April started off right with a visit from my aunt Dorcas on the very first day. Dorcas tells me I was “her little girl” when I was Annalise’s age and a little older. She used to cuddle me and read me stories. As a young adult, I lived with her for the length of three school years while teaching school in Virgina, and I always knew I could count on “Aunt D” for a comfortable, listening ear and practical solutions.
Yes, I’ve always loved my Aunt Dorcas, and Annalise is following right in my footsteps.
April included a fun, random visit to Dairy Queen…
Several Kinsinger family gatherings…
And a farewell birthday party for Grandma Dorothy at the Mountain View Mennonite Church. If you’ve followed my previous blogs, you know that her marriage to Ivan’s dad was a second marriage for both of them, and they both had children and grandchildren from their first marriages. Grandma Dorothy has been a giving and warm-hearted grandma to both her sets of children, but now that Grandpa Jonas is gone, she’s decided to move back to Iowa, to be near her biological children. We will miss her! Pictured below are the three local daughters-in-law with Grandma Dorothy at her farewell.
Here is Annalise with Grandma at church. These two are close and the separation will be hard on both of them.
And here is Annalise with her daddy, practicing walking.
We are trying our best to introduce her to the great outdoors, but so far, she prefers arms or a stroller to feet on the ground. Grass is scary and it feels weird, thank you very much!
Ivan snapped this photo of a rainbow. Rainbows always remind me of my dad and a whimsical, wondering part of him. “Do you think there’s a pot of gold at the end of that rainbow?” he might say, if we were out driving and saw one. And one day he and Mom actually did drive right exactly through the spot where a rainbow landed, and there was nothing–no leprechaun, no pot of gold, no colors painted across the sky. Of course, he had known there would be nothing. But he used that story as an illustration of the illusory dreams of life. “We all have dreams,” he said in a sermon. “And we go chasing our dreams looking for our pot of gold, and when we reach the end of the rainbow, there’s nothing there. What we have right here, right now is worth so much more than the dreams we chase.”
That philosophy, and that whimsical approach to life–grounded in story, imagination, and gentle pessimism–describes my dad exactly.
That’s all for this month!
I love the pictures of your darling daughter!💗She is so loved, and so blessed.
Yes she is. 💞
I like the picture of Aunt Dorcas and Annalise, but if you crop that picture in to just capture the faces of Annalise and Dorcas, I wonder if you wouldn’t have an even better picture? The look of childlike contentment and adult contentment is rarely together on two faces as it is on theirs in that picture.
I’m a physical therapist who has focused on early intervention (helping babies to walk) at various times in my life. When you write that Annalise is not taking too well to the walking thing, what you’re describing is typical. Babies need to focus on what we call “positive support”. That is, the ability to control knee flexion and extension and hip flexion and extension. So, just have her stand at a low coffee table in front of the sofa. Give her support from behind at her hips and let her practice holding her legs straight just in standing. She’ll learn to hold the legs straight against gravity. Then she’ll start to learn to bounce up and down. Then she’ll start to lean side to side and then slowly she’ll develop in moving about that coffee table. That’ll take a few weeks to a month. And that’s where she’ll learn to walk. Give her a chance and she’ll make good on it.
Cropping is a nice idea. :) And when I said she prefers arms or a stroller to feet on the ground, I actually meant specifically outside. She thinks it’s scary to get set down outside! But inside she does stand if she has something to hold onto and she can pull herself up and walk sideways along a couch, too. She still lacks balance for walking, but I know that will come with time.