Anna at 18 months

This post was begun as simply a depository of cute kiddie photos from our new-found spring, but then I remembered that...Anna turned 1 1/2 on Earth Day (22nd). Here's a bit of what she's like these days:

Height/weight: smaller than average (about 20 pounds)

Appetite:  Hearty (she eats almost twice what her three-year-old brother eats). Especially loves cheese, mama milk (once, when she wakes up in the morning), pasta, tomatoes, yogurt, ice cream.

Personality: larger than average.

Anna is in a fun developmental stage - she's curious, brave (except with animals), exploratory, provoking (of Jonathan), and easily insulted but also easily appeased (if done right). She's starting to jabber more and more, with a few more recognizable words per week (yesterday it was "blanket" in LG). She seems to understand e.v.e.r.y.t.h.i.n.g, and responds appropriately. It's a constant reminder to keep explaining and pointing out things to her (not just to Jonathan, as we tend to do). She likes to look at books, and always needs a few in her bed to peruse before falling asleep. She's been waking up at 5am the last few weeks, and making it known it such a way that can hardly be ignored (we try). But she's also been taking 1.5-2 hour naps more regularly.

She loves, loves, loves to be outside. Even in the middle of snow season, when her nose was running and her hands were ice cold - and she was the only one left outside - she did not want to come inside. Exploring the yard and pushing the plastic lawn mower are great pastimes for her.

Our two children's personalities are quite different, and we're still finding Anna harder to "figure out" (in an ongoing process kind of way) than Jonathan.

But one thing is clear, these two need each other. I'm reminded of that each time I take just Anna somewhere in the car; she gets quite distressed when the car seat beside her is empty. They can get intensely mad at each other (in fact, Jonathan twice bit Anna this week - something completely out of the blue). But Jonathan is also incredibly solicitous of Anna. When they're playing alone outside, I will sometimes overhear Jonathan saying something like "vee mutta zeiya up posse, Anna..."

This afternoon at my folks', Jonathan took Anna by the hand and walked with her across the driveway and into the shop, where they then explored for awhile. These moments give me great hope that they'll at least like one another when they're in high school.

One last word about Jonathan: he is almost beside himself with all the excitement of farming season starting up again. This is truly the place for him!

Yet another snow day + cookies

I know everyone must be getting tired of seeing yet more photos of snow here. It's such an unusual spring, though, and all the more so for us since we hadn't experienced snow in so long anyway. Yesterday was another all-day affair, and today schools are canceled again - as well as the library story hour we were planning to go to. So as usual, everyone got all bundled up and went outside after breakfast - Ramont to push snow and the rest of us to pretend like we were working.

Jonathan was so sad that this tractor was too small for him to ride along.

But mowing snow is almost as fun.

Our yard on April 19, 2013. Seriously.

And because our romping around outside has been so severely curtailed we've, unfortunately, been spending more time doing this - watching videos of ourselves and Tractor Tom (10 minute youtube videos).

I also made cookies this morning. Snacks are a major part of our day. And while I wish we would eat only kale chips and bean sprouts, the truth is that we all really like cookies. I figure that if we keep brushing the kids' teeth regularly and set them loose to "exercise" as they naturally (over)do, they'll be ok (or at least bump up to the 10th percentile for their age weight at some point).

Several months ago I found the perfect cookie recipe and have been making pretty much only these since then (poor Ramont). Here is my recipe, loosely adapted from a Taste of Home magazine.

CHEWY GOOD OATMEAL COOKIES

3/4 cup butter, soft
1 cup brown sugar
2 eggs
1 T honey (not sure why)
2 t vanilla extract
2 1/2 cups quick oats
1 1/2 cups flour (with about 1/4 cup of that being ground flax seed or wheat germ)
1 t baking powder or soda
1/2 t ground cinnamon
handful sunflower seeds or sesame seeds
handful dried cranberries
handful white or chocolate chips

Mix and drop by spoonfuls onto greased baking sheets. Bake at 350 for 8-10 minutes. Remove directly onto counter to cool. Yields about 4 1/2 dozen Harder Schrock size cookies (tiny, so that I don't feel so bad if we eat four - or six - a day).

Top Ten: Home favorites

Since we've been home for eight months now, I've formed a fairly definite list in my mind of the top ten best things about living in our little corner of the US of A (compared to where we were last). They are, in no particular order:

10. Frozen vegetables

Because even though the rest of our meal might be nutritionally sketchy, I can pull a bag of peas out of the freezer, steam it for a few minutes, and feel like Super Mama.

