four days old

On this wet, but so soul-warming December day in Chicago, Juniper is four days old. I think about her as I wake up in my "room with a view."

She will always be the youngest for me, just as Snowdrop will always be the oldest grandchild and as the carriers of two ends of this very special banner, they carry the burden and the glory of where they stand. With Snowdrop, I began learning how to grandparent in a way that would meet her needs and, too, the needs of her parents (because each parent looks to you for different things, both at the emotional level and of course in terms of connection to their child). With Juniper, it's a whole nostalgia trip! Each previous grandkid has been where Juniper is now. And she, coming last, is the beneficiary of all their firsts, their personalities, their experiences. 

 

 

And since I do know that she will be my last little one, everything is special: my breakfast with her this morning, that important meal, with a four-day old...

And after: Did you know that if I put the camera on the table, I can stand with you by the white cubes and the tree and click us together? Like this?

(Or, put you down on the couch, by the tree, so you look like a Christmas gift to us all?)

I pick her up, we walk some more.

And I notice how with her, I don't want to rush to the next stage (as I admit to sometimes wanting with the other kids, not out of impatience but out of curiosity). I could walk her up and down, and up and down forever, with her skinny little newborn feet and her eyes, either shut tight or gazing out wondrously at the blobs and fuzzy images suddenly put before her.

When the older girl returns from a quick outing with her dad, I look at the whole family unit, big sister at the helm, leading the way forward for all of them (because what parent does not structure a day, a week, a life without first and foremost thinking about how their routines and behaviors will impact the child or children at home...).

More family members means more permutations: older girl with younger one and mom, dad and older girl, mother and babe...

And just before I go, one last big hug for the girl who was my partner in crime while we had the house to ourselves for the days her parents were at the hospital...

And now I'm back in the car, driving home, for once not worrying too much about the distance between us. I'll be back in Chicago on Monday.

For now, more thoughts, all of them loaded with smiles. Lighted candle, coffee with chocolate covered gingerbread, and half a cookie (Ed took the other half)  that I made with Primrose the day her sister came home.

Juniper comes home...

We waited. After an early wake up, several play sessions, leftover croissants for breakfast...

 

After singing Christmas songs, together and solo (not me!), and working through a Christmas activity book...

We learned what I know too well: releasing a person (let alone three people!) from the hospital takes time. When the young parents text me that it may be after lunch before they bring Juniper home, I decide that I need to distract Primrose from the wait. 

What better activity than to bake cookies! My daughter's house is so well organized that I have no problem finding needed ingredients. Primrose and I set to work.

I will have made more Christmas cutout cookies this year than ever before!

Thank you Wash Post for including a good recipe where you don't have to keep the dough refrigerated for endless hours before baking! 

And just as Primrose sits down to lunch, her sister comes home.

(Still in her baby cap...)

 

(cap off: lots of hair!)

Juniper is the seventh baby I have held close to my heart and I have to say, I have to marvel at how special each one is and how different from the others!

Oh, she sleeps, she cries (but not that much, at least that's today's verdict), she yawns, she snuggles in bliss into mommy's fold...

But she also appears to be mesmerized by her new environment (which I know she cant really see, but she hears it well!)

So Primrose has a sister. The young parents have two girls. I run a few errands for them and then I leave them for the night. I decided to overnight at a hotel just a short walk away. These guys need that first night alone as the new young family. I'll see them again tomorrow.

Juniper, you just knocked the socks off of all of us! Welcome. 

With so much love...

(Out of my hotel room window: Chicago) 

 

Juniper

To me, the tiny blue juniper cones are what make a holiday wreath or a swig of pine branches on a door so beautiful. They add that frosty, wintry blue color. They are the spice of the season! Here they are on the farmhouse front door:

 

 

Let me just add this from Wiki:

A juniper berry is the female seed cone produced by the various species of junipers. It is not a true berry but a cone with unusually fleshy and merged scales, which gives it a berry-like appearance. The cones from a handful of species, especially Juniperus communis, are used as a spice, particularly in European cuisine, and also give gin its distinctive flavour. Juniper berries are among the only spices derived from conifers, along with spruce buds. 

