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.)






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!






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.






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.)






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...






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.






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)!






We set to work.





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.