...weekend

Busy week and busier weekend...glad it is over...

...Friday night was the annual beginning of summer party at the daycare. This year the theme was "Renaissance" Fair and all of the workers were dressed up in midieval costumes. They had the following...though don't know where they got this from as food choices...turkey drumsticks; pickle on a stick; kabobs of fruit and then some salads and barbecue chicken legs and various desserts and other things brought by the families. But the real fun at this party is the pool being open. I got there around 6:10 cuz I was home working on the benches after work and had to get into my bathing suit. We had a great time in the pool; the kids ate nearly nothing and by 8:00 we were all beat!

...Saturday I woke with a migraine and it looked like it would be a badddddd day. Ultimately, I was better by the evening and I even had a chance to work on the benches some and to try and paint several cabinet doors to choose which one I want to us. Then it was the annual Med-Peds party to welcome the new interns. This is the first year in about 15 that it hasn't been at my house! What a relief! We got to go over and just relax. The yard was great and the kids had plenty to do so I could just sit and relax.

...Sunday, everyone actually slept in (or was quiet in Riley's case) until around 8:00 am. We got to eat breakfast and watch a little TV, go outside for a while and then...it was lunchtime. Mommy slept during naps (which almost never happens) and then I took the kids to a local elementary school to play on the playground (and we took a little picnic snack) ...by the time it was dinner, we stopped to do some Walgreens and CVS shopping and then went home to my home-made Mac & Cheese - which everyone loved!

...CVS...spent $3.50 out of pocket (plus $24 ECB's from 2 weeks ago) and got...2 mascara's, 1 professional strength right guard deodorant and a toy for Matthew and candy for the other 3...also got $12 ECB's back

...Walgreen's...spent $15 out of pocket (plus $5 in "register rewards") and got...3 packages of 40 diapers, 2 boxes of Honey Bunches of Oats, and 2 oral B power toothbrushes...and got $7 RR's back.

...Today, Matthew started his summer school. Had a little trouble getting things together but he was on time for the bus. Addison only started to cry when I was leaving and was pretty distractable so looks like I might make it thru the summer.

...I'll close with a couple of pictures of my girls from last week at the daycare. They love the pool!

Ugh...

...woke up this morning with a splitting headache...well should say that I was awoken...Addison crawled downstairs then started shouting when she didn't find anyone else awake...at 5 am!!! Ugh...we all got in late yesterday after a day of swimming and fun. I went to bed at 10 pm but wasn't feeling well when I went to bed and tossed and turned all early morning...I can remember thinking that I should go get tylenol, but I couldn't get myself up from the bed...

...also, my stomach was upset and I was dizzy when I stood up. Definately a migraine, I haven't had one for a couple of years. By the time I finished work, it was 11 am and my headache was better but my stomach and dizziness was still there. Finally around 4 PM I was feeling better all the way but I am TIRED today. Not one of my better mommy days...little patience when I am sick.

...hopefully tomorrow will be a better day. did some work on the kitchen benches today. got the bottom cushions re-upholstered with this really cute beige vinyl material which feels like suede. I also painted two of the kitchen cabinet doors. I can't decide what color to paint them so I got two different brown colors and painted each a different brown. I'm going to let Wendy and Pat help me choose...hopefully bring them out into the light tomorrow.

A better week...

So, it's Friday afternoon and no one has been kicked out of daycare so...it already is a better week than last week....
...its a good thing too because work has been busier, lots of consults each day but I have still been able to get out and do some errands before picking up the kids at 6:00. Still working on my kitchen project, but I have it nearly all cut out and plan on finishing the cuts this weekend and spending sometime sanding the "joints" where I will attach the benches together. Also hope to get out on time today so maybe I can stop at a fabric store and find the fabric to re-cover the cushions for the seats.
It is going to be hot this weekend so hoping that my air conditioner stays on while I am in the garage sanding...

What a great day?....

