Since this week’s WellCommons has a “mature living” theme, I thought I would focus this week’s column on two of the more mature people I know: my parents.

To be honest, I can’t remember the last time they were this thrilled with me. And I know it has everything with do with my beautiful, 9-month-old daughter.

My mom and dad officially became grandparents with the birth of Lily last October. They were never the types to bug me about having kids, but when I told them one was on the way they got just as emotional as I did.

Even though they live more than 500 miles away, they came to Lawrence to help me set up the baby furniture and were out here shortly after she entered the world.

Their patience for my relative immaturity now seems endless. They no longer complain about making an nine-hour drive to see me. They no longer yell at me when I ask for money. All thanks to my baby.

“It’s fun to buy her stuff, watch her grow up and not have to get up with her at night and when she’s sick,” said my mother, Vicki, a 62-year-old nurse who lives near Chicago, delighted that the karma from all the sleepless nights I caused her is finally catching up to me. “It’s fun to see how she looks like you sometimes. I see a lot of you in her: her expressions and stuff.”

My mother said she wishes Lily lived closer, but at least we’re in the age of the smartphone. And, boy, does my mom take advantage of that FaceTime! Also, whenever I come home to find Amazon boxes on my front stoop, I know it’s grandma showering grandbaby with love from afar. “It’s fun to spoil your grandchildren!” she said. (Let’s slow down on the plural form there, ma.)

My father, James, said it took a while for it to register that he actually was a grandfather. Now he can’t imagine not being one.

“Before there was just you and your sister, Emma, and now there’s Lily, too!” said my dad, 66, a retired truck driver and junior college professor. “Someday, Lily will have children” — we should slow down here, as well — “and her children will have children, and the cycle will go on. In the beginning, I didn’t see that, I didn’t feel that. Now I’m starting to get a bigger picture of what life is all about.”

One thing I’ve learned from this experience is that making your mom and dad grandparents will blind them (temporarily, at least) to your own faults.

“I kind of forgot I had children,” my mom said. “I only think about Lily.”