I gave a Pottery Class Christmas gift to Nadia and Kira, but Kira got sick the morning of the day I was going to pick both of them up in Milwaukee. After discussion with Anna, we decided that I will still take Nadia for that class, and figure out something else for Kira.
Looks like it was for the better, since the class turned out to be way more advanced than advertised. Although no previous experience was needed, there were a lot of instructions, which Kira probably wouldn’t like :).
Nadia and I had a great time, though!
Nadia’s bowlMy orchid pot
After the class, we went to Ryo Sushi, then to Amorino gelato, and spent some time at the Art Institute Ryan Center on some crafts. As Nadia put it, “it gives her an inspiration.”
Time well spent :). Also, Nadia made a Valentine for me:
Mom’s God-given case manager L. visited her on Friday. She texted me an apology that she might be 15 minutes delayed, ended up being on time, and texted me again that she would wait for me to come. Pure angel.
Gave both of us a million hugs, told me how to talk to the agency, and increased mom’s help hours to 83/month. Mom finally started to realize that this is going to be a huge assistance for her, so now, instead of blaming me for “I didn’t react properly” on her fainting episode, she tells me that “I didn’t explain to her” what I was planning to do.
On Monday, I took her to her doctor for the check-up. I was not surprised that he didn’t find anything wrong with her in general, but I was surprised that there was nothing visibly wrong with her left leg. All neurological reactions were fine. He said that, obviously, fainting is not normal, but three weeks later, it’s hard to tell what was wrong.
Mom was very happy with the results of this visit and immediately went on a long walk with her caregiver. The good part about her ordeal is that she came to turms we needing more help, and hopefully she won’t be getting out of the house on her own.
It turned out that my mom fainted when she went to the grocery store with her caretaker several days after I went on my trip. I knew something had happened and that she was hiding something because she missed a day of emailing me. I figured I would find out anyway, and I finally talked to her caretaker over the weekend. It sounds strange because the store called the ambulance: they took her vitals, and absolutely everything looked perfect. But now she is afraid to leave the house on her own, and the caregiver can be there only twice a week. Also, it appears that her glasses didn’t change from outdoors to indoors immediately when she entered the store, so she is afreaid to wear them,
With all of that, in addition to the work crisis follow-up and some super-urgent Prairie Postgres matters, I had to make tons of mom-related calls. Now, her case manager is coming on Friday, and we will discuss adding more help (she has tons of allowed hours she does not use).
I also scheduled a visit to her family doctor for next Monday, ordered new glasses for her, and dropped off the frames.
She was at her biannual checkup on January 5, but she never tells the doctor what her problems are and says everything is fine. Having her vitals remarkably OK, it’s challenging for me to explain that not everything is OK. Last time, I left a note for the doctor before the visit, noting that she had complained about her left leg. But when she was at the doctor, she said she didn’t have any pain, so he let it go.
My mom turned 91 yesterday, and we had a small celebration at Anto Pizza by Jarvis Square. This place never fails us; it’s perfect for any small family-style celebrations. They are officially BYOB and happy to provide glasses and bottle openers. I stopped by them last week and asked whether we could also bring our own dessert. They were surprised by request but said: sure!
Anna ordered a cake at a bakery just outside the border of Chicago, Sweet Temptations Bake Shop, and it was excellent! They used raspberry mousse instead of icing inside, and fresh raspberries for decoration.
My mom liked that the celebration was so small and cosy, and I think she also liked that John drove her both ways. At least, she didn’t complain about anything, neither at the restaurant, nor later in the evening when I called her.
The logistics for both Friday and Saturday were exceptionally complicated, because Friday night was my gift night for John and Anna: they had tickets for Phantom of the Opera and a night at Palmer House hotel, and I had the girls, and in the morning, the girls had a CSO for Kids concert, and then we had to pick up the cake, to pick up mom, and get my gift for her from my house.
I opened the Armenian pomegranate wine, which I bought on my recent trip, and it was also exceptionally good! Now I regret I got only one bottle!
On December 31, I was working. Even though I worked from home, it was a pretty intense workday. I was hoping to start early and finish early, and make a nice meal to bring to my mom to celebrate the New Year with her, but “early” didn’t happen.
