After family visiting my house for three days over Thanksgiving, I understand why God designed us so that only young women can bear children.

But of course I was delighted to be able to spend some time at my house with my son, daughter-in-law, and my grandchildren, ages 5 and 20 months. Those little ones change all the time. I love them, and I love seeing how they are changing, growing, and becoming a real little person with their own personalities. Plus I want them to remember me, to know who I am. I believe we’re getting there on that front.

Still, I was weary when they left–a good tired, to be sure, but a tired I don’t remember from when my children were little and I was in my 30s. Now I am starting to understand why my seniors would say things to me then like “My! I don’t know where you get all that energy with two little children!”

It is more mentally than physically challenging to be around a precocious little girl who is five going on fifteen, I’m learning. Nothing gets by someone like her, and there are many questions because of that. She wasn’t even all the way into my house yet when she asked about the Christmas tumblers setting on a table in my breezeway. (I had them for gifts that weren’t for her.)

Then, on her way through my kitchen, she announced she was going to set up “her room,” which the other 362 days of the year is my office with a daybed in it. And that’s exactly what she proceeded to do, exactly the way she wanted it.

Probably because she had set up her own room, she went to bed with little fuss that night. It was 4:00 the next morning when I heard the door to my room open with a cheerful “Hi, Grandma!” I let her into my bed under the covers, where she snuggled up to me like bark on a tree. It was sweet. The problem was the granddaughter didn’t have in mind to go back to sleep. She wanted to visit.

And who can be angry at a sweet little girl saying, “I love you, Grandma. I love to visit you.”