And away we go...

We have spent three miserable days of sick. On Thursday and Friday night, Olivia and I had a hard time sleeping because of the congestion and sore throat. Last night was better and I'm starting to feel like a normal person again, but now the cold has settled into my chest. I'm developing a nasty chest cough that hurts, and Olivia still talks like a smoker took over her lungs. Miraculously, my husband has escaped all cold symptoms so far, and we're praying it stays that way.

And we're leaving for vacation tomorrow.

I'm glad, at least, that the really miserable cold symptoms are over. If we had left on Friday, our whole trip would have been awful. We are definitely on the mend.

Olivia has been pretty rotten these last few days. I blame the cold and also sugar. She has had no appetite because she can't taste or smell anything, so we couldn't get her to eat or drink anything unless it contained lots of sugar. She was on the verge of dehydrating when we discovered that although she refused any other drink, she would gladly gulp down the juice boxes we had stored away for outings and such. So we were giving them to her one after the other. That came back to bite us this afternoon when we attended a wedding reception and she WOULD. NOT. SIT. STILL. Or eat anything. Except candy mints. She was purposely pulling stuff off of tables and shoving other kids. And since she had had a long nap before we went, my only other thought was that she was reacting badly to all the sugar. *Sigh* So we'll be leaving the juice boxes at home this week.

Between wrestling the child and finding a computer, I may be silent this week. If so, the highlights will appear here next week.

The downside to bringing other toddlers into your house

On Wednesday, Addie showed up at our house with a runny nose and cough. I went into full-on prevention mode and made thorough use of the hand sanitizer all day (for me and the kids). But toddlers are toddlers, and they are experts at sharing their germs. So now Olivia and I are both sick. (I blame school...Addie's parents are both teachers and must have carried something home from work...and this is my life for the rest of the school year.)

Thankfully, I took today "off" to do a presentation for seminarians this morning, so Olivia and I got to sleep in (which kind of makes up for the many times she woke us up last night, but not quite). And after the presentation we will come straight home to nap. Unfortunately, we are leaving on our "vacation" on Monday, so the overall timing is crappy. But when is a "good" time to get a cold?

I say "vacation" because this is our annual family visiting trip. We drive ten hours to another state and then stay in a different hotel for four consecutive nights as we travel around the state seeing various family members. Not exactly relaxing. But the focal point of the trip is a visit to my husband's grandpa, who is 94, and we think it's important to keep doing this every year while we still can.

My husband doesn't have a cold...yet. I can imagine how this is going to affect our trip. I can only hope that the worst is over before we leave on Monday.

Olivia did something this morning that she has never done. She woke up and came out of her room to check to make sure that I was up, and then she went back to her room and closed the door. She didn't really go back to sleep...I thought she just got back in bed for awhile, so I sat down to write this post. A few minutes ago, she came back out of her room and asked for "silly snacks" (yogurt-covered raisins), and I heard her CD player going, so maybe she was just playing and wanted to play alone. Weird.

My project for this week

It's been months since I did a closet overhaul with Olivia's clothes...something I used to do monthly (they grow SO FAST when they are teeny). I haven't been through Olivia's clothes since I put away her winter stuff in May. So yesterday, I trekked up to the attic to see what we had in terms of 3T and 4T for cool weather.

It turns out that there's A LOT! I pack these hand-me-downs away and forget just how many there are. I'm running out of space to put them while we are still using the 2T summer stuff. She can still fit most of it since there are no sleeve lengths to worry about. But the 3T and some of the 4T stuff fits her now, so we'll move into that quickly.

So I'm wondering...what do you do with all of these clothes? We have six huge storage tubs in the attic that are FULL of stuff that she's not wearing now, and five of those are full of stuff she's already grown out of. And that doesn't even include her 0-9 month things, which have been loaned to her baby cousin. We're running out of room! But I don't want to get rid of anything in case we have another girl. Seriously, how to parents of multiple children keep up with all of this stuff?

Let's just focus on a happier subject

I have two sleeping toddlers in my house who went down for nap a full half-hour earlier than usual. I wanted to put them to bed an hour before that. They were NOT good this morning. I don't know if they were both overtired or what, but there was a lot of pushing and hitting and tantrum throwing by both of them. We usually have a little of that, but not ALL MORNING. They had better both get a good long nap.

I would rather not dwell on that, so let's talk about our weekend, shall we?