Most times, Igor is around for this early celebration, and then he brings my mom to my place, but since he went to celebrate with Anna’s family (which is definitely more fun), I figured I can’t/don’t want to make a trip to my mom’s house twice, and decided to make it simple and bring all the food to her place.
I prepared myself to sit and nod to everything she would say, which is the only way to keep things calm these days, and that’s exactly how it went. The events and facts she does and does not remember anymore are pretty random. Somehow, many people believe that when older people forget things, they forget the most recent events and remember their past really well. I don’t know what to tell you about others, but that’s definitely not the case with my mom. If there is anything she remembers, it’s repetitive things that she does every day. As for the past, even when she thinks she remembers some events, in reality, she does not remember them clearly, and I can see a difference between how she described them ten years ago and now.
It’s really sad to see, and I can imagine who scared she should be feeling that the world around her is becoming an unknown and dangerous place.
I didn’t plan to go to the Chicago River for the fireworks; not because Igor was not here; I am perfectly fine to go anywhere on my own. It was relatively cold, and also, I had too many things I needed to do before next Monday. On my way back from Armenia, I was making plans for the upcoming week (till January 5), and I was debating with myself whether I should do some fun activities, like going to the Navy Pier, or whether I should focus on catching up with life. By the end of the day December 31, the answer was clear!
I went to bed before midnight, and missed all the Happy New Year texts 🙂
On January first, it was even colder that on December 31, and also cloudy, which made it a perfect weather to be inside and focus on different aspects of community work. Also, I went to my mom one more time, to change her bedding and take her laundry to wash, and since I also took her shower curtain to wash, I returned one more time to put it back :).
The highlights of the day were several conversations with people with whom i do not talk often, and finally catching up on emails with friends, so I guess, the day was not entirely hopeless, and also, I finished some of my ong-overdue-tasks. Still, I hope that January 1 didn’t define the rest of 2026 :).
So that I won’t leave a trail of stories-not-told, a quick recap of Monday and Tuesday.
On Monday morning, we went for breakfast to the Common Cup “to compare the breakfast sandwiches,” and the vote was that “both were good, but different.”
A coffee-cup decorated tree in the Common Cup
Shortly after, we left for Christkindl Market, planning to get there by its opening. The plan didn’t exactly work, since we had a couple of photo stops on the way (and a couple of fights), so we actually arrived at 11:20.
There was no wait, but the market was pretty crowded; besides, all three of us wanted food from three separate lines 😂, and it was really difficult to navigate. We got everything everyone wanted, and then we stood in a really long line for the best hot chocolate (Belgian, with a chocolate wrench on top).
Then, we went to the Sweet Castle store. As usual, there was a line to enter, but the girls were willing to stay in it. I told them they could get two small or one big thing each, and they ended up with gummy bears and hard candy (I hinted that there might be a lot of chocolate in the presents). By the time we got out of the Sweet Castle, the crowd had subsided a little bit. There were still a lot of people, but as Nadis put it, fewer intimidating, so we happily continued our journey exploring the market, and stayed in another line to get into the Christmas Ornaments store.
Next stop was a manicure appointment. We started walking toward the DePaul campus (where the nail salon is located), but there was a bookstore on our way, and we couldn’t pass it without going in and starting to read off the shelves :).
… and then since we were by Harold Washington Library, one can guess what happened next :).
On Tuesday morning, we were waiting for Anna and John to come and have a pre-Christmas celebration together. They ordered the food from Honeybear cafe, and picked it up on the way. Once again, Igor escorted my mom to my place, and we had brunch, and exchanged presents.
Igor and my mom left, the girls packed, and all five of us went to the Merry Merry Chicago Concert. For Nadia, it was for either the third or fourth time, and she was looking forward to it. Kira was restless, and at the end, she said it was boring, and she didn’t like it. I think it was indeed too long of a concert for her, because before that, she only attended half-hour children’s concerts.
