Each Week. . .

. . . I tell myself if I get through this week, things will slow down, get easier or more manageable; I will work on writing a post for my blog, catching up on all the UFOs (unfinished objects) in my bags of quilt fabric, clean the house (low priority, but it does still make the list most of the time), get organized.

First it was get through the first Girl Scout meeting, the start of Mandarin school, the start of soccer season, the Girl Scout cookout/bonfire, the start of Cub Scouts, the family cookout for the den, soccer practices, the start of religious school, the back-to-school nights, the 3v3 soccer tournament, the second grade field trip and on and on until the weeks and weekends start to blur.

And each week new things insinuate themselves onto the calendar until "things will slow down next week" turns into a rather hollow mantra.

But the up side to all of this is that both kids are doing well with soccer, scouts and the school year.  Thea decided she wanted to switch from viola to violin to learn treble clef this year.

The Girl Scouts are working on their Bronze Award by babysitting at the monthly leader meetings.  This month is Thea's group's turn to plan the activities and games.  Micah's Cub Scout den is working on earning their Wolf rank.  This year we'll be able to go to the Pinewood derby and I'm looking forward to helping Micah on his car.

Fortunately all of this is a good sort of exhaustion, but it's still exhaustion - made worse since I started wearing an UP band from Jawbone that keeps track of how many steps I take per days (still working on getting to 10,000) and how many hours of sleep.

Two more weeks of soccer, then Hanukkah comes along during Thanksgiving week to ambush us .

Ready for School

As of last weekend I had purchased all the school supplies on the 2nd grade and 5th grade lists, labeled all the stuff and put them in two bags.  At work I printed copies of the children's bus passes and made IDs for their backpacks.

Cleaned out their backpacks, which was more like an archeological expedition combined with recycling/trash-picking .

Ready, set, go - except our "go" is the Wednesday after Labor Day.

And then schools are closed on Thursday for Rosh Hashanah, and back on Friday.

From there the school year rolls on until June 17, 2014.

Mandarin classes start next Sunday, as does Girl Scouts, then comes religious school on Tuesdays, Cub Scouts, soccer practices and soccer games.

The school year hasn't started and I'm exhausted by it already.

Bring it on.

Camping for the Non-Camper

Written sometime after the first weekend of May 2013.

As a prelude, I have served my time camping and earned my camper credentials:  one week each summer from 1969 through 1975 at Mar-Lu-Ridge, including one year when we camped out in the woods and dug our own pit latrine, one week of canoeing on the Shenandoah River, and one week of biking and camping along the C&O Canal, and weekend camping while I was a Girl Scout.  So basically, I have crossed camping off my bucket list.  Been there, done that: bitten by ticks and bugs, cooked over an open flame, slept on lumpy, rocky ground. I am over it.

Until my own daughter became a Girl Scout. . . . .

And as a Brownie bridging to Junior, went on her first overnight with her troop to Oak Springs with all of the mothers.  Indoor camping, which is not as posh as it seems.  Two inch foam mattresses covered in plastic on metal spring cot frames that creaked with every movement and guaranteed to make one feel twice one's chronological age, which is not bad when one is eight, but is hell when one is 50.  But mothers do things like this because we love our children and want them to have rich, full lives and a variety of experiences.

The first night at Oak Springs we cooked outdoors and had a campfire that night.  The next morning we used the house's kitchen to cook breakfast.  Flush toilets, running water, civilization.  A camping trip in the loosest sense of the word.

During this initial camping experience, we were hearing that next year we'll be outdoors and sleeping in platform tents.  Oh, joy.  Must we?

So here we are one year later and we're off to Camp Sacajewea.  Platform tents.  Latrines.  Obstacle courses.  Zip line. Hurray, hurray, my vertebrae and knees were just a-quiver with anticipation.

But we got a perfect Saturday, blue skies, warm sun.  It was a great day to be getting up at the crack of dawn to head out to WaWa to pick up lunch and head to the meeting place.

Our campsite at Camp Sacajewea was Smoke Rise, with six or seven platform tents, a little cabin with a refrigerator and a couple of picnic tables and right across the path from the latrine.  So far, not so bad.