Yesterday we attended the 8th Annual Kazahkstan/International Adoption Family Picnic hosted by a family who lives in a rural suburb of Richmond. They live on a farm like area with a pool, a large (like 1/4 mile) paved driveway, with a large grassy area with swingsets and sandboxes. I've been invited to this party 2 or 3 years in a row but haven't had time to make it to it. So, yesterday I decided to go and what a great time we had!

...The boys brought their bikes and the driveway was a great place to practice riding without training wheels. Matthew was on his bike nearly the entire afternoon. Logan made friends with a couple of girls and spent hours on the swingset...and in the pool. Riley loved swiming in the 4 ft pool without a float and sliding down the slide. He really is getting good at swimming. Addison charmed everyone she met - though she was a little clingy given that in the past 24 hours she had been at daycare, had a babysitter till she went to bed, had me for 2 hours and then the babysitter came back again...oh no!!...yup, she kept pretty tight to me for the afternoon. But, she played in the kiddy pool, ate 2 (or maybe 3) sno-cones, smiled alot and basically had a great time.

...I ended up knowing 4 other families there and had a good time sitting and conversing with other adults - with only one kid glommed onto me!- and even she was walking around me and playing a little. In no time at all, it was after 7 pm and the food was gone and even Matthew had eaten some cake and ice cream! We all dragged ourselves back to the car and drove home.

...As we were driving home Matthew said..."that was the best party I've ever been to!!!!" I have to say, it really was fun.

Tiring week...

...I'm sitting here in the hospital at 10:40 pm and you cannot imagine the bad memories this is bringing back...not only the constant people walking up to me asking me to do this or that but that coupled with boredom of waiting for the next shoe to drop and it getting closer and closer to the time I get to go home and knowing that if there is an admission this late I am going to be incredibly resentful.

...Why am I here? well, this is the annual Pediatric resident's night off. so attendings stay in house and cover for them. I am the attending for the evening part (5-12 pm) and while I am only supposed to be covering for General Ped admissions and patients, I have now officially put in orders and done things for H/O, GI, and Pulmonary.

...I started back to work on Monday only to have Addison be kicked out of daycare with a fever. Luckily she was not too sick and was able to go back on Wednesday. But, that meant I had to take her to work with me on Tuesday and I didn't get much but the bare minimum done. Then, Thursday, Logan gets booted for fever...okay, now I have to ask (thank you thank you thank you) my friend Beth to go pick her up cuz I am swamped with work and can't get there in the hour window. Logan looks really punky and I start to get a little anxious...you know, I found that tick the day before. So, being the non-hypochondriac I am, I get her some medicine cuz, you know, I really can't deal with her having Rocky Mountain Spotted fever or anything like that...Meanwhile she comes to work with me today and I have to pay this student who is working for me this summer $10 an hour extra to watch her while I am seeing patients...so much for frugal fanny!

...then, I have arranged for her to go to a neighbors house for the afternoon cuz the babysitter (who works at the kids daycare) doesn't get off till 6 PM and I have to start my shift at 5 PM...and then pay the painter and go back to the hospital.

...what painter you ask? well, after my DIY escapade with the breakfast nook, the rest of my house was looking like Sh** so I was talking to one of the residents and her husband does painting. so, he has been at my house all week painting the kitchen/family room, the hall/stairs/and foyer area (you know that two story foyer area I have with the vaulted 16 foot ceilings on the second floor!)...yup you guessed it - I won't be doing those. Then, he noticed the water damage in my dining room and said...you have to fix that...so he did that today. He also "has a guy" who does hardwood floor repair and he's going to fix me up with that when he comes back to town in 5 weeks and also has a guy with carpet who will do the upstairs (again when he comes back in town in 5 weeks)...

...it looks amazingly good but I will be glad for the 5 weeks to get everything re-organized.

...oh yeah and I bought a new dishwasher and it was delivered yesterday and I was so excited not to have the sound of a train going thru my kitchen that I ran it half full yesterday. It is amazingly quiet.

