Why travel sucks even though it is awesome

I have what I think is a respiratory infection, which came on the heels of a nasty cold, which started in the midst of our long weekend of travel in mid-July during which we slept in hotels and spent hours in the car. This awful monster illness is eerily similar to what I got immediately following Spring Break week, when we took a short vacation trip. I think I am sensing a pattern...

When I have a cold, I feel like I am just waiting out life until things get back to normal. My energy is sapped. I have very little to offer Olivia, who is bored stiff and watching her upteenth episode of Disn#y Jr crap just to pass the time. I am so sorry, kid. I would love to take you to the pool or the park or, heck, the backyard. But the steamy, hot weather sends me into fits of coughing, and I'm just trying to keep breathing as it is. (Ok, let's face it...I would avoid the steamy hot weather even if I was well. But I might be more inclined to drive to the library or something.)

The thing is, I really look forward to trips. It is fun to plan and think about doing something out of the ordinary. It's good to have a diversion from the routine. But the price I pay...it just sucks.

Here's what I don't get...I am the only one getting sick. How is that possible? What makes me more susceptible to whatever germs we are encountering when the three of us travel together? And how can I fix that?

Ugh. There are no answers. I hate that I'm spending precious Summer time wasting away the days being sick. Babysitting resumes on August 10th. That's just two weeks away! Must get out of the house while we can!

So. We are going "to town" to buy canning jars and spices to make some dill pickles this afternoon. High excitement going on here.

Whoa, baby. Summer is busy.

Geez. It's been almost three weeks since I posted. Whoever called it Summer "break" was seriously disturbed.

We have been busy. That is the understatement of the year. Our homestudy has taken off. In the last three weeks we have completed all of the paperwork, attended our homestudy interview and class, had our home visit, and now we sit on our hands and wait until the agency finishes our report. Probably about four weeks to activation. And away we go!

Olivia has been talking a lot about baby brother or sister. She often says she wants a baby brother AND sister. I tell her it's a tall order. She's been repeating that to everyone. "I'm going to have a baby brother and sister, but Mommy says it's a tall order, but that's OK." So. Possible, but not likely. But she can keep praying.

Meanwhile, Olivia seems to get the whole adoption thing. She knows that she grew in Miss Samantha's tummy and knows without a doubt that we are Mommy and Daddy. I guess that's good enough. I'm sure more questions will come with baby, but she seems to drink stuff in and process it pretty well, so I'm not really worried.

We spent last weekend in the car, mostly. We visited Joe's Grampa (10 hour drive), who just turned 95 and was having a big party. He is 95 but with the energy of most people in their 70s, and it's always fun to see him. We came home by way of my brother's house (5 hour drive), where we saw my niece in their local amateur circus. It was fabulous. It's really amazing what those kids do. Then we came home. Five days, four nights, four different hotels, more than 25 hours in the car. Olivia napped less than 90 minutes (total) in the car in ALL that time. But she slept well at night. And she was pretty well behaved in the car. The trip went so much better than expected, except for the "trip cold" I contracted that is now beating me down. *Sigh* The joys of traveling.

Today I'm processing garden produce and trying to rest and stay inside. IT IS HOT. We've had temps in the 90s and dew points in the 80s for, well, what seems like forever. Swimming doesn't even feel good now because most pools are now bath temperature, and the air is so damp that it just feels like pouring hot water over you in a steam bath. Yuck.

Olivia has picked this horribly humid time of year to decide that she wants to experiment with straight hair. So we bought a straight iron and tried. It started out straight-ish. Then after an hour outside it looked like this.
I won't even bother showing you what it looked like by the end of the day. Yikes! But it did give me an opportunity to trim the ends, making it infinitely easier to style. I didn't realize the ends were so damaged and tangled. I blame the hours in the pool.

Oh, speaking of the pool, while we were swimming in one of the hotel pools, Olivia decided to get brave and swim the entire length by herself! I was just a few steps in front of her the whole time, but still...she never needed me. Just jumped in at one end, swam underwater a few feet, then doggie-paddled to the end. The kid is a fish (no lessons, just inborn talent). Too bad the chlorine ruins her hair.

A very happy 4th

Our last visit with Samantha went so well that we decided we wanted to invite her up to see our house and go with us to Local Theme Park. Today seemed to work out well for all of us, so plans were made and cleaning was done (because let's face it...when new people come over, we can't help but clean).

The day started out a little iffy. Samantha had trouble getting to sleep last night and was very, very tired. It rained all morning. But we held fast to our plans and charged forward.

She got here around 10 am, giving us plenty of time for her to play with Olivia in the house and backyard a bit before lunch. We had hoped for this because she hasn't been here, ever. She's never seen Olivia just be Olivia in her own environment. They had a great time. We ate lunch, got things ready and packed the car for our trip to Local Theme Park.

Our afternoon consisted of mostly waterpark attractions. The rain that hung around all morning disappeared by lunchtime, and by about 2 p.m. the sun had shown up and it was getting steamy. Perfect for a little water. Olivia found a new favorite ride...one she had been reluctant to try before (to say the least...she would melt down once she got to the front of the line and refuse to ride). But for some reason (maybe because she didn't want to back out in front of "Miss Samantha") she agreed to let me push her down this super tall water slide. And then we rode it 11 more times. Yeah. She loved it.

