Our good friend Karen lives in Ithaca with her husband and daughter, born only a few weeks after Maggie. We haven’t seen them since their wedding, so we spent a few glorious days catching up and seeing the glories of Ithaca. My only “knowledge” of Ithaca prior to this was the Ithaca is Gorges bumper sticker that I saw with some frequency in college and in places east. I always enjoyed the play on words, but never got around to visiting. After only a few hours there, Sarah and I both agreed that it would be high on the list of places where we might happily live. (You know, in case we have to flee Saint Paul in the night.) It felt like a bit of a wonderland, with dramatic vistas and sparkling waterfalls around every turn.
This was our first time meeting Lila, and the kids had a blast together. We tried letting them all sleep together in a big pile of blankets in Lila’s room, but it became quickly apparent that sleep would never happen. So they were separated, to some tears and ultimatums (from Griffin, a la, “I’m never going to sleep again!”). They wreaked their revenge, however, by sleeping poorly and waking us up multiple times each night. On the first night, for example, Griffin came padding into our room and asked where Maggie was. I got up to verify that she was in the blankets next to him, but indeed she was missing. I searched the room, checked Lila’s room, checked the bathroom, and started to get nervous. Got Sarah up and she checked downstairs while I double-checked everywhere. I even looked behind the couch in the room where they were sleeping. No Maggie. Finally got Karen up too, just in case Maggie had gone into the master bedroom by accident. No luck. Beginning to imagine her out wandering among the gorges in the dark. Sarah cries out from the kids’ room, and I see her pulling Maggie out from beneath the couch where she had been invisibly wedged. Fun times.
The most important element of the trip, from Maggie’s perspective, was the discovery that Lila also has a rainbow dress—the very same rainbow dress that has been Maggie’s favorite since Sarah bought it last month.
