Five years of our firstborn

As five years is a bit of a milestone, I've been looking through our photos of Jonathan's birth and birthday each year. And as he's been sickly and kept us all house-bound, I have a bit too much time at the computer to do posts like this: a snapshot of each birthday so far.
 

The photo above shows us the morning of March 9 five years ago (2010) in front of our house in Charagua, Bolivia - just before leaving for the hospital.

Jonathan was shockingly (to us) wrinkly and frog-like the first few days. We had no idea babies looked like this!

We were in the hospital for two nights and a day-and-a-half (thanks to the c-section) - much too long, at any rate.

The maternity ward, at that very moment blissfully empty of other folk.

If you look closely, you can see some of the mosquito welts from his nights in the hospital.

Elma Schroeder and Kathy Heppner, MCC colleagues from Santa Cruz, were waiting in our house when we finally got home. We were so very grateful to have experienced mothers with us for the first few hours (keep in mind, no internet).

Elma gave Jonathan his first bath and showed us how to cut those wee little finger nails.

And then we were on our own!

And then two weeks later Ramont's parents came, for which I am so very grateful to this day. What sweet assurance to inexperienced parents!

Our second family portrait, when Jonathan was two weeks old and we were young and trim.

And here we see some monster trucks for the first time...

FIRST BIRTHDAY

Our good fortune with grandparents coming to visit continued on, as my folks were with us on Jonathan's first birthday.

We also finally went to take a picture of the Charagua hospital, where Jonathan was born.

And here he is at one year old.

SECOND BIRTHDAY

At this point we were living in Santa Cruz, and so had a bit of a party under the hatata outside our apartment at MCC.

All his Harder cousins (at that point) were there, along with a few others.

The big excitement that year was the box of monster and other toy trucks cousin Reuben had deposited at our door that morning (only to be reclaimed later, but fun while it lasted!), and of course,

the tractor cake!

THIRD BIRTHDAY

For the first time, Jonathan celebrated a birthday in Minnesota.

 At this point he also had a walking sister,

and was fast becoming a prairie farmer (and less a chaqueño).

FOURTH BIRTHDAY

To me Jonathan looks very similar on his fourth and fifth birthday photos (just zippier at four, since he wasn't sick).

Just for comparison, here he is with his sister,

and sharing his birthday with Opa, just like every year save for the second.

FIFTH BIRTHDAY

And there it is, five eventful years stuffed into one blog post! When I look at that first photo of wrinkly Jonathan and then see how strong and lively he is now, I can hardly believe our good fortune.

Jonathan turns 5!

Five years ago, Jonathan was born on a hot and buggy day in Charagua, Bolivia. How his (and our) life has changed since then! Then he was such a helpless, wrinkly little thing and we had no idea how to take care of him (next post will have a few photos from then). Now he's such an exuberant, strong little fellow...and we know all about how to take care of him. Ha!

But I will say this: he sure is easier to take care of then many other 5-year olds. We continually marvel at his appreciation for boundaries and even rules, as well as his self-discipline. He often begs for things (sweets, toys, more time somewhere), but rather quickly concedes "that's too bad" with a shrug, and moves on. Another tiny example is the 1-hour egg timer we turn on for quiet time after lunch. He obeys that thing like it's his master, and this afternoon when I forgot to set it I heard him slip out of his room and set it himself. Once it dings, he bursts out of room and plays quietly downstairs until Anna and I come down ready to face the world.

Jonathan has new friends at preschool (whom we don't get to hear enough about), but Anna is still his favorite friend and playmate. Sometimes, namely not at birthdays when it becomes evident that they're not twins (as in, not both getting gifts), I find myself thinking of them a bit like twins. The one thing I don't appreciate so much about their relationship is that he insists on speaking English to her; he'll be motoring along in Low German to one of us, then turn to her and, in the same breath, switch over to English.

Tractors are still his favorite thing, of course, but lately he's been on a "monster truck" kick. That's what this cake was supposed to be, but the cupcake wheels didn't exactly turn out monster-ish.