We stayed until the end of the day and then watched the fireworks display. Aside from Olivia freaking out a bit over the noise, it was a perfect end to a darn-near-perfect day. Many great memories were made for Olivia AND Samantha. I was thinking that this is what a good open adoption can be. So positive.

A very good day

Joe took the day off Wednesday and we all got dolled up and headed "to town" to attend the ordination celebration for our new bishop. Big event. Lots of people. We were lucky enough to find some of our friends with preschoolers and sit with them, which helped Olivia (and the other kids) survive the nearly-three-hour liturgy.

It was beautiful. The kids were surprisingly well behaved. We left with our good humor still intact (which cannot often be said after certain behavior issues during a regular Sunday Mass, so this was definitely a win).

Close to the end of the liturgy, Joe whispered to ask me if we should call Samantha and see if she was available for a visit. So I texted her, and she promptly texted back, and an hour later we picked her up for what turned out to be the nicest visit we've probably ever had. We went out to eat (at a place that a bunch of our ordination-attending friends also coincidentally chose). Olivia was a little grumpy at first, having taken a 45-minute nap in Daddy's arms at the end of Mass and still not fully awake, but she perked up after a bit. It was relaxed and enjoyable, just like old friends catching up.

Our relationship with Samantha has not always been easy. She has had a lot of drama going on in her life, and it tends to cloud her ability to be fully present to Olivia when we see her. But Wednesday was great. I am really, really hoping for more visits like this one.

Today is the first day in more than a week that we are home. Just home. Olivia hates it.

Last week, Olivia was at Vacation Bible School every morning for three hours. It was HEAVENLY to have three hours to myself every day, and I filled it with a lot of paper chasing (for the homestudy) and errands. As a reward for my "work" during those three hours, I showed up every day in time to watch Olivia and her new pals practice their Bible School songs. She left cheerful every day and was, overall, just easier to deal with. I'm thinking that morning bible school ROCKS and that she's TOTALLY ready for preschool.

Though I enjoyed my mornings alone last week, the addition of Bible School to our schedules did make life a little crazy. We had A LOT going on. And today, we have nothing. Also, it is raining. So I've done copious amounts of laundry and managed to FINALLY prepare my four heads of garden cabbage for fermenting. In six-to-eight weeks, we will be enjoying homemade sauerkraut. And I have more room in the fridge now that the cabbage is gone.

I've been cleaning and going through the pile of (non-adoption-related) paper on my desk and mostly just ignoring Olivia. She, in turn, has been making nonsensical and unnecessary requests every 30 seconds. I know she just wants my attention. But between the hectic schedule and the race to complete the adoption paperwork before our homestudy class next week (and we are almost done, yes, we are paperwork rockstars), I have done NOTHING in this house for more than a week. And it shows.

Here's hoping for a sunny day tomorrow and the freedom to get out and enjoy it!

It's Official! We are signed on for a pile of paperwork.

We went to an information seminar for an adoption agency on Wednesday...an appointment we made several months ago when our homestudy expired and we decided to take a temporary break and then sign on with this other agency. While we had planned this as our starting point (again) for a few months, as it approached I began to feel more and more ready to get this thing going. It is high time we give our child a sibling.

Apparently, my husband was feeling the same way because after the mandatory seminar, he said, "Ok, who do we see to sign up?" We wrote a deposit check and were rewarded with a big stack of paperwork to complete in the next three weeks before our office interview and adoption class.

And away we go.

As I glanced through the paperwork, I felt sorry for the seminar attendees who were approaching adoption for the first time. This is our fourth homestudy, so we were well aware of the crazy scavenger hunt that is involved in the paperwork. And still, opening that packet was daunting. To be approaching this for the first time...I'm just glad I'm not back in that spot again.

Timeline...because of the program we chose and other factors in our life, we are looking at probably an average of 3-6 months from homestudy approval to placement. And this agency has a reputation of being pretty good at meeting those expectations while also providing stellar counseling and support to the birthmoms. It seemed like a pretty good fit after two years of "active waiting".

I'm excited. Are you?

The sun is wearing us all out

Summer looks good on Olivia. Unfortunately, it has been hard on her mood. I think she's just plain worn out. The sun, the heat...she's just tired.

Today was Olivia's very first dance class. We switched from gymnastics for the Summer. It was in the morning, even. And she behaved atrociously. It was embarrassing. Everything she did made it obvious to me that she was tired. She didn't want to do the sequence, then she wanted to do a different song, then she wanted to use the pompoms, then she wanted to dictate the moves they'd be doing. And the instructor was out of her element and just let Olivia, a 3-year-old, take over her class.

I'm not sure we will be going back to dance class.

We came home, and she was a big ball of whine. I fed her at 11:15, let her watch the last 10 minutes of a movie and then MADE her lay down. She was asleep by noon and slept until I woke her up at 2:15.

Now, I will probably pay for that little piece of heaven we call naptime. But I just could NOT spend my whole day with Madamoiselle McCrabby.

As a contrast, this afternoon she cheerfully helped me slice fruits and veggies for dinner. She helped with the dishes. She played nicely by herself. And after dinner, we will take her to the waterpark and let her swim the wave pool until they close, hoping against all hope that the evening sun and water will wear her out for a normal bedtime.

We must figure out a Summer schedule that works. We must.