 

On December 15th, late into the evening, while winds howled and temperatures outside soared, Juniper was born. She is as tiny as a newborn, healthy as pie, and totally adorable. 

(From her first face-to-face, via phone, with her sister, Primrose)

The winds never let up once, but we were safe and everyone was feeling, well, rather celebratory!

But in the morning, my whole focus comes back to Primrose. I have one whole day with her (parents and sister are coming home tomorrow) and she has this one last moment of being an only child. It's huge to suddenly having a sib. Primrose was anticipating the changes for a while now and since she is a girl who is very in touch with her own feelings and with those of her family, I was not surprised to hear her voice apprehensions about how this will all play out. I have told her many times that eventually it will be grand and I think she believes this to be true, but still, I am determined to give her a last whiff of being the one who sets the rules of the game. 

(playing with beads from Aunt Goat, aka my older girl)

(breakfast with grandma)

(I tell her the headband she's chosen for her dance is from Poland...)

After last night's winds and storms, the air settled and winter came back to take its rightful place here, in the upper Midwest. The sun is out, but it's some thirty degrees cooler and still gusty, though not at last night's levels. Nevertheless, I coax Primrose into a walk while the sun is pretending to make it a warm day out there. I had placed an order at Floriole Bakery and Cafe and we set out to pick it up. With a stroller, since it is a bit of a walk (across the river and into a different neighborhood of this very neighborhoody city).

(a tad windblown, picking up our stuff at the bakery: like in Paris only different!)

(can the wind sweep the cap away??)

And the evening? Well, I'm trying to keep the house in order for the arrival of Juniper and parents tomorrow. Time for some of us to finally meet this already greatly beloved babe!

(Remember how I used to take timed released photos of Primrose and me by the white cube when she could hardly stand unsupported on her wee toddler feet? Some things never change...)

with love...

wait and play

In Chicago, on a bizarrely warm day. (High of 64F/18C in Chicago, and 67F/19.5C -- a December record in Madison.) Here, awaiting the birth of a new grandchild.

 

By the time Primrose wakes up this morning (and she wakes up early!), the parents have already checked into the hospital. The day, therefore, belongs to just Primrose and me.

 

Breakfast, just the two of us.

 

Since she has been out of school for a week (closure, due to Covid), I wondered if she would be tired of playing all day in her same old house.

She is not.

Primrose is a leader and I was not surprised that she has ideas as to what we should do.

Let's play messy house! -- was her first suggestion. Talking her out of this required brain work, though in fact, Primrose's idea of a "messy house" is pretty close to my idea of "house in order." My initial panic (what if my younger daughter returns home from the hospital to find everything in the wrong place??) was somewhat mollified.

Primrose allows her imagination to carry her forward. Everything is merely a stepping stone toward a vignette out of school or a home. We act out the various personalities encountered there: mom, dad, teacher, student. Shifting sands, shifting stories.

Too, we read. She has her favorites. Some, but not all, are about Christmas.

 

(while she naps...)

In the afternoon I virtually push her out of the house for a walk. I mean, we are setting records here in the Midwest! No way should we skip an outing.

Crazy warm! Where is this air coming from? Scooting in a light sweatshirt, through gusty winds and past Christmas lights: memorable!

This calls for a gingerbread cookie upon the return home. From Clasen's in Madison!

 

We eat a quiet dinner of stuff I sautee for the two of us. You feel the wait most of all in the evenings. Maybe tomorrow we'll wake up to some good news!

to Chicago

Did I mention how crazy our planning was for this trip of mine? All along I was to run like mad the moment I heard my daughter was going into labor. In good traffic, their home is about 2.5 hours away from the farmette, but in Chicago you cannot count on good traffic. We hoped it would all somehow come together okay. I was to stay with their little Primrose until they came home from the hospital with the new addition. The due date is in the second half of December, but it is going to be a planned delivery, so we expected my coming to Chicago would be no later than today and that she would go into the hospital tomorrow.