We had a fun weekend without much on the actual schedule. We opted for a high school football game on Friday night. That was fun for me, particularly because the weather turned suddenly cool late last week and there was a cool breeze that made me think of Fall...ah, Fall! We found a spot on the grass near the track, and Olivia entertained herself by running around and exploring.

On Saturday, we went to Local Theme Park, where Olivia, for the first time, got to ride the big kid rides. Before, she was limited by her height (under 36") to just the kiddie rides and a handful of other 'family' rides that anyone can ride as long as they can sit up and be with an adult. We banned her from the kiddie rides a couple months ago because she learned to unlatch her seatbelt and would do it in the middle of the ride, and that just wasn't acceptable. So we were EXTREMELY limited in what we could do for awhile.

Then, Saturday we thought we'd check...and she hit the mark! There are about 8 more rides she can ride now (all with an adult, but still). Yep, our 21-month-old is now 36 inches tall. How is that possible?

Kid phrases

"Whatcha doin', Mommy?" Olivia says this OFTEN and repeats it until I tell her. Then she asks herself, "Whatcha doin', Libia?"

At the end of snack time, Olivia said, "I wanna go play toys and stop screaming." What?

Yesterday, she was listening as Grampy was trying to talk about something. He started by saying, "This guy..." to which Olivia chimed in, "This guy says blah-blah-blah-blah-blah" and babbled on about some story she made up in her head in a quick and unintelligible way. She can speak in full sentences and clearly, but sometimes she just wants to tell stories to herself in her own little language.

The schedule

When I was little, we never went anywhere. Mom was always busy caring for the little ones and keeping up with the garden and house. It was a rare event when Mom ventured out to go grocery shopping with all five of us in tow. I can only imagine. We did occasionally take off to visit Grandma (my Mom's mom) for the day, but that was about the extent of our outings until we got old enough to participate in sports and school stuff.

We were all active in all kinds of stuff in high school, and then there was college, and then a job that pushed me into the realm of WAY TOO INVOLVED in projects and ministries and social groups. I have spent the last fifteen years running from one event to the next. Even during this past 20 or so months, I've kept up with playgroups and a few volunteer things with Olivia in tow.

Now we are confined to the house five days a week because I'm babysitting. And I thought it would be hard. But you know what? It is SO MUCH EASIER.

Olivia sleeps better. She goes down for naps better and quicker. She's consistently ready for bed at the same time each night and doesn't fight it. She eats more regularly and doesn't throw as many tantrums and is learning all about sharing (in bits and pieces...it's imperfect, but coming along).

So I'm thinking...perhaps the lack of a consistent schedule before was throwing her little system into a tizzy. She is best behaved when she's on a predictable schedule. Go figure.

I guess my Mom knew what she was doing when she kept us all at home most of the time when we were little. While it can be a little isolating (and she didn't even have the internet!), it makes life with a toddler (or, in Mom's case, several small children) much, much easier.

Thinking about the lifebook

I need to start Olivia's lifebook. For those of you outside of the adoption realm, this is a story I will write about my daughter and how she came to be a part of our family. I suppose there's no right or wrong way to do this, but I haven't quite figured out what I want it to be yet and so I haven't started.

I guess part of my issue is that I don't know how to tell Olivia about her adoption because it doesn't seem like a part of our lives any more. I mean, she's just our daughter, and we're just her parents. Except that I know that adoption is still and always will be a part of our lives. And the way Olivia views it will affect the way she sees the rest of the world, and it just seems important that the story is told in a way that will help her understand how precious she is and how she was very much loved and wanted all along. By us. But you see...that's where I'm having trouble. How on earth do you explain to your child, whom you love with all your heart, the circumstances that resulted in her birth when those circumstances are what they are?

I'm not making any sense. Do you get what I'm trying to say? I am discovering where the loss that social workers talk about in adoption seminars is going to become important.

I've been reading some open adoption blogs, and that concept now seems so foreign to me. At one time, I thought it might become us. We were on the road to a greater openness...we had exchanged phone numbers with Olivia's birthmom and talked monthly and shared kid stories. We were even planning a meeting. That was a year ago...and then her life started falling apart and we completely lost contact with her. Not that we didn't try...it just didn't work out the way I had hoped.

I still think about her now and then. When Olivia does something particularly funny or clever, I stop to think...I wonder if her birthmom has some of these quirky traits. For Olivia's sake, I had hoped to maintain some sort of contact. And now I wonder if Olivia will mourn this lack of connection to her birth family.

I need to start buying some adoption-related children's books and start introducing the subject to our very smart little girl. It's time.