After putting our gear in the tents, we went off to our first activity, the zip line.  Another Item I had crossed off my list - Steve and I went on a zip-line tour in Costa Rica.  Fortunately as the troop's designated photographer, I took the pictures.  Except my own kid, who was worried about becoming dizzy, so I was not pushing her.

After lunch we went to the obstacle course, but we arrived there early and the girls ran for the tire swings.  Luckily they were able to have a blast swinging before the obstacle course overlord arrived and shut the fun down by telling them that they had to be properly supervised.  We had three mothers and our troop leader.  I'm a nurse practitioner, and these kids have been on swings for years.  Seriously?  I was practically chewing the bark off of a tree so as not to explode.

The fun part of the obstacle course was seeing our troop of 4th graders beat a troop of 6th graders at a game where they all had to stand on a log, and then rearrange themselves by birth date or alphabetical order without their feet touching the ground in three minutes.  It was my Thea who came up with the idea of crawling on their knees, holding their feet up, to speed up the process.  The 6th graders were annoyed, but the obstacle course overlord deemed that no rule had been broken so Troop 71602 won.

Later that afternoon we went to the Lego Robotics activity and then we went back to our campsite for jewelry making and dinner preparation.

The troop was divided into two groups - one making dinner and one making breakfast.  For both meals, they did an amazing job, they worked together, did all the preparation without a lot of prodding or supervision, and both meals were great.  Chicken or veggie parmesan for dinner with bananas stuffed with marshmallows and chocolate chips for dessert., breakfast burritos for breakfast.  Campfire cooking has improved since the time I was in scouts.

For as gorgeous as the weather was during the day, it got a little chilly at night.  A lot chilly.  The kind of chilly that makes it hard to change into your pajamas.  Fortunately, in addition to our sleeping bags, I brought extra blankets for Thea and myself - either they could be used underneath the sleeping bags or on top.  Platform tents have slats that allow cold air to seep up through the floor, but Mrs. Church and her years of camping experience brought plastic tarps to put over the floor.  Layers of long sleeves, sweatshirts and sweatpants and wool socks and dreams of the electric mattress warmer on my half of the bed helped me survive the night. 

After breakfast, we packed up, went for a short walk to toss a stick or a rock into the pond and say what we liked best about the camping trip and we went home.

ChongQing 2004 Reunion

Thea and Jennifer

It's been almost nine years since a small band of  adoptive parents boarded planes that took them to San Francisco where they boarded an Air China flight to Beijing.  Some of the group knew others from the travel workshop given by the adoption agency, but since everyone was scattered throughout the jumbo jet,  once everyone made it off the plane and into passport control at the airport, the group began to form for the first time.  At baggage claim, we met our guides and the adventure of getting to know one another began.

We went on a jetlag-fueled blitzkrieg tour of Beijing: Tiananmen Square, the Forbidden City, lunch at a Friendship Store a visit to the Great Wall at Baodaling and as darkness fell, a trip back to the Beijing airport and a flight to ChongQing.

And on what was Labor Day back in the States, we gathered in the dining room of the Holiday Inn to fill out paperwork with our guides.

What made us a group came later that afternoon.  We boarded a large tour bus and went to an office building on the other side of ChongQing.  Rather nondescript, an elevator capable of holding at most four or five people and a ride up to the office where we met our kids. Thirteen babies from three different social welfare institutions, they were the glue that made us a group.

Trips to the grocery store to buy formula and baby food, pacing the hallways, hanging out in the playroom at the hotel, sight-seeing trips to the ChongQing Zoo, sharing stacking cups, toys, Tylenol for infants, the plane to GuangZhou, shopping and bargaining made us a very large, slightly strange family.  Two weeks together until we boarded a plane that took us to Shanghai and from there to San Francisco, and at SFO, we scattered - to New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New York, Ohio, Minnesota, Colorado.

