Playdates All-Around

This morning, we trekked up to Niles for The Girl's swim lesson at the Leaning Tower YMCA. The weather was finally decent enough for us to enjoy it, so The Boy and The Tot played on the equipment in the attached playground while The Girl had her lesson. I sat on a bench in the playground area observing all of their "Mama, look at me!" moments and making a few phone calls to line up social occasions for the afternoon and next week.

When The Girl's lesson was over, we went over to Target, as has become our custom, to pick up the 3 things on my list, have a snack, and kill time. The Boy and The Girl are at a double playdate at their friends' house now, The Tot is sleeping and I'm enjoying some quiet time. Sometimes, the best part of a mother's day is the part where her kids are happily and quietly occupied.

Note to Self: Dempster Hosed

On Thursday afternoons, The Girl participates in a 3-way kid swap with two of her friends. Today was our turn to host. Before we could open our home to a gaggle of 4-year-old girls, however, we had swimming lessons for The Girl and an errand to run.

It was very important to The Girl that Grandma Texas come to watch her swimming lesson at the Leaning Tower Y in Niles. She did, and The Boy, The Tot, Grandma Texas and I watched the lesson through the glass wall between the pool and the SRO entrance lounge. The Boy and The Tot declared that they were hungry, so I spent my last $1 in cash on a bag of Cheetos from the vending machine.

After class, I got The Girl dressed and to the car, and we headed north and east to Vogue Fabrics in Evanston. The Girl was starving after her lesson and complained loudly that she needed a snack all the way down Dempster, which was completely backed up due to traffic. My snack destination of choice was Breadsmith, near Dempster and McCormick, but The Girl could not wait, so we pulled into the Starbucks drive-thru in the converted Skokie train station and ordered up 3 apple fritters (the kids), a blueberry muffin (Grandma), and a tall nonfat vanilla latte (me). After that, the traffic on Dempster wasn't quite as irritating, although we were still running up against the time contraints of both Grandma Texas's friend coming to our house in the city and the start of the girlie playdate.

I needn't have worried about Grandma Texas's friend, who came from the south suburbs, got stuck in Taste of Chicago traffic, and made every wrong choice possible in the drive up. It took her 2.5 hours to make a drive that should take about an hour.

Fortunately, we found Vogue Fabrics with only a little help from the folks at Verizon Information, parked easily just across the street, and zipped in and out of the store. If you need oilcloth for any reason, they have some great patterns at this location. I picked out a cute black and white pattern that is more grown-up than the juvenile/retro patterns I was expecting to find (and found) based on oilcloth mats available at Land of Nod, etc. We made it back to the city with time to spare.

Life's a Beach

Thanks to the generosity of my mom's best friend, who loaned us her "cottage" for the length of our stay, our family just returned from a 4-day lake vacation in Michigan. It was heavenly. This cottage is a 3-bedroom house in the woods about 1/2 mile from Weko Beach -- the house is bigger than our Chicago Foursquare and decorated in a unique combination of painted shabby chic-vintage and original 60s and 70s Danish modern, with comfy couches and tons of magazines. No TV, no Internet, no phone. It's perfect. If I could afford a lake cottage, it would look like that. We read books, napped, played in the sand, body surfed (The Boy and The Dad), ate ice cream, grilled out, made s'mores, visited picturesque South Haven, and generally took it easy.