Filed under: life in general
- chocolate chip pancakes for breakfast
- game time after breakfast – Parcheesi and card games
- planted 36 tulip bulbs
- divided some perennials
- trip to the museum (bringing our annual membership cost down to $6 each per visit, with 4 months still to go in our membership)
- quick grocery shop
- present bought for birthday party next weekend
- baked pina colada muffins
- made giant pasta salad for lunches this week
- helped with some Lego construction
- made Southwestern Chicken Stew for supper
- packed lunches for tomorrow
- did 2 loads of laundry
- sprayed and hopefully killed the wasp nest behind my vinyl siding
- and last, but not least, finished my express library book BEFORE the due date! (I can usually either return them on time without reading the whole thing, or read to the end but incur a scary fine.)
And it’s only 8:03!
… and his stupid law. Because wouldn’t you know it, three weeks after starting Sport at the home-based daycare, I get a call from the in-school centre saying oh, we have a spot for him now!
Sigh. Cause that’s what we need right now, another change in routine. I briefly considered asking if they could go on to the next person and let us sit on the list for a few more months, but with my luck, “a few more months” would be next December or something. I asked for a day to think about it, but it really makes no sense to turn the spot down. (We’re talking a permanent spot in the centre attached to his school, which is open during school holidays, summer, etc. And it opens early enough in the morning for me to easily catch the bus to work.)
Sport is not going to take this well at all, though. He has become very tight with one of the other boys in the home daycare, and already complains if I pick him up even five minutes early. I’m thinking of compromising by continuing to send him there after school – that way he can still have his playtime with his buddy, and I still have an option open in case the daycare is a disaster for some reason. Logistically this wouldn’t be any more difficult, it would only cost $1 more per day, and it might soften the blow of yet another change. Or maybe it’s a stupid idea. I have no clue anymore, really.
Filed under: life in general
… in a couple of places around the blogosphere.
First, to Russia, where Kate finally, finally has her lovely peanut Lexi in her arms. Go give her your congrats and check out those SUPERCUTE dimples on little Lexi.
And second, to the amazing Erin, whose beautiful family grew this week with the addition of a nine month old baby boy. Erin is truly a role model I aspire to – in her outlook on life, her parenting, and her passion to educate and advocate for others. (Plus her ability to stick to fitness goals… sigh.)
Congratulations!
Last week marked six months since my dossier was sent to Ethiopia. (For those of you who have not engaged in this crazy process, that’s when all your months worth of paperwork arrive in the country you are adopting from. Basically, from that date on you are waiting to be matched with a child.)
Two years ago, I was matched with Sport three weeks after my dossier arrived. I knew that was not going to happen this time, and when my file went over I was expecting a 10-12 month wait based on the age of child I was asking to be matched with. (Usually, the process for older children moves more quickly than for infants, since less people are asking to be matched with older kids.) Six months later, I am now expecting to wait between 18-24 months. Hopefully in another six months that won’t have increased again, but you never know.
Waiting doesn’t really bother me. No, I’m serious, it doesn’t. Obviously it would be nice to have a better idea of when you will be matched with a child, but it’ll happen when it happens, and I’m ok with that. What does bother me though, along with all the usual uncertainties of international adoption, is the constant fear that Ethiopia may decide to close their adoption program to single parents. This has been a sword dangling over the program for three or four years now, and the only reason I ever wish things would hurry up a bit is to get through before the sword finally drops.
As it did last week, for prospective adoptive parents from Australia. As far as I know this information has not been communicated to Canadian agencies. But it’s not a good sign, that’s for sure. At least it appears that dossiers already in-country will continue to be processed – so hopefully that will be the case even if this ban is extended further.
Filed under: life in general
Yes, the rash is gone. Mostly. And the sinus infection is gone, and the ear infection is gone, so things are looking up. The house and yard, unfortunately, are going to take about another two weeks to get back to where they were before this whole nonsense started. Housework and yardwork is not being helped by the fact that we finally seem to be having summer – now, in mid-September – so frankly I’m not about to spend my day vacuuming or mowing when it’s 30 degrees outside. Sitting by a pool sounds like a much better idea – especially now that I can wear short sleeves without causing bystanders to draw away, fearing the plague.
Filed under: random whining
Today is day 9 of the 10 day course of antibiotics I was prescribed to beat my sinus infection (which actually turned out to be both a sinus and an ear infection.) I started feeling better around day 5, and things went uphill from there.