We are fortunate to be in New Jersey, which puts us in an area were a large number of our travel group live, and we have been doubly fortunate that we've stayed in touch - and that we get together every year.  The group changes a bit every year - especially since the kids are getting older and have activities and social lives of their own.  But the gathering happens - and the shared experiences of having people ask if our children are 'really' siblings (with 'really' being a synonym for 'biological'), what about their 'real' mothers, how much did you pay for them. All the annoying questions that you can share the answers that you would have liked to have given if we did not feel compelled to be the polite ambassadors for international adoptions.  And a thousand other topics, shared memories and whatnot.  Yesterday was that day, and it was wonderful - and I say this even after having to work in the morning and being on call for the weekend.

Meanwhile, our kids have grown, siblings have been added to the families and even though they don't see each other, they all seem to know that their shared history is important - and most of them have iPods, Nintendos, Wiis; the universal language of the electronic childhood becomes their common thread just as the shared experience of the trip to China binds the adults - and hanging out with other kids is more entertaining than hanging out with a bunch of parents.  The kids do pop over to the parents table every now and then, to check in, to eat and for that they will receive the pat on the head, the "look at how much you've grown" from the friends of their parents, so far they are not rolling their eyes at this, but that day may come.

Jennifer, Micah, Thea and Juliana

Next year will be the 10th anniversary of that trip that made us a group, and we've started talking about how to celebrate, could we get those members who don't live as close to come?, where to have it?  Our kids will be 10 to 11 or so, with younger and older siblings.  Suggestions welcome.

China 2004 kids, plus siblings, plus high school exchange students

Post-Hurricane Recovery

 OK, so I am not a meteorological genius (referencing my previous post.)

Our power went out at 8:23 pm Monday night, so it lasted 23 minutes longer than my prediction of darkness descending at 8 pm.  It spent  ten minutes or so flickering and toying with us before the final outage.   It had been raining all day on Monday, but it wasn't until after dark that the wind really started raging.  Fortunately I had finished both squares of my Saturday Sampler homework at 8:00 pm.

Monday night wasn't much for sleeping, at least for me. Too much noise.  The trains running on the Northeast Corridor tracks behind our house had stopped, but the wind sounded like a continuous train running through the backyard.

Tuesday was spent occupying the kids so they did not run down the batteries on their Nintendos and iPods since we were told it could possibly be a week without power.

School was cancelled for Wednesday, and Princeton University also decided to close for a third day.  (And the watch for signs that Hell was going to freeze over began.)

Dinner was leftovers heated on the stove.  Pizza, believe it or not, can be reheated without an oven by inverting a vegetable steamer over boiling water, and it helps that the pizza was a little stale.  Micah ate four pieces of it.  This Little House on Krebs Road approach to cooking was getting a bit old, though.

Wednesday morning I got up and went to work, where there was power, so I had every device I own that has a battery - minus a power strip, which would have come in handy.  It's Hallowe'en and I originally wanted to be home for trick-or-treating so I asked for a half-day, and this was an act of genius, because right as I was finishing my last patients of the morning. . . .

. . . the power went o-u-t at work.  Seriously.  Sense of irony and sense of humor were wearing fairly thin.

Lovely, just bleeping lovely because with no power, the server for the EHR system goes down so I can't even write my chart notes from home.  Though I was a bit of genius for requesting that afternoon off (for the now cancelled Hallowe'en); no patients needing rescheduling for me.

Route 1 had most of the traffic lights out still, long lines at the gas stations that were open.  The Dunkin' Donuts was not open. (Hell must really be ready to freeze over.)

West Windsor-Plainsboro schools were out the entire week.  By Sunday night eight out of ten schools had power, but  the district offices had no power or phones, and one upper elementary school and one middle school were still without electricity so the district arranged accommodation for those schools at two large churches.

Soccer on Saturday went on as usual, and Sunday's GoalFest/GhoulFest which had been rescheduled also took place.  Neither kid came home with a trophy this year, which was probably a good learning experience for them.  They had great teams, but there weren't enough 4th and 5th graders for individual teams, so the league made a Girls 4-6 level for GoalFest.  Which meant my delicate little 4th grader had to go up against 6th grade Amazons riding a wave of premenstrual fury.  It was just not right that nine-year olds had to go up against adolescents with attitude wearing orange tutus (those damn tutus hid quite a bit of hip checking.).

