I Am Officially In Love

I’m here to tell you that I am well and truly head over heels in love with my new granddaughter. She was born on September 5, 2025, just after 1 pm. As I write this, it has been less than 48 hours since her arrival, and I can’t stop staring at her. Perhaps “in love” is a bit of an understatement. Obsessed might be a more apt description.

This adorable little girl slept in my arms this morning for the longest time. “Little” is a relative term, by the way. She weighed 11 lbs, 5 ounces at birth, so there’s a lot of her to obsess over. I may have never given her up this morning, except that I finally had to come to grips with the fact that if I didn’t stop staring at her, I would never get to the presentation I needed to finish for the Houston Association of REALTORS® Strategic Leadership Conference. It was due yesterday.

She spent the last 30 minutes holding my finger. Rocky took a photo for me to share here. This is all you’re going to get. I’ll follow the same rules we had for our children. I won’t be sharing photos of her publicly or even mentioning her name online. Looking back, that is one of the best decisions we ever made for our children, and to a one, they’ve told us they appreciate that now. But there won’t be a lack of photos of this beautiful little girl. You can be assured of that.

I just handed her back to her Shosho. Shosho is Swahili for ‘grandmother,’ and this is what Rocky has chosen to be called by our grandchildren. Anyone who knows Rocky knows why. Pappaw (Papaw) is what I will be called. It’s a family tradition. And I spell it Pappaw, because people tend to pronounce Papaw (the most common regional spelling) like pawpaw, the fruit, and we don’t pronounce it like the fruit. I don’t really care if it’s not the standard spelling where I come from. My dad had a Pappaw, I had a Pappaw, my children have a Pappaw, and now I am a Pappaw.

And I am officially in love.