snow: the aftermath

It's funny looking back at these pictures now, because they are so different from our present reality! Much of the snow (barring the mountains in parking lots, which we expect to be living with for a long time) has melted, and yesterday when we went outside it felt like spring! We could see grass, it was warm enough to leave my hood down, I could smell earth and plants (what is it about the olfactory process that I can't smell anything when it's cold?), and the sun felt wonderful on my face. Esther splashed in a puddle with a stick, and we both had a relaxing time. But the snow was an amazing experience while it lasted, and I wanted to share a few more pictures before it faded from my mind.

Admittedly, the snow bank owes part of its height to snow shoveled off of the walkway--but look, it's nearly as tall as Esther!

This snow bank is a more average height.  Still nothing to sneeze at!

This is what twenty or so inches of snow looks like on top of a car.











Nobody's going to be using this parking spot for a while!

Queen of the mountain!  (To give you an idea of the height of this pile, you can just see Tim's head behind it.  Yes, he was standing fully upright.)

communication

It's really fun watching Esther figure out how to use language. She is definitely working on grammar right now, trying to apply past tense ("The ball rolleded"), auxiliary verbs ("Are you want some crackers?"), and negatives ("No my hippo!"). She seems to be developing pretty normally, though sometimes I wonder about her transposition of sounds (there were several she did chronically, but the only one that comes to mind right now is "wiper dipes" for "diaper wipes") and words ("May I drink glass from your water?"). She has also learned lots of workarounds when a word doesn't come to mind immediately: we hear "thingy" a lot, "stuff" from time to time, and at least once, "thingamabobber." In any case, she is learning more and more vocabulary, and figuring out creative ways to say what she wants. A couple of recent funnies:

She was peering into my ear one evening, and when she started poking her fingers into it, I said, "Hey, that's my private ear!" Tim joked, "As opposed to your public ear?" "No," Esther replied, "that's the other one."

Last night she wanted to shut the door to the bedroom partway. So she said, "Let me close it in half."

a story

Esther wanted to read me a story. The book she was using was a devotional book that I think mostly has pictures of flowers and such. The story went as follows:

Jesus God every day. Then Jesus fell in the water! God said, "Don't fall in the water." Then Jesus went boom [illustrated by jumping off the chair and landing on her knees].

After that the story got a little muddled and I (and Esther too, I think!) lost the flow of it.

On a related note, a few nights ago Esther was praying and started getting distracted, so I finished up for her. She was offended at being cut off, until I told her that she could talk to God anytime, and she could talk to God in her crib after she went to bed if she wanted. As she absorbed this idea, a delighted grin spread across her face. I didn't actually hear any talking from her (though I had the Olympics on, so I might not have), but when I went later to re-tuck her in she said, "I talk to God in my crib. Then I go to sleep!" I'm not sure if the statement was supposed to be past tense or future tense, but...may this be the beginning of a life-long, two-way conversation!

Chunjie Kuaile!

That is, Happy Spring Festival! This is the greeting you will hear in the northern parts of China around Chinese New Year, which the Chinese (at least in Shandong) usually call Spring Festival. It's pronounced something like Choon-jeeah kwy-luh. The actual day was February 14th this year, but we did most of our celebrating on the 13th, when we shared a Chinese New Year's party with the Chinese fellowship that we attend. Esther had been watching the Chinese New Year episode of Nihao, Kailan, so she was excited to get to wear special Chinese New Year clothes like Kailan. She was also, naturally, excited about seeing her friends and eating homemade dumplings, a traditional Spring Festival food and one of her favorite meals. Here are a couple of pictures we took (at an earlier date) of her in her Spring Festival jacket.

And it's still coming down!

Our historic "blizzard of 2010" is slowly winding down, but we don't even need those last few inches to make this an amazing experience! I'm not sure what the final snow amount will be for our area (I heard 30 inches quoted for Laurel, which is nearby), but I'm pretty confident this snow is deeper than the 20-inch storm we had our first winter in Laurel.

Note: for some reason, the pictures are not formatting the way I'm used to. I apologize for the awkward layout, but hopefully you will be able to tell which text goes with which pictures!

This picture gives an idea of how the snow was coming down earlier in the day. Note the downed tree in the background: the wet snow on its branches was just too much for it!

Esther's zipper on her snowpants is broken, and Tim doesn't have any snowboots, so we improvised. Behold, the plastic bag gang! (Esther did put a coat on over this getup before going out in the cold.)

The mound of snow to the left is a car. You can just see the side mirror sticking out.

Here is Tim shoveling out our car. He commented that this is the kind of snow where you have to uncover the license plate first, to make sure you're digging out the right vehicle!

The snow is up to Tim's knees! Esther doesn't sink in as far.

This snowdrift (next to the steps leading up to our entrance) is higher than Esther's head!

I don't know if you can really tell in the picture, with the different levels of white snow all blending in to each other, but the actual snow level was somewhere above Esther's waist. She is standing on the sidewalk, which had been cleared by a snowblower earlier in the day (and subsequently accumulated several more inches).

This is a picnic table.

The way the snow stayed on the top of the fence was both fascinating and lovely!

Esther, handygirl

Today we needed to change the batteries in one of Esther's noisy toys. Doing this required removing a tiny screw from the door to the battery compartment. So I got out the screwdriver, at which point Esther begged to use it. I figured that would give me time to fix my hair before she got frustrated and gave up, so I let her have it. I had not even finished my braid when she called to me to tell me that she had done it herself. And she had. Another milestone...I'm not sure whether to be proud or scared!