Steve is getting a generator as his Hanukkah/Christmas present, and I am going to by a few dozen "D" cell batteries.   I will be better than prepared for the next one.

Surviving the Birthday Weekend

It was a weekend dominated by the calendar telling me where I should be.

Friday:  Cancelled a class, "Fundamentals of Musculoskeletal Imaging" because being in Parsippany by 7:30 am and staying there until 4 pm would put me at odds with being back in Plainsboro in time for Girl Scouts at 3:15 pm.  There was also the question of where during the day would I have time to make samples of the crafts for the Girl Scouts' Crafting for the Community event so the girls could pick which three they wanted to do.  This year is our troop's first as Juniors, meaning they will be teaching the crafts to the Daisies and the Brownies.  So my morning involved hot-gluing popsicle sticks into triangles and then the triangles into Stars of David.  The first degree burns on my third finger are healing nicely.

All the while I am thinking, I did not get to Pennington Quilt Works for the Saturday Sampler on Thursday night as I had planned. A patient's appointment ran later than what was allotted in the schedule, and it was important that I not rush things along.  And there were plenty of Saturday Sampler slots on Friday and Saturday.  No problem.

The Girl Scouts meeting was fun - we're lucky, we have really nice girls who seem to approach all of the things we're doing with enthusiasm.

After Girl Scouts, Thea had to put on her shin guards, socks, shorts and cleats and head to soccer practice.

Saturday's schedule included soccer at 9 am, with both children playing on opposite sides of town.  The photo day for the soccer league was held at Thea's school, with both teams times (fortunately) within fifteen minutes of each other.  So all of us connected at the photo event so I could get Micah and Steve could go to see his mother.   Meanwhile Steve talked with Micah's friend Jeff's father and planned a play date - and it's now Saturday, and I still haven't been to PQW to collect the quilt fabric for my next square.

So after the team photos were done, talking with Jeff's father to finalize the time for the play date, I hauled Thea and Micah with me to PQW for the noon session.  Fortunately they were heavily armed with their electronic devices (Nintendos, iPods and my iPad), so sitting in the car for 20 minutes would not be torture.

And meanwhile, Saturday is Thea's 9th birthday - and the only thing I had really done to prepare is send out emails to the parents of four of her friends inviting them to join us for dinner on Friday and purchase the new versions of Pokemon Black and White.  No party bags, no cake, nothing.

At 2 pm we dropped Micah off at Jeff's and went on a mission to pick out a cake, buy stuff for the party bags and get ready.

Thea chose four boys that she has known since second grade to come along with us for dinner at the Olive Garden: Adam, Tommy, Amol and Jeffrey.  Her preference would have been to have two tables, one for parents and annoying sibling and one for herself and her boy posse.  But the Olive Garden gave us a long table in a semi-private area, which was worth the 45 minute wait.

After dinner we came home and the boys and Thea adjourned to the living room to play games on the Wii.  Tidbits overhead include:  "We can have cake after we kill off Thea," and  "You won't always be able to fight like a boy. . . ."

What I learned from this was, we could've skipped dinner, thrown a few snacks at them and let them play Wii for five hours and they would've been just as happy.  But they did seem to like the party favors - Pokemon cards, yo-yos and a super ball.

Sunday was Mandarin school for Thea and a playdate with Leland for Micah.  I got to sew a little bit, but eventually I had two little boys who wanted to sew.  So, I made a pattern and cut out four pieces that could be sewn into a person-ish shape. I then got out the fabric pens and they drew on faces.  And fangs.  And blood dripping off of the fangs.  Not quite how I envisioned the little project turning out.

Then we had to get Micah dressed up in his Tiger Cubs uniform for his first den meeting.  We made a scrapbooks and learned a few things about being a scout.  I had put a chicken in the oven so dinner was done by the time we got home.