I went how and started to get my life in order. Actually, this time, the girls did a very decent job of keeping things in order, so it was not like I had a lot to clean up. However, I also had to pack for a short trip, catch up with work and other responsibilities, visit my mom, and finally talk to Boris for longer than ten minutes at a time. This took pretty much all the time starting with after the concert till 6 PM on the Christmas Eve, when I left the house with my luggage.
Sunday was our Art Institute Christmas Day: as anyone should, we went to see Napolitan Creche and Miniature Rooms, and then headed to the Ryan Center to do the projects.
The theme of the projects was a newly opened Bruce Goff exhibit. We missed it on our way to the Ryan Center, but went to see it after lunch, and then returned to the Ryan Center one more time to make more art.
We all liked the Bruce Goff exhibit. I previously mentioned that I was disappointed with the Symbolism exhibit, and Nadia said she didn’t like it either. She said that the Bruce Goff “Material world” was also “Strange realities,” but the funny ones. I agree.
We finally left the Art Institute close to 3 PM, returned home, and then spent the evening decorating cookies. Last Christmas, Nadia did a great job with cookies, and I told her I could use your help, but this year, it was on a whole new level, and Kira helped as well. They decorated all of the remaining cookies and said they could do more 🙂
I was super impressed with this rocking horse – that’s one of the most difficult shapes to decorate.
Now, I am definitely employing their skills next year!
Igor picked up my mom, and they both came to have dinner with us, to socialize with the girls, and watch them decorating cookies.
My mom was really impressed with the work the girls did “on their own will,” and said that she understood how much work I had to do with the girls staying with me, and that she “sympathized with me.” When I told her that I do not see anything to be “sympathized” about and that I only do the things I enjoy doing, she got very upset and went on one of her regular rants about “my generation not being able to understand hers”, but I honestly have no idea how this all got connected in her mind!
I love making breakfast, and most people who stay with me love my quiche and breakfast casserole. But when it comes to Nadia and Kira, the only two parts of breakfast they love unconditionally are fruits and chocolate. For the longest time, Nadia loved my savory toasts (grenki), but the problem of Kira not eating anything except for fruits reamined. She would get hungry an hour after breakfast, just when we would be on the way to activities.
Last couple of times when the girls stayed with me, we went to Common Cup for breakfast (we also went to Charmers, but they didn’t like anything there except for the swings :). I thought that since they bioh love breakfast sandwiches, we should try to make them at home. I used to have a breakfast sandwich maker, but I didn’t take it from Palatine to Rogers Park in an attempt to reduce the clutter.
I browsed several models online, and the most simple (and cheap) one seemed to work the best.
The girst decided to make sandwiched just with eggs, with no extra ingedients. That was an easy recipe: beat an egg in the sandwich maker, microwave for one minute:
Warm up a brioche bun for 30 sec
Assemble and enojoy!
First time they tried it, both of them ate two sandwiches for breakfast, and one more for dinner (in addition to actual dinner:)). On the third day, they decided to go to the Common Cup “to compare,” and later made one more at home 🙂
It’s not easy to get on a Santa Train, because these days, there is only one train instead of two, and it runs on different CTA lines at different times. Igor and I were discussing how we can get the girls on the train, and the only option seems to be to try to get on it after the Nutcracker, which was a little bit tight, even taking into account the usual holiday train delays. But then Igor realized that we could catch it in the opposite direction, when it departs from Howard, and take it to the Nutcracker instead.
The girls were impatient, so we left well in advance, and it turned out to be perfect, because there were picture-taking opportunities and tons of candy canes.
A line for pictures with Santa
Finally, the train doors were open, and we got inside (Igor joined us by then). It was super crowded, so even though we got the seats, it was difficult to see the rest of the car.
The ride took significantly longer than it would be on a regular train, but we still managed to get to the Nutcracker on time!
So, I have Nadia and Kira here with me for the first part of Christmas break, which means I do not have time for anything else :), so I will make a post tomorrow, when everyone leaves.
So far, we have done Santa Train, Christmas crafts, the Joffrey Nutcracker, the Art Institute, and cookie decorating. Next on our list is Christkindle Market and a holiday manicure :). And then early Christmas presents giving and the Merry Merry Chicago concert on Tuesday.
Hettie's Reflections 