Yesterday morning was spent altering a pair of delightful flannel pjs that were gifted to me at Christmas …

They fit just fine, but I have a long-standing aversion to exposing my ankles, so I took out the cuffed hems to lengthen the pants … then reverse engineered them, putting the piping along the bottom, and seaming the raw edges together with a whipped stitch.

As I worked, I thought about why I’ve insisted on wearing over-long pants all these years (decades really). Upon reflection I decided to blame it on my mom (wink), who made me among the very last in my cohort to get a pair of bell-bottomed jeans (because she was sure it was sure to be a short-lived fad), which were way too short (queue a long wail of teenaged angst).

I never got over it, which is why to this day all my jeans have ragged back hems … ha!!

Yesterday also saw the beginning of what we hope to be once-a-week solo visits by our youngest grandchild … fondly referred to as “Littlest” by her doting nana. E’s two older siblings were similarly indulged during their respective pre-school years (although P got short shrift due to Covid).

I picked Ellis up at pre-school after nap time and sent a picture text to her mom once she was snugged into her car seat (yes, we roll with car seats, lucky us) …

Being new to the whole idea, Ellis asked if we were going to her house.

Nope.

But what about Parker?

Not today … you get to go to NanaPopPop’s house all by yourself!

I’m not sure that she was entirely on board with the idea, but we arrived without incident.

And so we spent a few golden hours together … painting with PopPop, mixing up cookie dough with Nana, making dinosaur puzzles, sorting sea shells, and eating a rainbow dinner of cherries (on ice cream for dessert), carrots (just a little bit), avocado (for yellow and green), and blueberries (for blue and purple), along with homemade chicken fingers and rice …

And if there is a decided dearth of pictures, well you can chalk that up to NanaPopPop being in the moment. Fortunately, there will be many more opportunities for picture-taking to come.

Last, but not least, when we took Ellis home, we were treated to Parker reading us a bedtime story entitled Elephants Can’t Dance by Mo Willems. The pictures were actually taken the night before by her Mom …

so we were able to relax into enjoying the encore performance … complete with questions at the end to check our comprehension. Our retired-teacher selves couldn’t have been more delighted.