Kick-Offs

Today soccer started.  Nothing like walking across an enormous field to the farthest DT (double tiny) where the kindergarteners and first-graders play to make my knees even more balky than they usually are.  Micah's team is the Red Bulls and the team is very lucky to have a coach; a few of the fourth grade girls teams are being coached by a different parent each week, including Thea's team, the Tigers.  Steve's taking the second week's practice and game next Friday.  Smart planning on his part:  the weather is still warm and expectations are still low since it's still early in the season.

Fourth grade soccer was a bit of a shock to the system because the girls are no longer practicing immediately before games, they have a week-day practice so it's one more thing to put on the calendar and they play for 55 minutes straight with a referee instead of coach-referees.  The Tigers' game ended in a tie score today; first-graders don't keep score.

And most of our games are at 9:00 am Saturdays, so we're kissing sleeping in for the next ten weeks, if one counts sleeping until 8:30 to 9 as sleeping in.

Girl Scouts got going last Sunday, as did Ying Hua Language School.  Still to come:  Boy Scouts/Tiger Cubs, and Back-to-School nights for both first- and fourth-grades and the fourth-grade music program orientation.  Thea has chosen the viola.  We shall see how this goes as she has deviated from my plan of her taking chorus for fourth grade and then starting flute or clarinet and we'll have one more thing to add lists of things she will need to be nagged about.

Sheepish

Today Micah, Thea and I went to the Sheep and Fiber Festival at the Hunterdon County Fairgrounds.  As I sit writing, I am wondering if the smell of sheep, alpacas and llamas is stuck in my nostrils or if it's actually clinging to my clothes, or if I'm just imagining it.

We wandered around looking at the animals in their pens, the vendors.  There is an alpaca farm near my office and the owner had a booth so we stopped by to say hello:  Micah picked out a toy alpaca, Thea selected a pair of gorgeous fingerless gloves and we bought a knitted teddy bear for a gift. 

We went to the sheep shearing demonstration.  Sheep are amazing, get them on their back and they are like blobs of woolly Silly Putty.  The gentleman conducting the demonstration actually wrestled a feisty ewe onto her back propped something behind her neck or shoulder and walked away and the ewe just surrendered, lay on its back and made no effort whatsoever to escape.  Micah tried his hand at shearing, which was rather cool and both kids went up to feel the lanolin on the skin after the shearing.

For lunch we went to Panera's and while waiting for our food, we ran into the father of two of Thea's Mandarin school classmates.  (Mandarin school starts tomorrow.)  He was coming in for coffee and was next door at Chuck E. Cheese with his wife and their boys.  So after eating we went to say 'hello'.  I give both parents credit, they can actually read books while sitting at a table in the middle of background noise that almost defies description.  I am not that sort of person, I invested in the minimum amount of tokens that my sanity could tolerate.

Tomorrow is the first meeting of Thea's Junior troop, then Mandarin school - she still has a few pages of the summer homework to do.  Sigh.  At least this summer she didn't give much grief over doing the 20+ pages she completed.

School started Thursday, so after two days it's too early to tell, but so far so good. 

Religious school starts Tuesday for Thea; Micah doesn't start until next year.  Soccer is gearing up - Thea's team will be the Tigers, so she is thrilled.  The team doesn't have a coach, so the parents will need to take turns with practice and games, so I am NOT thrilled.

September 6, 2004

Once upon a time, eight years ago when my knees felt much younger, a bus loaded with thirteen families left the Holiday Inn in ChongQing and drove across the Yangtze River to a rather unimpressive office building with an elevator about the size of a large phone booth; it took multiple trips for our entire group and the two facilitators to arrive at our destination.  The adoption office was much swankier than the building or its elevator.  This is the email that I wrote on September 6, 2004, back in the days before I was a sometimes blogger and a full-time Mom:

Dear Everyone,

I started a nice, long email to all of you, which was just eaten by Juno or the

hotel's internet connection.  And I'm not even going ballastic.

Greetings from the Holiday Inn-Yangtze in Chongqing ("chun ching", if you

happen to care about pronounciation).

We survived the two long flights from Newark to San Francisco, and then on to

Beijing.  Our 24 hours in Beijing went by very fast: one Peking duck restaurant on

arrival, Tianmen Square, the Forbidden City and the Great Wall on Sunday, then by

5 pm we were on our way to the airport for Chongqing.  Our travel group and the 

facilitators are phenomenal.

