March 2020: The Garden

Since we moved into the house in April last year, we missed the earliest Spring garden activity, but we had plenty of time to enjoy and document it this year.

The first major event is the blooming of the magnolia tree. It started earlier than I expected, and when the big buds start to pop open they look mostly pink.

Then they open further, and EVERYWHERE, and the tree turns pink and white.

And it looks lovely from my coffee porch.

And it looks lovely from every window on the second floor.

And then the green leaves start to pop out right as the last flowers are blooming, so there's a brief time of seeing the giant pink and white flowers and the fresh green leaf shoots together.

Then the giant petals start to fall and if you don't pick them all up in a very timely manner, they turn to a grass-killing thick slimy carpet. This picture is adorable, but little hands aren't actually that helpful at picking up the petals. I tried paying a couple kids for the job and they got tired and bored long before they made a dent in the magnolia carpet, so it was mostly up to me and Dema. (For the record, any time a job is mostly up to "me and Dema," what it really means is I start a thing and Dema finishes it, or we start a thing and she ends up doing most of it while I distract Agnes from ruining the thing or getting hurt, and take pictures of her cute little chubby toddler hands.)

This tree in the street level garden was another early bloomer and so pretty!

And lots of hyacinth, which I love because I think they are the best smelling bulb of all.

We tore up the yard pretty well last fall when it was soft and muddy a lot, so I seeded it with a mix of native grasses, groundcovers, and mini clover. Agnes helped lay the straw over the seeds.

Oh but before I could seed it I had the boys use a manual plug to aerate the dirt. This was only a couple weeks into Rona Lockdown but with the wet and cool weather and no climbing gym or indoor skate park or visits with friends or church classes, they were already dealing with a surplus of energy.

In order to bring a little interaction of sorts into the lockdown, some neighborhoods posted a list of something fun to make and post in your window each week so people out on walks could find them; it started with Easter eggs since all of the Easter egg hunts were canceled, then they added other things for the following weeks. I found the easiest way to brighten someone's day would just be to put a toddler in the window.

This picture is clearly from a different day - I think I was walking around outside trying to get her to fall asleep but she only wanted to watch the birds and airplanes.

I walked out the kitchen door one day to see the swingset smiling at me. I still don't know if one of the kids set it up like that on purpose or if it was a happy accident, but I laughed for a long time.

Random rainbow picture! Edie is always up for weird stuff like this. The rainbow was fading fast and I only had my phone on me, but it's pretty good placement!

All of the kids are always up for S'mores on the patio. 

I love this space. The "outdoor living areas" as realtors like to say are definitely one of my favorite things about this house. A year later and I still marvel at how we ended up in a home so beautifully fitting for us.

March 2020: More Farm Time

With all of our regular commitments suddenly cancelled, we had no reason not to jet out to the Hermann farm on a regular basis. For much of March through June, we went out for a couple days each week. It has been a welcome distraction from all the other things the kids are missing! Given the fire and coats in these pictures, I guess it was a cool March week.

The kids' screen time is still generally pretty limited, but that doesn't mean Agnes isn't totally attached to a screen the second it turns on. And to the consternation of anyone trying to play a game on a phone or tablet, she insists on touching the screen constantly to help you out. Just look at this picture and imagine Agnes yelling "EE-YA! EE-YA" (her name for Olivia) while trying to touch the screen and Olivia trying to play while blocking Agnes's hand with her arm.

The amazing thing about the farm in March is that there are no spiders or ticks out so we can go trekking through the forest trails with no tick checks afterwards.

By summer the creek will be mostly dry, but in the spring the waterfall is beautiful!

The kids found a vine and were using it to jump back and forth over the creek.

Daddy likes to go into town in the morning to sit at the coffee shop and bring donuts back with him.

I think there are actually two teenagers living in our house, not one.

It took a few consistent visits but Agnes is pretty well accustomed to Charlie now. She points and yells at him when he barks, tries to jump on his back, and only gets really upset when he sneaks some food out of her hands that she was trying to eat while walking around at his level.

Forest walk selfie.

I guess it was colder the next day. Or maybe this was from another trip? My phone pictures keep getting mixed around when I put them on my computer and the date info is off so who knows!

I am sure that everyone else was loading branches and trees onto the trailer while Edie and Charlie supervised (but again not sure which trip to the farm this was!).

I have no idea who took these pictures but I found them on my camera. This would be a great picture of Catherine if she wasn't waving a green glowstick bracelet in front of her face!

I dearly hope these two get through the teen years with their friendship intact and end up close friends as adults. (Yes, they're so old I can almost imagine them as adults now!)

I don't know what Edie is doing, but she's hard at work with the measuring tape and a bunch of bracelets.

I'm pretty sure she borrowed the measuring tape from Grandpa, who is building the custom bunk beds in the very cool bunk room!

We helped by putting Agnes in a big basket so she couldn't run into the bunk room and get in the way.

Then we helped more by putting a train engineer hat on her.

March 2020: Adorableness From Agnes

Here is a host of adorable pictures and videos of Agnes, about 17 months old. I'll try to remember what she had going on in her life at that point.

This is from Edie's last ballet class. I try to keep Agnes distracted with markers since she loves coloring and especially loves taking off the marker lids and putting them back on.

But even a giant box of markers can't keep her from standing right at the edge of the dance space and peeking around the curtain so she can watch Edie.

Sunglasses make "I found you" an even more entertaining game.

