Saturday

Though Saturdays are typically Snowdrop lite days, this one is a bit different as the young family needed extra help this weekend.

Besides, it's not as if there is a pull to do something outdoors. We are about twelve hours away from an Arctic blast and in the meantime, the temperatures hover at the freezing point and even the delicate snow shower doesn't improve the landscape greatly.

The birds are wonderful to watch. From the warm quiet of the farmhouse kitchen.






I do a quick sweep of the roof again so that we wont have a repeat of the frozen solid snow to contend with and again I feel so grateful for that hot shower that warms you so completely after you've been working outside in a t-shirt because you didn't want to bother with the clunky jacket.

We eat breakfast feeling buoyed by the flowers again. (Full disclosure: the potted colorful anemones are from Giverny, but they are not real.)






And then I hurry over to Snowdrop's home.

The little one is, unfortunately, convinced that someday, the real deal cats will open up their hearts to her. Here's Goldie, the most queenly one of all. Snowdrop knows that Goldie does not take well to an outpouring of even gentle affection from her... 






But the poor girl never stops trying. It rarely ends well and so the only thing I can do is distract Snowdrop from the queen herself.






It's easy enough.






In the late morning. I take Snowdrop to music class -- this is the third series of song and dance classes she has enrolled in (they're part of the national Music Together program) and I have to smile at how far she has come. If before she was a fairly passive participant, now she is stomping and clapping and shaking things like a real toddler. True, her rhythm is uniquely her own, but hey -- why be constrained by convention?! (No photos. Too much action, too many other children, too much dancing and clapping and swooshing.)


At home, she feels emboldened. If yesterday she was parading around with two, three toys clasped tightly in her hands, today, she carries a whole basket of treasures and scatters them behind her, like a little Gretel.






Snowdrop, who will be picking these up after you?
Is that a real question, grandma?






And the afternoon? Well, there is lunch. Her all time beloved food? Sections of those clementines that flood our supermarkets in the winter. (Can you tell which cheek she naps on?)

After eating, she plays.

I'm thinking she needs to be introduced to public transportation. She has too many positive feelings about cars.






And of course, she has so many positive feelings about penguins. Someone indulged her love this Christmas and gave her Mr. Penguin supreme (it didn't help that he was on sale at the grocery store where we all shop so I understand the temptation). I have to say, that image of Christopher Robin and Pooh Bear? Nothing, compared to Snowdrop trying to criss cross her home with Mr. Penguin in hand.






I leave you with a bunch of adorable (in my grandmotherly opinion!) Snowdrop expressions. The girl is a genius at working her face in ways that'll make me laugh.






I'll say -- are you a chipmunk, Snowdrop? And oftentimes, I'll get this:






Ask for a kissy face, and (sometimes) you'll get this:






Oh, the beautiful faces of childhood!






Toward evening, I wave good bye to the sweet girl and head to a chocolate store. Why? That's next week's story. For now, I'm driving on the country roads, thinking how sometimes even that, which has little going for it, can actually turn out to be quite beautiful.






At home, I cook comforting pasta. Not hand made tortelli, but still, a thick veggie pasta dish that truly lets you forget the weather outside.





Almost completely.