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    Alexander and the Wonderful, Marvelous, Excellent, Terrific Ninety Days: An Almost Completely Honest Account of What Happened to Our Family When Our Youngest Son, His Wife, Their Baby, Their Toddler, and Their Five-Year-Old Came to Live with Us for Three Months
    Alexander and the Wonderful, Marvelous, Excellent, Terrific Ninety Days: An Almost Completely Honest Account of What Happened to Our Family When Our Youngest Son, His Wife, Their Baby, Their Toddler, and Their Five-Year-Old Came to Live with Us for Three Months
    Alexander and the Wonderful, Marvelous, Excellent, Terrific Ninety Days: An Almost Completely Honest Account of What Happened to Our Family When Our Youngest Son, His Wife, Their Baby, Their Toddler, and Their Five-Year-Old Came to Live with Us for Three Months
    Ebook116 pages1 hour

    Alexander and the Wonderful, Marvelous, Excellent, Terrific Ninety Days: An Almost Completely Honest Account of What Happened to Our Family When Our Youngest Son, His Wife, Their Baby, Their Toddler, and Their Five-Year-Old Came to Live with Us for Three Months

    By Judith Viorst

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    About this ebook

    Judith Viorst is known and loved by readers of all ages, for children’s books such as Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day; nonfiction titles, including the bestseller Necessary Losses; and her collections of humorous poetry, which make perfect gifts for birthdays, Mother’s Day, graduation, Christmas, Chanukah, or at any time of year.

    Whatever became of Alexander after that famously bad day? And did you know that Judith Viorst is his mother? And what happens to her passion for household neatness and orderliness, her deep devotion to schedules, her compulsive yearning to offer helpful advice when Alexander— now grown up, married, and the father of three—moves his family into his parents’ house? What happens is controlled, and sometimes not so controlled, chaos, as lives and routines are turned upside down and the house is overrun with scattered toys, pacifiers, baby bottles, sippy cups, pink-sequined flip-flops, jigsaw puzzles, and fishy crackers. With her characteristic sparkle and wit, Viorst relates her efforts to (graciously) share space, to become (if only a little bit) more flexible, to (sort of) keep her opinions to herself, and even to eventually figure out how to unlock the safety locks of the baby's (expletives deleted) bouncy seat. She describes how she and her husband, while sometimes longing for the former peace and tranquility of unravished rooms and quiet dinners for two unaccompanied by cries of “Oh, yuck!” survived and relished the extended visit of the Alexander Five. She also opens our eyes to the joys of multigenerational family living and to the unexpected opportunities to grow that life presents—even under the most unlikely circumstances. Several generations of readers surely will relate to this funny and loving book, enhanced throughout by Laura Gibson’s delightful two-color drawings.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSimon & Schuster
    Release dateOct 23, 2007
    ISBN9781416571377
    Author

    Judith Viorst

    Judith Viorst is the author of the beloved Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day, which has sold some four million copies; the Lulu books, including Lulu and the Brontosaurus; the New York Times bestseller Necessary Losses; four musicals; and poetry for children and young adults. Her most recent books of poetry include What Are You Glad About? What Are You Mad About? and Nearing Ninety.

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    Reviews for Alexander and the Wonderful, Marvelous, Excellent, Terrific Ninety Days

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    • 5/5
      I expected it to be light and funny, with a sense of truth. It was. Also kind. As a parent with grown children I appreciate the kindness.
    • 3/5
      I did find this short book to have its moments of intense humour- especially the stories that revolved around mealtimes with the grandchildren. Viorst has not lost her comedic touch, and it is interesting to see how the little boy with the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day handles adulthood!
    • 1/5
      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...
    • 3/5
      This was more an extended article than a book, and it was slight re-hashing generational parenting styles, but it was still fun. And I think those Viorst grandkids have a great set of grandparents.

    Book preview

    Alexander and the Wonderful, Marvelous, Excellent, Terrific Ninety Days - Judith Viorst

    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 that many 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.

    This balancing act, in my humble view, seems harder than it needs to be, for Olivia goes to camp and the others to day care, which means that when they’re afflicted with ear infections, rashes, strep, or stomach flu they have to stay home—and there’s no one at home to take care of them. Instead, Alexander or Marla leaves work, or they contact an emergency nanny service, or they turn to their backup nannies, Milton and me.

    By the way, in case you were wondering, my renovation suggestion to Alexander was adding a room for a nanny or an au pair. I have many things to say on the subject of why our children don’t listen to us when we’re offering some brilliant piece of advice, but instead of getting into all that I’m going to introduce you to our family:

    Milton and I are the patriarch and matriarch of the Viorsts, having succeeded in staying married for forty-six years, during which time we’ve acquired three sons (Anthony, Nicholas, and Alexander); three daughters-in-law (Hyla, Marya, and Marla); and a total of seven grandchildren (Miranda and Brandeis, Nathaniel and Benjamin, and Alexander’s Olivia, Isaac, and Toby). In addition, our family includes our Taiwanese almost-daughter, Jeannette, and her husband, Steve, the son of my oldest friend, and if all goes well the baby—that would make grandchild number eight—they’re eagerly endeavoring to adopt.

    We’re a fond-of-each-other family and we all get together in Washington three times a year—Thanksgiving, Passover, and a few days in the summer—with all of the out-of-towners, from New York and Denver, squeezing into our house at the same time. This summer, however, the presence of the Alexander Five reduces our sleeping space dramatically, which means that our other kids and their families, instead of coming to Washington simultaneously, are going to have to each make a separate visit. This change in the family tradition has been generating much e-mail on the subject of which of the kids would be coming here when, with the Denver branch—Tony and his crew—deciding on the wide-open spaces of a national park instead of the crowded quarters of D.C. But I have assured everyone that, unless Alexander’s

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