Grandparents' weekend

[dorchadas]

On Friday, which I took off because it was the first day of Shavuot, we went to the Field Museum with my parents for a couple hours so I could check out the First Kings of Europe exhibit and my mother and sashagee could wander around the animal exhibits with Laila, and then then took Laila with them back out to the suburbs so that they could have some time with their cute granddaughter and sashagee and I could have a weekend to ourselves!

Unfortunately, sashagee was sick for part of the weekend, so we didn't actually do that much and she spent a large chunk of it resting. But we still managed to do some things. On Friday we went out to dinner at Uvae:

Mine is in front, with gin, creme de peche, and elderflower. sashagee's is in back, with non-alcoholic pea flower, lemon, and grapefruit juice.

We originally had seats outside but it was weirdly cold for even the end of Chicago May--wind gusting at like 13°C, far too cold to just sit outside. We saw another couple move indoors after just a few minutes outside and then we asked if we could do the same, which the waitress was happy to arrange.

I was a little worried that we would suffer the Parent Problem where on a night out without the kids we'd struggle to think of what to talk about, but we didn't. Other than sashagee worrying about Laila being away from us, we had a lovely conversation, ate our salad and meals and drank our drinks, and wrapped up around 6:30 p.m.

Vanilla panna cotta in the back and cheesecake in the front with compote by local company Twiddly Bits.

We paid and left and I said goodbye to head to my next event--I went to Friday night Shabbat services because it was Rabbi Deena's last day. Since she had a special blessing for Laila's mikvah visit I wanted to see her off and leave a note for her, and after services ended I walked up to some of the people I knew. yoni-labow-5693413a, once he had completed the traditional telling me his name again because for some reason he always assumes I don't remember him--maybe I give off "Who is this guy?" vibes?--invited me out to a bar with his wife whoolia45 (the OneTable sponsor of the dinner I went to at Milt's pre-Plague Years) and some friends. I said I had to talk to sashagee about and by yoni-labow-5693413a's reaction I knew it was fine if she came, so I told her where we were going and she hopped in a Lyft and met us there. It was more of a bar and grill so it had live music, children playing pool, and closed at 10 p.m. so we had our one drink--I had an Old Fashioned as is my custom, sashagee got a Lunacy beer--everyone met sashagee finally, we got an invite to aaronhparker's outdoor Shabbat in two weeks, and everyone got to see photos of Laila. yoni-labow-5693413a invited us to a Shabbat dinner too, though I don't remember when it is.

Man, my posts are always filled with tons of referential links to my friends' online presence. I'd say this is a Sign of the Times but mostly it's because I don't want to use people's names unless they already put their names out there on the internet. Regardless, it's not going to get any better in the rest of this post.

Saturday we did mostly nothing while sashagee rested and napped and I caught up a bit in Genshin Impact, but in the evening we had an invite to lisekatevans's house for afschifler's birthday! sashagee was all dressed in a cute sundress and was planning to wear heels since heels are half her shoe collection but she hasn't gotten to wear them in years, but since the weather was 20°C and sunny I suggested walking. We had Some Brief Discourse™ on my suggestion but in the end we left with sashagee in flats and walked through side streets filled with flowering trees for thirty minutes until we arrived at the party, lisekatevans handed us some drinks, and we spent a while chatting with people and eating tavern-style pizza and tres leches cake.

Me: "Tres leches. That's Spanish for 'three leches.' "
sashagee: 🤣🤣🤣

The benefit of having a fiancée who is not Too Online is that this is the first time she's heard these jokes.

Sunday we once again mostly rested and played games, and then Laila came back in the evening and was happy enough to see us but it was clear that she had an extremely fun time at Papa and Nana's--after they left, she grabbed her toy bag and walked over to the front door while waving bye-bye at us! I can see many more grandparents' weekends in the future--Laila and my parents both are getting older and need as much time together as they can get. And I think it was really helpful for sashagee and me too.

As the saying goes, the only real parenting hack is having grandparents who live nearby.