When my daughter faced the perennial childhood question of what she wanted to be when she grew up, she insisted her goal was to be a grandmother. With four energetic grandparents, grandparent time was special-event time. She and her brother and cousins played games, visited museums and beaches, and explored canyons and deserts with my husband Dave's and my parents.

My folks and in-laws all loved to travel. Their postcards home were shared around the dinner table; our house was gradually knick-knacked with masks, baskets, and toys from around the world. In our kids' eyes, they did nothing but play. Who wouldn't want to grow up to be a grandparent?

My own aspirations toward grandmother-hood grew in that ever-lengthening period between the kids' college graduations and marriage. I was dutifully concentrating on my own career, trying to be only peripherally interested in their adult lives without bordering on prying.

Then my friends' kids started having babies. I'm not one who has to keep up with the latest fashion, hairstyle, or destination vacation, but the grandbaby thing hit me like desert thirst needing to be slacked. Since I didn't want to whine to my kids, I practiced grandmother skills by inviting my precocious and adorable next-door neighbors for visits.

For several years my "foster granddaughters" and I colored Easter eggs using natural dyes like earth-toned onionskins and a brilliant red collected from cochineal bugs on opuntia cacti. Sometimes they helped me pull weeds or we'd walk the woodlands between our yards, carefully avoiding poison oak. At Christmastime they came to enjoy my creche collection and count the Baby Jesuses.

Meanwhile I collected "stuff" for future arts and crafts projects. I have crayons, markers, stickers, and stencils left over from our kids' childhoods. I have bags of dryer lint that I'm hoping we can use to make paper with a fine screen. (Does this work?) I have fabric and glue and posterboard.

Dave scoffed at my early grandma preparations, but he created a winding pathway through the oak woodland that looks like a perfect "Grandad path.” He repurposed old bender board and bricks for the path and cleared the poison oak from the immediate area.

Together we've plotted future grandkid-friendly vacations, hoping to take each grandchild on a trip with us when they're 12. But as the years ticked by, we began to wonder if we'd have to move up the 12-year old trip to age 10 or earlier, so we wouldn't be too old for the types of adventures we wanted to have.

Early this year, our daughter and son-in-law finally revealed their secret package. We spent the year in joyful anticipation, allowing ourselves the guilty pleasure of mulling over grandparent names.

I liked a play on our pet names for each other: Bo Baren and Egan becoming Grandma Beaux and Grandpa Egan. But this idea faded when I found out Beaux is male beautiful whose female equivalent is Belle. Then I came upon the idea of Grandma Birdie, because undoubtedly I'll be listening to birds with my granddaughter and maybe teaching her birdcalls. I like that.

Dave thinks he'd rather have the name evolve, as did my parents "Moki" and "Baba.” But when I settled on Birdie he started thinking of Conrad: he played Conrad Birdie in Bye Bye Birdie in college. I don't know about that.

In November I began leaving my cell phone on at night, waiting for the call. Everything was settled except the birth date, and Baby Girl seemed content to stay in the womb. Emily had felt fine all the way through her pregnancy, but the days after the due date seemed endless. After missing the due date, she was hoping for a nice date like 11/11/12 or 11/12/12. This seemed pretty doable when she went into labor the evening of November 10th. A long labor called this into question, but Charlotte granted her mother's first wish by emerging at 11:59 PM on the 12th.

For several days we cooked cleaned, marketed, and gardened to help them bridge the gap between adrenaline and exhaustion. We kept our cell phones on at night in our nearby motel, in case of a midnight meltdown. Charlotte's perfection brought them through it all.

Now we're home again. Mom, Dad, and baby — as well as Birdie and Grandad, Moki and Baba – are doing fine. Emily, an estate-planning attorney and brand new mom, is now just a generation from Grandmother-hood.

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