Sunday

Abundant sunshine, warm temps. No trace of snow in Chicago. Weird February! But, it makes for a very very peasant walk from the hotel back to my daughter's home. Indeed, I take a detour. 

A stop at a bakery would be a cool surprise! 

What?? Long lines? Oh cities! Open up a good bakery and lines form. I shrug off the idea of baked treats and walk briskly to spend my last hours with the young family.

By the time I get there, the kids are in the thick of their Sunday morning routines. 

Primrose gets ready for her morning swim lesson...

Juniper is about to take her morning nap.

Well that's okay. I'll have a few minutes to chat with my daughter over a morning cup of coffee.

We review this, we make plans to do that, and before you know it, Juniper is up again!

Hey, shaggy girl! Oh, now I can see you!

I am not surprised that she goes straight for her Van Gogh book. She has one on Monet that has the same concept: push a point on a page and you get an excerpt of classical music. I was so excited to see an edition of this for Van Gogh, in Rome at the exhibition, that I neglected to take note that the text of the book is actually in Italian. No matter! My daughter has a great Italian accent. It served us well during our travels to that country together way back when. 

(Look at those perfect young knees: a total 90 degree squat!)

Once Primrose returns, we all head out to Middle Brow -- a neighborhood brew pub that serves up fantastic brunch foods.

The kids may love their creative pizzas, but I am a sucker for a good shakshouka.

And there it ends. 

Time to say goodbye. I'll see them all again in March, but now I need to head back and they need to get on with their routines. And on the drive back I play my music and put on my sunglasses and I think (what I admit, likely most parents think) -- how awesome are my adult daughters! Each different, each exquisite, taking the good from our family life and improving on it all tenfold. With kids of their own -- ones who love so intensely and care so deeply.

Thank you, Chicago bunch. For everything.

And a few hours later I am pulling up into the farmette driveway which, despite the warmth these past days, is still quite iced over. No matter. It'll melt.

I quickly throw down my bag and start in on dinner. The older young family is coming tonight for a Sunday family meal. Our routine has been choppy this past month -- bugs, travel, they all cut into our weekly suppers at the farmhouse. And I have more disruptions coming up, so it's good to keep this dinner in place.

(Sandpiper moving a chair, because minutes before that, Sparrow had moved a chair.)

(As usual, I and her mom coax Snowdrop to give her very long hair a solid brushing. We ask the girl ten times if she wouldn't like to trim off a couple of inches. No, she would not!)

(messin' with Ed doesn't end just because it's Sunday!)

And the weekend comes to a close. And I feel all warm inside, so proud and so totally grateful to have these young families in my everyday.

With so much love...

Saturday

After several false starts last weekend, I finally made it to Chicago today! 

Stand back, cheepers, cats, hurry down for breakfast, Ed, I need to get on the road!

Here we are nearing the middle of February and I can just now celebrate my daughter's January birthday! Not to mention the grand girls! I haven't seem them at all in 2023. Our last encounter? On New Year's Eve day, in Door County. That seems like a mountain of years ago!

Oh how they grow!

I didn't make it here on time for Primrose's ballet class (where are those high speed trains when you need them??), but I did arrive in time for lunch. Afterwards? We do a passport picture session! Here are two photos that are obvious rejects, but ones I love!

An afternoon of play, of books, of music...

Ending with a neighborhood walk. 

(In her Wisconsin Piggly Wiggly cap!)

(Some of the buildings in the Wicker Park neighborhood of Chicago are really intriguing...)

(... and the murals -- beautiful!)

And in the evening, the young couple go out for a date, and I stay with the kids. The three of us eat supper... which obviously includes marinara sauce!

... and an amused older sister!

And then, soon after the parents return, I actually have to retreat to their neighborhood hotel. The corner of their home where I usually camp out is having some structural issues at the moment and it's easier for me to just sleep down the street rather than disrupt their household even more. Tomorrow I'll be back with the whole lot of them for a morning together. Not a long visit, to be sure, but a rich one nonetheless!

Friday

Yesterday felt weird, schedule wise. No routine to follow, no child to pick up, no afternoon walk in the county park. So what happens the day after a weird day? I'm happy to say that we return to a normality of sorts. True, yesterday's pileup of slushy snow has now turned into a thick cover of ice, but it will melt soon, so we don't worry about it. Too much. I had urged (okay, nagged) Ed to clear a path for essential movement to and from the barn, but that was a huge mistake. Icy snow would have been easier to navigate than what remains -- a ribbon of rippled ice.

If we are to break bones this winter, it is likely to be today.

The sun is brilliant, the chickens mistakenly think it's spring, life is good.

Breakfast -- still with beautiful flowers. I mean, really beautiful flowers! Makes you want to build a greenhouse and grow your own winter blossoms. (That's been on my list of suggestions for a while. But it's a huge project, so the likelihood of it moving forward is, well, near zero.)

Despite the pretty sunshine and not too cold temperatures, we know a walk in the park is not an option for us. Too much ice. We will have to give that a pause until it all melts. And skiing? Honestly, I think we are done for the year.