Until this morning, when they dropped off the edge of a cliff. Why? Because I woke up looking like this:
Arms, legs, chest, feet, neck…. it’s brutal. At least it’s not on my face, but that may only be a matter of time. Stupid amoxicillin. If you’re thinking I should take Benadryl, well, that’s what it looks like AFTER a lot of Benadryl. And if you’re wondering if it’s itchy… HELL YES.
(No, I’ve never had a reaction to antibiotics before. But then again, in the last twenty years I think this is only the second time I’ve taken any. Normally I’m pretty healthy, I swear.)
Filed under: off topic
Sadly, our teenage screen idols don’t live forever.
I think I’ve seen Dirty Dancing more often than any other movie, and that’s saying something considering Sport subjected me to Cars about once a week for quite a while. When Dirty Dancing came out on video (spring 88 maybe?), my best friend Andrea and I would ride our bikes to the video store on Friday night, rent it, and proceed to watch it about eight times before we returned it. (Admittedly, after watching it all the way through twice, we would just fast forward large portions and watch the mutually agreed-upon “good bits”.) We both owned both the albums. (Er, yes, there were two.) We knew large portions of the dialogue by heart. We were geeks, what can I say. But dammit, I loved that movie, and I still do. And not just because a few friends & I will still reference it when we embarrass ourselves in front of men we like. (“I had a total carried-a-watermelon moment.”)
Godspeed, Patrick Swayze.
Yeah, so remember how this week was going to be ugly? Sadly my prediction has come true. First of all, I wasn’t actually feeling better by Tuesday, since it turns out I had an ear infection as well as a sinus infection. The antibiotics seem to be finally kicking in, since I have only had to take painkillers once today. So basically I have been sick for two weeks, which means that the house is a disaster area, the lawn needs a swather, and Sport has eaten a LOT of chicken fingers for supper.
Other than that, things seemed to be going smoothly. The new daycare went well. First swimming lesson went well. Dentist appointment this morning went startlingly well, considering that Sport has some really mutant baby teeth (yes, that’s the technical term for it) and therefore needs a lot more scraping, chipping, and gouging than the average cleaning would require. Roll on, nice smooth properly-enameled permanent teeth. Anyway, he was an absolute champ at the dentist.
Which brought us to this afternoon’s “Triad Conference”, aka meet the teacher. It’s an informal little chat about the upcoming year, how the class routine goes, here’s your desk and coat-hook, etc. We had already been to the classroom last spring, so some of it was already familiar. Frankly, I thought this was going to be the easiest part of my week. Yeah, that oughta learn me. It was the meeting from hell, because Sport suddenly became possessed by Dennis the Menace, or the Bad Seed, or possibly Satan. (You think I’m exaggerating, but at one point he told the teacher he wasn’t going to do homework, because homework is EEEEVIL.) Yes. My cooperative, school-loving, teacher’s-pet of a child was sullen, uncooperative, borderline rude, and tried to drag me out of the room more than once. He pretended he didn’t know how to read. He wouldn’t find his name on things. He was a NIGHTMARE.I don’t know what on earth was going on, and after we left he couldn’t explain it either.
So part of me thinks I should take a few hours off work tomorrow morning and take him to his first day of school myself. The other part of me thinks I should leave him at daycare and run like hell. Option B is probably going to prevail.
Filed under: offspring
The week ahead is going to be a doozy. I am breaking every single rule I have held sacred over the last two years since Sport came home. (Tomorrow it is 2 years exactly since we arrived home, by the way. And that is really, really hard for me to believe.)
Which rules, you ask? Well, the rules about gradual transitions and careful scheduling and no over-stimulation. Here’s the week at a glance: Tomorrow he starts at his new daycare, going all day Tuesday and Wednesday. (I chose the small in-home daycare instead of the centre, by the way.) Swimming lessons also start on Wednesday night. On Thursday, he has a dentist appointment and a beginning-of-year school conference. Thursday night is his first Beavers meeting. Friday is his first day at his new school.
It just sort of … happened this way. I wanted him to start at the daycare with just before-and-after, and later have him go for a full day when there was an inservice, for example. But classes don’t start at his school until Friday, and I have next to no holiday time left, so I didn’t have a lot of options. As for the swimming, I could have sworn it started NEXT week, but I got the emailed confirmation after registering him and realized that the first session is on the 9th. Beavers, well… we were out of town on the registration day, so I had decided to skip it this year, but Sport was so disappointed when I told him that I ended up going down to the Scouts office and signing him up anyway. He’s really excited about the whole Scouting thing… I blame Russell the Wilderness Explorer from “Up”.
Next week won’t be so bad – we’ll be into the swing of things, and two weeknight activities is what he usually has. So I just have to get through this week… and I know my kid. It’s going to get ugly.