All hell broke loose when last week Primrose was exposed to Covid from a teacher in her school. You can imagine the what ifs that flew. We quickly reformulated the plan. If Primrose were to fall ill, I would bring my older daughter to Chicago (she volunteered) and hang back at the sidelines. I dont know what their hospital return would have looked like, but they are great planners and so I'm sure there were options on the table. 

So it was a question of testing and waiting. A week has passed, the girl did not develop Covid (would someone dare challenge the mask mandate to my face? Two of my younger grandkids had the highly transmissible variant of Covid in their masks-mandatory school room and both managed to avoid bringing it home and yes, I'm knocking on wood and thanking stars), so I've packed my bag and not too long after breakfast...

I head south.

 

(for the road!)

 

 

I am grateful for my new car. I have good driving weather, but still, it is cold, and the car lives in the great outdoors. I need it to have an "I'm tough!" attitude toward winter. So far so good.

Hello, young family, soon to be a family of four! Hello Primrose! What? You baked cookies with mom?

Hello, younger very big bellied daughter of mine...

Dinner with the young family...

 

Let me put away the camera for now. I'm sure it will get a work out in the days ahead. Tonight, let's just enjoy each others company and review the thousand and one details that always attend big disruptions in routines.

(Oh, here's a snapshot done by my girl! Their Christmas tree makes an appearance! As does Primrose, playing a game with me.)

 

 

 

And let's feel grateful for all that for once went right for everyone involved.

With love...

the evolution of a party

My Polish friends and I began Zoom-partying back in March of 2020, when I came to the inevitable conclusion that I could not travel to Poland as planned. So we met on Zoom instead of in person, and we have been Zoom partying every three or four weeks ever since. (Well, it feels more like a party to them as we gather during their evenings... and my noon hour.)

At first, Poland was spared a Covid surge and so the commiserating flowed mostly east to west. Toward me. Especially in the Fall of 2020, when Wisconsin rose to the honor of being a state with proportionately the greatest numbers of infection in this country, which itself lead the world in infections at the time. 

But, we've since learned that the virus bounces around the world like a silly putty let loose in a school building. You can't predict where it will bounce to next and how long it will stay there. And so each month we passed the sympathy along to those who felt the burden of the pandemic most. At least two of my friends did get sick, several of their children and grandchildren also fell ill, though thankfully all have recovered -- some more quickly than others. 

Today we were to have a Zoom holiday-themed gathering, but though I wore antlers and some sipped potent beverages, we spent more than two hours once again immersed in the topic of Covid. We have all been triple vaxxed, yet the fact remains that we are all in that demographic that has proven to be so defenseless again and again as variants emerge, and people refuse to get shots for the good of humanity, let alone themselves. So we talk about what our holidays will look like this year and we are all a cheerful bunch, so jokes fly and good humor prevails, but I cannot tell you how eager we are to wake up someday (maybe in 2022?) without the fear of Covid hanging over us. A Zoom party where we don't compare Covid notes -- impossible to imagine right now, but something to look forward to in some future period of time. 

(3 missing today, happily *not* because of Covid)

In other news -- we Wisconsinites are creeping up to temperatures that belong more to early fall, even though we are just one week away from winter solstice. Today the sun was out and the patches of snow suddenly became a rarity.

Breakfast.

After my Zoom get together, I went with Ed to run two very important errands -- he needed a new battery for his car from Farm & Fleet, and I really needed a box of Candinas. Their herbal infusion truffle and ginger truffle are still hard to beat. We needed a box to carry us into the new year!

Both the chocolate shoppe and F&F are close to a segment of the Ice Age trail that cuts through the Prairie Moraine County Park. It's a lovely little segment (it took us about an hour to cover most of it), especially if you don't mind the occasional dog joining you on a part of the path (it overlaps with a terrific dog park -- one I would certainly take my pooch to if I had a pooch: lots of good dog sniffing ground and forest trees to mark). The sun was already making its way to the horizon, but still, it felt warm enough for Ed to leave his jacket in the car.

And then we came home and I made a frittata -- large enough for us to have tonight, with plenty of leftovers for him to enjoy in my absence. Unless something unexpected happens, I will be in Chicago starting tomorrow. 

In the meantime, some lights and gingerbread and love, sent your way.