Agnes is well into the phase of toddlerhood where she mimics everything you do and say and has to do everything herself and has very specific ideas about what she wants to have happen but doesn't have the vocabulary to relay that info to anyone else. That last one is clearly the most frustrating for all involved, but the first one is pretty much always adorable.

If putting on a hat was her idea, Agnes will keep a hat on and look adorable. The kids have already figured out that anytime they want Agnes to think something was her idea, they simply have to do the thing first and let her see them. Big kid puts on a hat and acts like it's all sorts of fun, and Agnes immediately demands to have the hat. Easy peasy.

But wrapping Mary's hair all around her face and then "patting" it (i.e. smacking really hard) into place was definitely Agnes's original idea.

We had some beautiful days in March. I wish I could say Agnes made a regular habit of napping in her swing while I worked in the yard, but alas this was a one-time-only event.

Mostly she still naps on me.

Agnes really likes all animals, and since the only animals she regularly sees in the yard are squirrels, birds, and chickens, and of those the only ones she can get close to are the chickens, well she really loves the chickens.

And now you need videos.

Agnes can open most doors and cupboards and drawers now, which means nothing is safe. And she really enjoys the process of emptying things one by one.




Agnes is determined to learn to jump, and she practices a lot on the old pocket door tracks in the house.



I know she's only been around 17 months, but this is my favorite-ever video of Agnes and might be my favorite for the rest of her life. Her rhythm can't be beat.

March 2020: A Farm Trip and Global Shutdown

March 2020 brought something none of us expected: the world began reacting to the spread of a novel coronavirus, and in a very short amount of time, most of the globe simply closed down. Everything "non-essential" was banned from operating, including schools, shops, sports, restaurants, travel, and churches. Since we homeschool, much of our daily life wasn't much affected, but two of those categories clearly hit our family hard. Churches were no longer allowed to hold public services, so even though Michael continued to go to work and say Mass every day, it was pretty much just him and a server, and us on Sundays. The Little Flowers group that I teach, children's choir, the Blue Knights and First Communion groups the boys were in, Atrium, the Schola Mary sings with... all of our classes and groups were cancelled. Michael was no longer admitted to hospitals for patient visits, the church administrative staff started working from home, and there was generally little for him to attend to.

The second big thing was sports. We went from a volleyball schedule that generally consumed 10-15 hours a week to nothing. The season was at first put on hold for a couple weeks, then a few more weeks, then simply ended. Gussie was signed up for Spring baseball but that never even got a practice in. Edie's ballet class was cancelled (including the recital that they had *just* started learning and she was already over the moon excited about performing for everyone come June). As far as commitments go, our schedule was wiped clean. Catherine was the hardest hit on this front, having made such amazing strides in her volleyball skills and having put so much time and effort into it day after day for months, only to have the end of the season and Regionals be swept away just as she felt she was making good progress. It was frustrating and disappointing, to say the least.

The silver lining in this clean sweep of our schedule was lots of time for visiting the farm. With nothing to report to in the city, we could spend several days a week at the farm and even Michael could join us most of the time. It was a welcome distraction for all of us.

I don't know what's happening here. It's a pretty normal state of affairs, me not knowing what is motivating the kids to do what they do, but my lack of insight makes it no less enjoyable. I love these goofs.

Anges loves loves loves the spider swing now.

She also loves coloring with anything she can get her hands on that makes marks on things. And she prefers sitting on counters to sitting in chairs.

I told Michael to jump really high and see if he could match up his body with the bear skin hanging on the wall. I think he got closer than this but my camera skills failed him.

The basement has a lot of room for gymnastics. Watch for Agnes's cartwheels!



I think after the amount of time we spent at the farm in March, April, May, and June, we owe Grandma approximately 2,483 cups of chai latte. The kids discovered the chai latte pods for the keurig, and discovered how quick and easy the keurig brews up the chai latte, and they can't stop. I have now limited them all to one chai latte per visit, regardless of how many days we are there.

Gussie has lots of favorite things about the farm, but I think his favorite favorite thing is fire. There is much work to be done still clearing dead trees from the woods (and live ones that grow giant painful spears from their trunks) so Grandpa piles them up and starts a gigantic fire now and then. Gussie loves to go back out to the burn pile as soon as he wakes up in the morning and poke around with a stick until he finds a tiny ember that is still hot so he can nurse it back to a real flame and then fire.

Everyone helps clear the trees!

The natural sand pit still a delightful mystery to me. It's in a great spot near the house and the kids spend so much time playing in it. I estimate it will still be a couple decades before they carry away enough sand stuck to themselves after playing that there is a noticeable lack in the sand pit.

Edie made this castle with a natural flag of stick and leaf.

Mary's favorite spots are the hammock and the screen porch, where she can sit and read for hours and hours and hours. Until I pop in and start taking pictures of her.

This is the only way I can get a picture of the two of us. Selfie culture for the win.

Then Catherine comes and takes over the selfie camera.

Hummus face. Agnes would eat bowls of hummus with a spoon, but since that seems weird somehow, I usually give her a single stick of cucumber or baby carrot, and she uses that as a spoon for her hummus which is somehow better.

Being at the farm always tires everyone out! This picture is a veritable "what not to do with seat belts and kids" lesson, and I was somewhat embarrassed by it when Mary showed it to me, but... it is what it is. And it's a good thing Agnes is sleeping in that rear-facing seat because with all the driving back and forth to Hermann she has relapsed a bit in her car tolerance; if she's not sleeping, she tugging at her buckles and crying "out out" or "muuuuuummmmmmmyyyyyyyyyyy!"