9. Garage door opener

Because the magical push of a button is just a bit more convenient than opening an awkward padlock on a big gate (which ends up always kicking you in the shins) while holding a baby (because there's no car seat in the vehicle), then driving through said gate and parking on a busy street, jumping out again with baby to close the gate and lock the padlock (while hoping no one steals the toddler jumping around in the vehicle), making it back to the vehicle and driving away without the car alarm rendering you mortified and the vehicle undrivable. It happens. And it's always 900 degrees and muggy when it does.

8. Customer service

Because it's nice to not feel guilty about waking up the fruit lady to buy some bananas (even though it's still a bit creepy that the bank phone-answerer knows who my parents are before I've identified myself).

7.  Carpeted floors

Because our kids are not losing as many I.Q. points each time they bonk their head on the floor.

6. Warm-in-winter and cool-in-summer house

Because we have snow storms in April. And because we used to wake up in a 90+ degree apartment, not  exactly looking with great excitement toward another hot, tropical day.

5. Organ music and hymn-singing

Because it's rather heavenly.

4. Mexican restaurants

Because for four years I dreamt longingly about those baskets-full of chips and salsa (along with DQ hot fudge sundaes).

3. Cash-free

Because it's so much handier to keep track of one plastic card than to stuff my pockets full of cash each day and then have to dig through all my pants/skirts/bags on accounting day.

2. Nice roads

Because Ramont loves them.

1. Living close to grand/parents

Because it's so very heart-warming and relieving to have your kids beg to go home with them.

Spring??!

This is what we woke up to this morning.

Reminder: it's (almost) the middle of April.

Ramont's not super impressed by Minnesota at this point.

Anna doesn't care so much, as long as she gets to be outside.

Field trip

In Jonathan parlance, a field trip means just that: a trip to the field.

[Side note: having just weathered his first northern winter, the oft-used parental phrase "when it gets warmer" has come to mean anything loosely associated with paradise e.g. "when it gets warmer, we'll go to the field every day."]

This week we joined a group of other (grand)mamas with pre-schoolers for a trip to the Children's Museum of Southern Minnesota in Mankato. The first great moment of the day was getting to go in an actual school bus! (we weren't the only ones singing "the wheels of the bus go 'round and 'round" on the way to town, as it turns out.) Seriously exciting.

Here is Jonathan with his friend and third cousin, Kirsten.

And here Anna and I are feeling a bit nauseated, while Jonathan is all bouncy. No one hurled, and in fact, it was quite a pleasant one hour journey there and back (except for the 10 minutes or so on the way home after lunch, when a super-tired Anna wouldn't believe that I had, in fact, forgotten her nookie at home).

The museum was pretty great for our kids' age level - nothing too sophisticated or scientific, but good, creative fun. Here is a bridge (and piano innards) that Anna loved. Added bonus: now she'll surely be able to conquer the tiny slope in the Care & Share shop.

This was a giant "playhouse," full of tunnels, ladders, slopes, a swinging bridge, a bucket on a pulley/rope, and more. I much enjoyed just sitting there and watching the children's exuberant play, and how our kids interacted with the others (turns out Jonathan is pretty chatty in English..."Have you more books, Tante Sara?").

Playing with water...something Jonathan grew up doing in warmer climes, and Anna knows very little about.

Working the till with Emma, while Kirsten wonders why it all has to take so long....

transferring fistfuls of sand onto the floor...

and checking out a cartful of produce with the helpful checkout lady.

It was really a fun day for all of us. And then we came home and took two and a half hour naps, which was the best part of all.

More new wheels

Uncle Merin surprised our kids with some sweet retro wheels: a Radio Flyer fire truck! He'd found it tossed out by someone, fixed it up, and has saved it for seven or eight years. Needless to say, it's a HUGE hit around our house. Also needless to say, Anna's time on it is severely restricted.

Hello, big new tractor!

Three generations of Harder/Schrock boys had been waiting for this day all winter: when would they finally get to drive home the big, shiny, new(ish) tractor? Friday was finally the big day, Ramont the lucky driver. Jonathan came over for a full inspection Saturday (I think it passed - at least all the photos we have of him grinning ear to ear seem to suggest so).

Anna rolls her eyes - she's had enough (as with Ramont, above), so Oma takes her back to the house.

Thanks to the warmer, wetter weather, we put away the moon boots (for now) and got out the rubber boots. So much fun, and so stylin'.

Happy Easter!

[Another stellar photoshoot from the Harder Schrock household.]

[Anna's dress was a gift from her "Aunt" Anna in Bolivia.]