Today was Gotcha Day, the day we've prepared, overpacked and angst-ed over for

months. It went so, so well.  We all met in the hotel's restaurant at 9:30 to do

the paperwork, which was spirited away by the facilitators, after lunch the bus 

came at 1:20 pm to take us to the local adoption office.  We arrived at a rather

non-descript corner, somewhere in CQ, went into a rather decrepit looking building

and arrived on the fourth floor to a rather new looking office with more than the

13 babies our group was there to claim.  Rolling scooters with babies (including 

one that was rocketing from one corner of the room to another), sofas with babies,

orphanage staff with babies, all in various states of happiness, apprehension, or

outright crying.

Steve and I failed to pick out Thea from the multitudes, but no sooner did we

really start focusing, someone called out "Liang Zhen" and a squalling Thea was 

placed in Steve's arms.  She calmed down pretty quickly and just stared at us

trying to figure things out; she like the toy we brought and seem to focus on 

faces.  For our paperwork we were photographed as a family (one hellacious picture

of me, don't expect to see it), then we met with the orphanage director and staff 

that accompanied the babies to ask any questions.  The LiangPing babies seemed 

very well cared for.  We managed to take a picture with them for Thea's scrapbook.

I have never said Xie Xie (shay shay: thank you) so many times on this whole trip

as I did today.

Thea had her first bottle (eats like a champ, liked whatever bottle she was given,

prefers silicon nipples) and diaper change at the adoption office.  That's what, 

I think, won her over:  we might be funny looking and unfamiliar, but we cater and

keep butts dry.

She fell asleep on the ride back to the hotel, so Steve did a diaper run to a local

department store.  I watched the nap and then played stacking cups with Thea.  We

had dinner with the group and the new additions, and then the doctor came to the

hotel room to check over the babies.  She's now 8.6 kg and passed her physical. 

The 9-12 month clothes with feet are a little tight, twelves are a little hefty in

the torso - we'll manage.

Chongqing had rain last night - the sky crying tears for the babies that we're

taking away, and still today it was a little damp.  It's foggy and smoggy - we're

on the 19th floor of the hotel and can barely see the other side of the Yangtze

for a few hours during the day.  There are beautiful lights along the river at

night.

Anyway, between the first effort and getting this email off, I've left Steve for

an hour and a half.  Thea's probably flayed the flesh off his arms with those nails of

hers, and he's so smitten, he's probably letting her.

Next update, if possible, either later in the week or after the 12th when we're in

Guangzhou

Hope all is well with you.  Thank you for all the good thoughts - they have

obviously worked.  Thea is fantastic, beyond our wildest hopes and dreams and we

can't wait to bring her home.


Lydia

And eight years later,  that little baby is still beyond my wildest dreams, the best daughter in the whole world and my fabulous girl.

Wishful Summer Thinking

 A post begun over a week ago. . . .

After two weeks in the WW-P Community Education summer programs, the kids are back to Princeton Friends School Camp next week.  They had a good time, but it seemed like quite a few of the program that we signed up for were cancelled and substitutions made.  Next year I think I want to take more time off during the summer so they can be home, hang out, go on day-trips and what not.

Fall seems like it's coming up quickly: Thea and Micah are registered for soccer, Thea is looking forward to the WWPSA's 3-on-3 tournament; I've got to register her for YingHua for the fall, check the school district's web site for school supply lists.

And even before this was posted, the week at Friends Camp finished and the kids are back to Community Education for one last week before returning once more to PFS for two final weeks.  Time is flying, I'm finding things other than keeping up with blogging to keep me busy.

It's almost August, time to start thinking about haircuts, finishing the remainder of the school supplies lists, starting to stalk the school district web site for teacher assignments, getting an appointment for Micah to get his ears flossed out, school physicals for both kids, and so on, and so on.

Maybe I've spent too much time at the quilt shops, where fall and Christmas fabrics are in abundance and everyone seems to be working on holiday table runners and tree skirts.  Not my thing, though some of the Hallowe'en fabrics are cute.