Jonathan almost shares a birthday with Opa, and as usual we had their celebrations together.

The kids looove to help in the kitchen (hrrumph), and here we are cutting up the strawberries and testing the whipped cream for the cake.

Anna did fairly well for herself in the gift department this year. Here her Great-Grandparents give them each a beautiful book. Anna's was on nursery rhymes, and she very ably recited to us:
Hey Diddo Diddo,
da cat and da fiddo,
da tow jumped over da moon.
The widdo dog waughed 
to see such a sight,
and da dish wan away wit da spoon!

The JD tractor lego set from Oma and Opa was a big hit!

As was the "monster truck gator" he got this morning. The thing is, it's a remote control - something he's been, shall we say, obsessed with since his cousin got one for Christmas.

Unfortunately, Jonathan has been sick on and off for about a week now and after a rough night of vomiting, still felt pretty rough this morning. But as it turns out, a remote control gator works just fine when operated from a curled up position on the floor.

South

The kids and I, with Opa, went south last weekend. All the way to central Kansas. It was not warmer than Minnesota; in fact, it snowed rather nicely on Sunday morning. We were right in the spirit, as Anna (and at least two of her cousins) coughed and hacked up a storm all weekend long. Ramont (blissfully) stayed home and waited for Gracie's calf, whose due date has now been pushed back a month. The photo here is not of Gracie (our new Jersey cow), but of Elias' 4-H steer.

Oma had gone down a few days earlier and had helped butcher roosters one day (before we came luckily).

We spent most of the time visiting and drinking mate...and keeping baby Maria from overrunning her older cousins.

Our kids had SO much fun with both their littler cousins (Maria and the twins Andrew and Annalise),

and their big cousins (Elias, Amos and Reuben), who are such accommodating playmates. Here they go dancing 'round the couch while we ate dessert.

Here we are out at Willmar and Hannah's ranch, fu-reezing our toes off.

And then there was this...

Kiddie photo dump

It's been a while since I updated you on all the minute details of our kids' lives, so here we go!

It snowed a few weeks ago, so Ramont dug out a tunnel/fort.

Literally hours of fun.

Anna's been noting the passage of time by putting stickers from Grandma Schrock on each calendar day.

Much to my delight, Legos have become the main indoor sport this winter.

My favorite hospital set from childhood is still very popular, but usually with strange variations (mainly having to do with motorized vehicles).

The kids now have free access to the tub (to which we added some Legos that were kindly left in the house), and so more often than not, the dining room table is covered in the colorful bricks.

In a foretaste of things to come (i.e. celebrating commercial holidays in ridiculously material ways), Jonathan was required to bring Valentine cards/treats to preschool. I'm a bit embarrassed to say that I actually quite enjoyed making them, and he helped write his name on them and attach gummy fruit candy. Needless to say, his were the only non-Disney character ones from a class of 12 (also needless to say, Ramont-the-eldest-son was a bit embarrassed for him).
 

 I'm enjoying having just Anna at home three mornings a week. Here she helps stir milk for yogurt or ricotta.

 Luckily for her, she actually gets a few hours of playing with all the toys uninhibitedly.

And making more Valentines - kind of the story of our month so far.

Blanket Blitz(es)

February is evidently the time of year to make warm blankets en masse. This week the women in our church will help finish comforters to send to MCC for distribution. Last week an eclectic, I mean ecumenical, group gathered in our church to cut and tie a huge pile of soft, warm fleece blankets. These will be given to a homeless shelter in the Cities for distribution to individuals to take with them.

A group of students came from the Christian school and another group came from the Elmendorf Christian Community. So there was some good visiting, and of course, some very good eats.

As usual, our kids had a grand time playing in the church. The project for this day was collecting blanket scraps for all kinds of projects, real and imagined ("mommy, when we get home can you sew me a dragon costume from these pieces?" ha!). On this day there were even a few other small ones their age.

In the end, about 80 blankets were made. Not bad for a day's work!