...so, now all I need to do is paint the kitchen cabinets, get a new stove and microwave and get a new countertop and I'll have a completely re-modeled downstairs.

...anyone have some extra money lying around?

Eeeek!

Okay, I know there are lots of you who have been there...done that...but tonight I had a first. I was putting the kids together and was rubbing Logan's back and shoulders while lying in her bed and I went to rub her head and found "something" firm. So, we get up and ...you betcha...a tick!!!! Ugh! Small, black and gross. I got it out but wanted to hose her down with disinfectant. Tomorrow all of the kids are getting the twice over!

Annoyed...

Okay, there are several things that are annoying me today and over the past several weeks. I usually don't vent much in this blog but I just have to share an email I got this morning...

"...With all of the confusion of the last day of school I forgot to send home report cards. I will leave the report cards at the front office for you to pick up at your convenience. Hope everyone has a great summer! Sorry for the inconvenience,Mrs. G"

...so, WTF!!! what else do you have to do on the last day (half-day actually) of school except to give out the report cards and have a party?! And...at my convenience I can just ...take all 4 kids, go to the school, take them all out of their car seats, walk into the office - oh by the way - what are the office hours during the summer?!?- get the report card which isn't going to really tell me anything knowing what she has written on the previous ones - and then trudge all 4 kids back to the car, hear the bickering, get them buckled in, and drive away...Sorry for the inconvenience - ha!

There is no love lost between me and this woman who, for some reason, haven't clicked since I met her last year at this time. I find her opinionated and inflexible (as, I'm sure, she finds me)...but, the last straw for me was when she argued with me at an IEP meeting that the 1 teaspoon of chocolate syrup my son was taking his medicine with was making him hyperactive.

So, we've had this almost passive aggressive relationship the last 9 weeks and then I get this email (at least it wasn't only my son who didn't get his report card)...I'm thinking...how lame can you be. This is the special ed teacher too so she only has 11 kids in her class. And what is the worst thing? Well, this special ed class is K-2 so I have 2 more years of her! UGH!!!

CVS

Good day at CVS today...two trips...spent $20 (total) out of pocket...got $22 in Extra Bucks to spend on my next trip...
Bought: 6 boxes of Cereal (4 Honey Nut Cheerios; 2 Fiber one) with $1 off each coupon
2 boxes of Q-tips (500 count)
4 12-can cases of Coke products
2 bags of pretzels (it was getting late and Addison needed a snack)
14 bags of various candies (oh my kids are going to be so happy)

Author, Author!

I have been reading this website called "Adoption Under One Roof". Their aim is to "cover adoption from every angle, every view, for everyone". Anyway, I am (minimally) participating in some of their forums and was asked a couple of weeks ago if I would be a guest blogger. So, today my "Joy" post was published on this blog.

You can find it at http://ouradopt.com/adoption-blog/jun-2008/guestblogger/joy-0

...And for those of you who were wondering...Addison continues to do well at daycare. She has gone 3 days so far (and luckily for mommy) and her response to seeing me continues to be " excited-high pitched squeal - followed by a death run to me - and today repeatedly happily slapping both of my arms and kissing me. I could get used to all of this love.

Update on the heat.

...we had a bunch of things to do today but didn't try to do too much. The kids and I went out in the backyard at 8:30 and within 5 minutes I was sweating. But, while they played, I put (back) together the doll house that L. got for Christmas. One side of it had blown over in the high winds and storms we have had the last few weeks and last week, Matthew decided to push the rest of it over and jump on top of it. Luckily the plastic is pretty resilient (and he is pretty lightweight!) and then I cut off the wood on our back fence gate which won't open because the ground isn't level there...it still won't open completely but it is better.