Meanwhile I haven't seen the Atlantic Ocean this year, I'm already planning for  Summer 2013 and taking more time off during the summer to enjoy it with the kids.

Two months. . .

until school starts. 

Thea volunteered that information today while we were out shopping.  To Thea, it seems like school is going  to be starting soon.  To me, it seems like there is still a lot of summer ahead of us.

Somehow there are people in the world who think that summer is somehow easier.  And it might be in terms of not having homework to deal with, but logistically, it may be more difficult.  It takes looking at my iPad to know where they will be each week for camp, learning the camps' schedules for snacks and lunches and whatnot.  With school, they have cafeteria accounts set up, and most days, I don't make lunches.  For camp, they need a lunch that will survive the heat (and yes, I do use re-usable freezer blocks.)

And in our lives, there is still is homework because we have the 35 page green workbook from Ying Hua Language School that must be finished and turned in on the first Sunday.

When the school year finally does get underway, it will be the first year that Micah stays put in one school for the entire day, and it will be Thea's first year at Millstone Upper Elementary School, which will be a much bigger school.  Wicoff School is the smallest of the district's lower elementary schools, which is nice because the staff and principal seem to know every student in the school but it will make the transition more interesting.

Countdown to Summer

Countdown to the last day of school:  4.5 days. This week Thea has a trip to the upper elementary school she will be attending in the fall on Monday and the rescheduled Third Grade Carnival on Tuesday, Micah has Sliding into First Grade on Wednesday and his AM Kindergarten class party on Thurday.  So by my estimation, 'school' was over last week and this week is for festivities and celebrating.

And it's the one week that I am working Monday through Friday, and Saturday is my day to work.  I am rather pouty about it, especially since I am usually of Fridays and would be there to pick the kids up from their last day of school.

Since Memorial Day weekend, quilting has gone by the wayside, so I was happy to drag out my bags of stuff and go off to OCQ for Super Sew on Friday.  Instead of working on projects, I once again worked on Thea's Junior vest by sewing on all the event patches that had been removed from her Brownie vest.  This is their final resting place, I am not ripping out all those stitches if she moves up to Cadets.

Then I worked on making scrappy strips for the Foursquare Farmhouse.  I like having a quilt back that has a little interest to it, and it's a great way to not wind up with a bunch of scraps that are too nice to throw away but will likely not find themselves used in a project any time soon.  I think I'm keeping this one.

Friday night I didn't even take all the quilting supplies out of the car since Saturday night was The Sew Must Go On.  Unfortunately, the path to The Sew went through a trip to Parsippany to attend the Practicing Clinician Series 2012 Symposia.  9.25 free CEUs.  To good to pass up, even it means driving an hour at 7 am on a Saturday morning, and then spending 90 minutes on I-78 and the NJ Turnpike to get to OCQ.

I got there a little later than I usually would (9.25 free CEUs), but quickly got up and running  I made a second strip, and then a third scrap strip for the back of the quilt, bought a very wide piece of a light batik and put it all together, then bought the batting and left it there to be quilted.  Estimated time for getting it back is about six weeks.

Meanwhile Steve has gotten memberships for us at the West Windsor community pool.  Not much in the way of grass is growing on the patch of backyard where the pool used to be, but the old pool is not missed.  The kids and Steve went for the first time yesterday., and may go back today. 

Memorial Day Mind Fog

Tuesday morning back at work, and already the weekend has blurred into a foggy blob of what did I really accomplish this weekend?  Not much in the way of cleaning the house or working on the garage.  Too bad.

Thursday was the end of the Third Grade Inquiry project, with the 132 students who stuck it out to the end (or who did enough work so as not be asked to drop out) showing off their work in the cafeteria at Town Center School.  Thea did well, worked without note cards answering questions about what she learned about genes and DNA; we were proud of her and her presentation looked liked she did it.  There were two others who also worked on similar projects - one with a slick Power Point presentation on a laptop (which to me smacked of too much parental involvement).  Thea hasn't gotten the paper back that her reviewer used to evaluate her presentation, but it will be interesting to see.  Particularly since the glue was still drying on the the tri-fold poster board as we were walking in. 

