Sunday, May 03, 2015

Sunday

Well, I hardly slept last night. I was so convinced that the baby monitor wasn't set right that I kept myself awake thinking about it. When I dozed off, Isie boy woke me up demanding food. Often times I ignore those predawn requests, or I tell him to get lost, but today I worried that he would wake up Snowdrop and so I caved. After that, I may as well have watched the sun rise. There was to be no more sleep for me.

Snowdrop, on the other hand, had no trouble sleeping eleven hours straight.

My daughter tells me that when she wakes up, she is all smiles and gentle coos and stretches and this proves to be the case at the farmhouse as well. (I obviously failed at swaddling her tightly enough to last the night.)


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I follow the patterns that she has at home. That means a prebreakfast bath (she needs it!) and then a nice long feed. And then we have about an hour of play!


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But not much longer than that: we have a schedule: Snowdrop, Ed and I are to join my younger girl and her husband as well as my older girl and her friend (Snowdrop's dad has been out of town this weekend) for a celebratory birthday brunch downtown. You'll be wondering -- is it a Polish thing, this prolonged celebration of a birthday? I mean, I've been 62 for nearly two weeks now. But I have never known a daughter to pass my birthday without a meal together to commemorate it and so the Minnesota couple made this their time to wish me a happy birthday.

I dress up Snowdrop for the occasion.


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Well, she looks adorable from within, but still, a summer blueberry dress is so joyous on a day when it's supposed to be quite summer-like! (Here, she is being introduced to Sophie, the rubber giraffe which I read on Amazon has been a beloved teething toy in France for decades.)


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We eat heartily at brunch, and it is the sad reality that after the meal, the Twin Cities duo has to pack up and head home. The best thing to remember at a time like this is that their next visit will take place later this month. I can wait a few days! Sigh...


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Ed and I head home. We now have a long list of gardening tasks before us, not the least of which is planting the tomatoes into the ground.


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I promised Ed that my predictions of no more frost would hold (in previous years my predictions were so off that we were left throwing blankets and sleeping bags at night over the prematurely planted tomatoes)!


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We set to work.


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Unlike planting flowers, the tomato job is back breaking and tedious because the veggie field always has weeds that need to come out before the seedlings go in and of course, there are just so many tomatoes! We make good progress, but we're not even half done when we stop to rest.

The winds are gusting and there may be a few storms passing through later tonight. For now, it's a gorgeous day. And I'll remember it as such.


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11 comments:

  1. I like extended celebrations...so happy birthday Nina, surrounded by your lovely family. After no sleep, I would need a long nap but there you are full of energy planting away. And your garden is so gorgeous!

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    1. Thank you! I have to admit -- posting in the evening was very very hard!

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  2. Tomatoes, already. You're very confident - but you might have reason to be. We're not ready for tomatoes here, yet. Our normal last frost is May 15th but last year we actually had one somewhere around the 20th or 25th. Besides, we buy potted tomatoes and I don't think they even have them at our nursery yet. (We were lucky with getting the alyssum. It was actually early for even them, when we put them in.)

    Snowdrop looks so sweet in her little outfit. I especially love the little shoes.

    Your younger daughter has a beautiful, classic face. When I saw the picture of her above I found myself thinking I'd seen a very similar face to hers in some classic painting. Wish I knew which one.

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    1. Last year we too had frost after the 15th. That was unusual. And this year's warm spring is also unusual. Looking at the weather maps for the next days, I am sure we're not heading back toward cold weather again!

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  3. Wonderful to all be together! Good times.

    I wish I could have so many photos of our family days together, as you have. I've just always found that wielding the camera takes me out of the moment, and obviously that's not true for you.
    I also feel our young people don't appreciate the camera in the way either...and yours are just used to it, I'm sure! And women, more than men if I may generalize, do appreciate the photographic record.

    So I'm trying to hold fast to the images in my mind from our wonderful weekend. Cadence really and truly plays interactively now. ("I do this, now you do THIS...") Initiates play! A joy!

    And like little Snowdrop, she needs many small interludes of calm throughout the busy day, and that's in Grandma's wheelhouse :)

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    1. I've had a camera on hand, by my side since I was nine years old. But the digital age really carried photo journalism to new pleasurable highs. I've learned not to disrupt the flow of a conversation, or a dinner with my camera (I front load most picture taking so that if I take nothing more, it's ok) and my family/friends have adjusted to my picture taking at most gatherings. On balance, I think they think it's worth it.

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    2. ...and I'm sure you provide SO MUCH more than just a pair of loving arms for Cadence!

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  4. The Girl with the Pearl Earring.

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  5. You can imagine how wonderful it is for me,hundreds of miles away to have my daily Snowdrop and family pictures! And to see how Spring progresses at the farmette... you're ahead of us!
    S Pic of the Day: Swaddling Breakout... swaddling's current popularity intrigues me, reviving an old practice which seems to work wonderfully since she sleeps eleven hours straight! (Don't think my unswaddled kids ever did.)

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    1. Every young parent will envy the 11-hour stretch.

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    2. It's true. I always say that if every baby was as good about sleeping at night as Snowdrop, we'd have a population explosion here. The little girl dropped her predawn feeding very many weeks ago and like a rock star, she stays up until about 10 or 11 then sleeps a good 11 or 12 hours. Her parents really have been consistent in teaching her to self settle (via the French method and the British Baby Whisperer) and Snowdrop has responded splendidly. My kids, too, did not sleep that long until I think they were in high school!

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