...then I remembered that the boys REALLY needed haircuts and in my current penny pinching-trying to pay for the adoption expenses mode, I am not going to spend $25 on haircuts. So, one at a time I put them outside and I cut their hair. I have gotten better at doing boy haircuts over the 5 years I have had them - though they have gotten less likely to just want a buzz cut. But, I have a very expensive pair of hair shears (LEFTY) and a pretty good buzzer and we got it done. I think both of them came out better than I have ever done them before. I am starting to be able to "thin" out the top part of Riley's and still have it lay flat. Matthew's cowlick is another thing but it looks cute!

...by the time I finished doing that it was lunch time...Addison ate an entire PB & J sandwich and then about 2 cups of watermelon chunks. Then she and Logan took a nap. They woke up in time for a little running under the hose and then we went to dinner with Wendy and Pat.

...we finished up our excursion with a trip to Target to buy Matthew another DS since Logan broke his other one.

...now we are home and I am trying not to move too much. Hope you all are keeping cool

It's not the heat...

...it's the humidity! Isn't that the old saying? well, it is definitely BOTH here in the mid-Atlantic this weekend. We had a wonderful, cool, relatively non-humid spring month of May but, this week has gotten progressively hotter. Today the forcast is for temps of 99 with heat index of 107 and tomorrow is supposed to be even hotter!

...so, what do you do with 4 kids under 7 when the recommendations are to stay inside because it is too DAM* hot?? It is a nightmare! Of course, it didn't start well...

...Riley woke at 6 am as usual...so, he went downstairs...Logan was content to sleep next to me until she heard him ask if he could have a popsicle (and me saying yes if he ate it over the table)...so, then I stay in bed till around 7 with various visitors (including a bob on the nose from a toy being thrown at me by my newest- I guess she wanted me to get up!)

...downstairs, meanwhile, the "boy who can't just eat one"...had found the brownies he and I had made last night and wasn't content to just make a mess downstairs and have the popsicle that I had told him he could have, but he had to (with Logan's help because she can't say no to sweets either) eat S*I*X (yes, you read it right!) brownies - leaving one (so I couldn't say they ate them all!)...I thought there was something funny when I saw empty baggies on the ground and didn't realize till I was making breakfast that the brownies were gone!

...so, needless to say, there is some tension in the house this morning. The two of them are banned from snacks all day. It will be a very tense day when the snack kids are kept from snacks all day.

...cabin fever is mostly described in cold weather but I bet it can happen in the heat too!

Joy!

Today, my newest daughter, attended daycare for the first time since her adoption. I have been off of work for over 2 months. In the next two weeks, I will work 2 days a week and then it will be FULL time. I knew this was coming, I have gone through it with my other 3 children as well, but somehow it was different this time.

When I first adopted my two older boys (in 2003), I read all of the information about child care options for adopted kids - how most people felt that large day-care centers were counter productive to attachment because it just put the child back into an institutional setting and that they wouldn't learn what it meant to be in a home or family. But, working in a large medical center that had a wonderful and caring on-site daycare center, I decided that having my new kids close was going to work for me. I made the committment (to myself) to never allow them to have 3 meals at the center and 3 months after I brought them home from Russia, I enrolled them. For my younger son, the transition was relatively easy. He was a laid back baby of 12 months who could weather any storm - as long as there was a bottle within reach.

For my older son (21 months at enrollment), it probably was one of the top 3 best decisions I have made for him. He was used to having a lot of children around. During my 3 month leave, he would regularly go to my back door and stare out at the neighbor children playing. His first English word was "shoes" (as in "lets put on some shoes" meaning we were going outside and he might have a chance to play with those other kids and not be only with me and his (at the time) pretty boring baby brother! On the day I brought him to the daycare center, he literally ran away from me to play with the other kids and the toys. Ultimately, it was the other kids who taught him what was the difference between a family and the center and he readily followed their lead.

When I brought home my older daughter 2 and 1/2 years later, I never had any doubts where she would go for daycare. She also was a young baby and adapted well - no doubt aided by the fact that her two very protective older brothers were also there for the first 6 months or so. A few months later, after my older son started school and needed a different center for after-care, I switched all of the kids to a program nearer to my house.

