYZ?”  And Rory then cupped his hand, and whispered in my Dad’s ear, “Papa!  WXYZ is chocolate!”

Yesterday I went to the grocery store for my mom with her list which included “mouse cheese,” and was what I knew to be swiss cheese, and was yet another story in that little notebook.  We used it to make “boy cheese sandwiches” because Ian once said there was no way he was going to eat a “girl cheese sandwich.”

And to this day in the MacDonald house – the boys eat a boy cheese sandwich, and the girls eat a girl cheese sandwich, always made with “mouse cheese,” and there is always a dish of WXYZ in a MacDonald cupboard, because everybody knows that WXYZ is a staple in any household.