Avoiding the To-Do List

Five days until we leave for China, though we don't yet have our tickets. They will be arriving Monday or Tuesday via FedEx. Meanwhile tomorrow in JingZhou, Micah will be 16 months old and still blissfully unaware of the changes in store for him. In one week, on July 9th he'll be going on his first trip from JingZhou to Wuhan.

I am beginning to think that a journey of thousands of miles doesn't begin with a single step, it begins with what feels like a thousand trips to Target, ShopRite and CVS, and a few hundred packing and to-do lists, most of which will disappear like socks in the dryer. The worst of the shopping is over - it's the little things from various China adoption packing list. Nix (lice medicine) - didn't need it last time, why am I obsessing about it now? Teether biscuits? Available in China. I need to take a deep breath and put a piece of duct tape (bought for our first trip and also never used) over the mouth of the little voice in my head that seems to have OCD.

I am hoping that posting to this blog will work while we're in China, but for now I'm happy that I actually can do it from home. I am hoping that this will be a better alternative to email - I emailed quite a few times while in China when we adopted Thea, but there were also a few long emails that I wrote while in ChongQing and GuangZhou that got vaporized when my email connection terminated.

Yesterday we took a day off from getting ready to see three other families from our first adoption travel group. It was such a great day - even though Thea is still in her "I don't want to wear a bathing suit, I don't want to go in the pool" phase. This from the child who loved the pool during the twice a day pool sessions at her daycare last summer.

This afternoon, while I was sitting on the steps making another packing list for the carry-on bags, Thea was busy with her chalk on the sidewalk: This is an airplane, this is Princeton, this is China where Baby Micah is, this is the White Swan Hotel - it was sort of scary all the elements she was working in from the bedtime stories we've being making up for her over the past week. Princess Thea Stories - and now instead of going on adventures with the Wonder Pets, the Wiggles, the Backyardigans and a few select classmates, Princess Thea's adventure has been going to China to meet her baby brother, Micah. Considering that the second time I started a story on the Princess Thea Travels to China theme, she popped out with, "Not that again, you already told me this story" she actually must've paid attention.