It has been a cold, miserable winter for the new retiree. Stan's sister, Linda, finished her teaching career in Ft. Collins, Col. last spring and returned to Minnesota with her husband, Ron. In her whirlwind way, she sold the Colorado house, built and furnished a house in Blaine, rented a home in Duluth where Ron serves a congregation, fussed over her mother in Alexandria and slipped in a vacation to Puerto Rico. Then came winter. Real winter."We don't regret moving to Minnesota," she gamely writes, but admits to grey and miserable times in a climate that makes it next to impossible to bring a plant home from Target and have it survive the trip.
But there is hope. In the midst of all the gray, dismal, cold days, she has a bright warm ray of sunshine: Her grandaughter, Anja.
We asked her to send us some pictures with her grandchild and a note about their times together.
March 5 is her birthday and the promise of a new season. She has hope for change. Can Ron and Linda make it through the Minnesota winter? In one voice, they now say, "Yes, we can! Yes, we can!"
Here's Linda's note:
Anja is sleeping now so I have an opportunity to write you about my own winter sunshine. Yesterday was particularly nice. Erik brought Anja over in her nightclothes early in the morning and we took it from there. Shana had packed a perfectly planned menu for the day along with all the other possible needs. Shana is careful to write things out for me though she knows I might forget to read it and just do my own thing.
Usually Anja and I read a dozen books in the day, but on this day only one. She was just fascinated with listening to Ron sing while he played the piano in the living room and played the guitar and sang upstairs. I had brought her a ukelele (Steve's unused one from 25 years ago) from storage, but we never got to it. That picture of her from Shana's blog got me to thinking. For the last few weeks she has been pointing out her shadow and since today was a sunny day, we found it numerous times in the kitchen. In Italy if you want to eat cheaper, you can stand at the bar. If you sit down in some places, it costs more. So we have Anja standing at her own place to eat, just getting her ready for future travels. She feeds herself from a shelf at just the right height which holds a picture of her and has nuks and sippy cups at the ready. Otherwise, one of us holds her and the other provides whatever assistance she needs which isn't very much.
So far we only have Anja at our house on Mondays so both of us can keep an eye on her. She is a real explorer, getting into anything she can. "No, no, no" has no effect, but redirecting does. You have to catch her first which is a job for two.Marilyn, the other grandmother, has magic. On Sunday Anja went potty on the Baby Bjorn with her. No such luck for me, but I AM training her to wash her hands whenever she asks to use Baby Bjorn.
No TV for Anja until she is two so she isn't any more sure about who Bert and Ernie are than I am. While Sesame Street taught Steve how to read with his face pressed against the screen, I don't remember much about the characters. Anja and I do know Elmo because we have Elmo Soup and books with Elmo identified clearly. Our favorite book is Barnyard Dance where we stomp our feet, clap our hands, bow to the horse and to the cow, twirl with the pig because we know how.Today Grandma had to dive on one, two, THREE like Anja does. The things we do for our grandchildren that we have never done before! (The pillow to fall on was soft, thank goodness!)
We have a portacrib in Ron's office. We don't know how long it will be before she will climb out of it, but so far it works. You have to be smart and ask her if she wants milk, juice BEFORE you take her up to bed so that she can't put you off with requests. The choice I usually give her is rock or nap. She will take rock 100% of the time which is the answer I want. From there she will ask for a book to be read. Because she wants to put off the nap, she listens very patiently to the book that has multiple lines on each page. Today she asked me to sing, but she didn't like what she heard so she would ask me to stop. Then she would ask me to try again, but nothing I sang sounded that good to her. She decided a nap would be better and off to sleep she went.In a few weeks she will be in Norway, learning Norwegian. We will miss our little sunshine, but it will be exciting to see what she has learned when she gets back. My hope is that the real sunshine will be out and I can go out for walks in it and miss her a little less.
Love, Linda