So now, I am home with daughter #2. Things are a little different. I spent a large portion of my allotted leave in Russia because the 10 day waiting period wasn't waived. My time at home with her has (literally) flown by. With 4 kids now, I have been seriously considering whether a nanny would be a better (or at least cheaper) option for daycare. In the back of my mind, I remember the recommendations from my reading 5 years ago. But something about having only one other person spending more hours a day with my child than I do ...something about that just seems like it would be counterproductive to me.

And honestly, her adjustment has seemed to be going better than I can even expect. This girl who was described to me by the orphanage director as "someone who will always have trouble with transitions" and who cried bitter tears each and everytime I visited her in Russia (19 separate visits of 1.5 - 2 hours each) and who, in Russia, was always trying to get me to leave and wanting to go back to her room - she shares more kisses and smiles and giggles than almost any other child I have encountered. She has displayed more signs of attachment in such a short period of time than I could even imagine. I truly believe that she was "waiting" for a mother to shower with love - and am blessed that I am that woman!

So, it is with great anxiety that I brought her to the daycare center this morning...Would she feel rejected? confused? angry? In the last month, she has been accompanying me to her older sister's class and has progressively become less timid and more interested in playing with the toys. We have been spending about 1/2 hour each morning and afternoon at the center. When we arrived this morning, her class was going outside. I went with her and put her into a swing (one of her favorite activities) and after about 10 minutes, I left.

Those tears which I haven't seen and sobs which I haven't heard for over a month were there as I said goodby...but her teacher picked her up and started to comfort her. Later, when I called, she was running around in the sprinkler! When I arrived to pick up the children, I walked into her room and...

WOW!!!! her eyes lit up, she ran to me and said "mama" and kissed my face about 20 times! I can honestly say that I have now seen pure JOY. I wish she had the words to express what she was feeling because I can only put my own spin on it. What I do know is that even though our "exclusive" time together has been shorter than I wish, we are definitely on track for a healthy and loving attachment - and I don't think that daycare could interfere with that!

Random monday musings...

...so, we are all sitting here waiting for the kids dentist appointment (need to leave in a few minutes) and the two boys decide to go outside. They ask if they can take Addison so I say okay...a few minutes later Logan goes outside and Riley opens the door for her (so I can stay sitting and working on my computer)...he shuts the door and then re-opens it with a big smile on his face and says to me..."mom, you get your own time!"...sometimes you want to kiss them...even a 5 year old can get that you need some time on your own (and I guess - for him - it is okay as long as it isn't my own time in my own bed!)

...what is your personality? a do it and get it over with kind of person? or a take your time and do it in small pieces so it doesn't hurt as much all at once? I'm sure you can guess what kind I am? not sure...okay...I am a single working woman with 4 kids under the age of 7...mmm...when I was an intern and resident, I always did the hardest rotations at the beginning of the year because I figured I could do anything for a month at a time...and today I am waiting to go to a dentist appointment...where all 3 kids are going to be seen. Yup, I am scheduled to take 3 kids aged 6, 6 3/4 and 3 to the dentist while carrying a newly adopted 2 year old with us. Crazy you say? yup. But, why not get the pain over all at once...I guess the only downside is how much pain we will cause the rest of the people at the office and the staff...oh well? its all about me...what about you?

Not much new...

...today was a better day than yesterday...not great but I still have a voice at the end of the day...we went to the pool (only took 20 minutes to get everyone dressed, everything packed and out the door)...I've been putting Addison into this infant float cuz I am a little worried about her stability - even in the baby pool. Today she wanted to get out so I let her and she did pretty well...fell a couple of times but was able to right herself.
...even Matthew has been swimming under water in the baby pool and tried his "wings" without a float in the big pool and Logan was swimming with her face in as well. Think this is the year that the 3 older ones will get it - especially with the swimming lessons at Tuckaway.