Still, there's stuff to do! City stuff. Since I moved to the farmette, I turned my back on much of Madison. I have become one of those retired faculty persons who never ventures to campus, and who rarely hangs out in the blocks surrounding the university. As so often in my life, I flipped from one environment to the next and I haven't looked back.

But today I reclaim some parking passes (retired faculty can park on campus several times each month), I peek at the lake by the university...

... I glance at the street that links the campus with the Capitol...

And I let my memories take hold as I drove along streets that were once my everyday stomping ground. 

Even in the short while that I've been (mostly) away -- oh, about a dozen years -- things have changed. Robots now scoot along the sidewalk making food deliveries. New building go up, new facilities are developed to aid in the learning process, new housing units appear in fancy high rise buildings -- so different than the rentals you'll get in neglected old houses with tattered couches on the porch that announce to the world "students live here!"

I drive a little aimlessly, remembering my more rushed existence, liking my slower pace. Somehow I wind up by a bakery -- Bloom, on Monroe Street. I cannot resist the breads, the cookies...

All this is quite lovely really. I tell myself I should feel the urban pulse more often. I live right by a very nice city. I should remember that.

[And as if to add an exclamation point to that remark, I read in the NYTimes today that Madison is in the top five in the country in terms of "best places to live for minimalists!" Wonder what that means? Read about it here.]

Just after noon, Ed and I go out for a walk -- along a built up road, this one hugging the shores of Lake Waubesa. Not quite urban, but still, not our usual forest walk!

And then I pick up Snowdrop.

I am dismayed that at the farmhouse, she wants to read a DogMan book (one that has been read here way too much, if you ask me). 

She thinks I don't like it for its references to pooping, peeing and all those other supposedly irreverent functions. Not true. I don't like it because it's repetitive and dumb. Still, I get her reluctance to pick up the Penderwicks books again (the children in it lost their mother to cancer). She has a firm line drawn between novels she willingly reads and those she resists: if someone dies in it, she'll avoid it. Indeed, today in the car, we were talking about my book again. Our neighbor had just borrowed it from the library and mentioned it in his visit today (he came to tell us that one of our trees was about to fall on top of his house.... fair point! It's kind of leaning in that direction). I mumbled something to her about someday reading it and she asked -- does anyone die in it? A minute later, she takes it in another direction:  do you love (insert her nickname for Ed here) more than anyone? 

I reply -- I love him tons, but I also love other people tons. My daughters and grandkids come to mind. 

So why did you say he was the one who helped you most in writing the book? (She, like so many others, read the acknowledgement section ever so carefully!)

Because he did. He was there, every day, encouraging, supporting. I'm sure your mommy and your aunt would have done that too, had they spent as much time with me, every day, as he did.

Well I spend time with you every day and I would have encouraged and helped you too if you had just told me that you were writing it! She cannot forget that she found out about the book after it was already published. It's up there with telling her Groundhog Day was just a made-up story. A real error of judgement on the part of her gaga!

Because it is a beautiful, if a bit nippy day, I ask her if she wants to check out the skating rink Ed and I discovered downtown last Sunday. I am surprised to hear her say yes. Typically she is too tired to do something that active late in the afternoon.

We are in a bit of a hurry, because I am to drop her off with her dad and brothers by 5:30. Still, despite the drive and the slight rush, she is absolutely enthralled with the set up! An inside space (warm!) to put on skates! One that serves snacks! A fire pit outside! Trees with twinkling lights! A rail to hold on to! 

The big grin never left her face!

We didn't have time to go down to the lake to watch them raise the Statue of Liberty from the ice, but hey, I pointed it out in the distance and Snowdrop recognized the torch. Can you spot it?

And there you have it! A day with a lot of bells and whistles. And slippery spots. And love...

Thursday

Wet, gloppy, heavy snow. A lot of it, too.  It is such a burden for those having to drive, that schools closed today. At the last minute.

The snowfall began (switching over from a night of rain) just as I set out to feed the animals.

And very quickly it piled up on the walkway, and clung to the tree branches. We watched it come down over breakfast, grateful that we were in no hurry to go out in it.

I'd ordered a grocery delivery for late this morning and so I felt compelled to shovel a path for the poor delivery person who's forced to navigate a slushy slippery mess out there. Heavy as it is to clear, I have to say, it is awfully pretty to look at!

From all sides!

(down the driveway...)

But wet and slippery. The kids are home and I promised that if the roads were drivable, I would come out for a short visit. To give the parent on duty a reprieve for a bit.

I set out, crawling and sliding along a messy highway. But, it's worth it! I get to spend time with all three today!

(studying his book about Number Blocks... what else?)

(stealing the book I finished reading with Snowdrop...)

(settling in to tell her own stories...)

(the brothers descend... Gaga, can you maybe read a book to them so that they would leave my set up alone?)

(the thing is that once I start reading to Sparrow, Snowdrop decides she wants to listen in, and once the two of them are in my lap, Sandpiper is not far behind...)

(photo gratias my daughter)

And in the afternoon I come back home. Lovely views at every turn! 

(At the farmhouse, the quintessentially cosy snack: warmed up half of a croissant with milky coffee)

The snow will be with us for a day or two and then boom! It will melt once again. Typical early spring weather, even if we are still in early February!