Friday, the car and I went to Honda for a much overdue oil change.  Nice of them to tell me on paper that my tires need replacing, it would've been nice to hear it in person rather than finding it out when I flipped the receipt over one day later.  The rest of the day was devoted to sewing: the two Saturday Sampler squares for PQW, which I usually finish within a day or so of bringing them home, Thea's Brownie and Junior vests and the start of a Four Square Farmhouse quilt top.  I forgot the pinwheel lap quilt top that I was working on so I couldn't put on the trim on the bottom edge - got to dig that out before it becomes a UFO (which translates an unfinished object).

 Saturday while Micah was at his friend Leland's birthday party, Thea and I went to the EMS store to pick up two dunk bags for the Brownies camping trip next weekend.  I remember dunk bags from my own Girl Scouts camping experiences, but instead of plastic, I think it was made of metal.  Then we went to Target to pick up sleeping bags and print up pictures for the troop leader to put in the scrapbook.  Once all that was finished, I could get back to sewing.

Which continued into Sunday, and once I had twenty squares for a lap quilt, making ten more for a twin-sized didn't seem so unreasonable.

But on Monday the two shops I frequent were both closed for Memorial Day so the five light / five dark batiks had to come from my stash and not from fat quarters.  So with a True Blood marathon on HBO and the kids at the Princeton pool with Steve, I made ten more squares.

Which leads me to wish there was an app for the iPad to put in pictures of quilt squares to crop and shuffle into the most pleasing pattern.  Doing this by laying them out on the bed is both time consuming and annoying and makes it a chore similar to working through a GRE question where you have five red books, four yellow books, two green and six red books, the red can't touch the yellow, the the blue can't touch the green, so where does the black book go? Tedium exemplified.

Meanwhile in the backyard, the chemical- and money-sucking cesspit that was the above ground swimming pool is GONE.  Two Thursdays ago Steve mentioned that Thea didn't really care if we had the backyard pool so maybe we should get rid of it.  Somehow I mentioned this in passing to Mike who was at the office to repair the hole in the wall made by one of my patient's who passed out, and he has a neighbor who wanted an above-ground backyard pool.  Reduce, reuse, recycle.  Gone, gone, gone as of Friday when I came back from Honda to pick up my quilting supplies to find two trucks in the driveway and heard the sounds of men doing manly disassembling things coming from the backyard.  I grabbed my stuff and trotted back to the car.

.Now I have my mother telling me that I should use it to plant an herb and vegetable garden.  Like that's ever going to happen.  I am just not the tilling the soil sort of woman; quilting, yes, gardening, big fat NO.  This is not Little House on the Prairie here.

No sewing this weekend:  Brownie's overnight camping trip to a Girl Scout camp in Somerset County and Ying Hua, the last class followed by the end-of-year ceremony.

Spring Cleaning

. . . for Micah's ears.  Yesterday we made another trip up the Turnpike to Englewood to see Dr. Choe.  I must have had a complete mental lapse when I called for the appointment because I took an 8:00 am slot, which is just murder from the get-go:  to get Micah up, fed and dressed on a school day in time to catch the school bus at 8:25 am is a minor feat.  To have him in the same state 90 minutes earlier would require prayer, a lot of talking in a loud voice, some gratuitous tickling and patience in quantities greater than I have at that hour of the morning.

Thankfully the Turnpike cooperated.  The GPS set our arrival at 7:58 am, and we were putting in the parking lot right at that time, and there was parking spots on the open, sunny first level so we didn't need to park in the dark, creepy bowels of the building level.  The appointment was 15 minutes: five minutes of chit-chat, five minutes per ear of Dr. Choe picking out the waxy debris that accumulates in the canals and we were back out at the reception area where Micah could schmooze with the staff.  He is especially proud that he can now see over the reception desk on his own.

Then we made the trip back home, with a small reward trip to Target thrown in, and he signed in at school, got a late pass and trotted off to Mrs. Miller's room by 10:00 am.

Later that day I had to go back to Wicoff to be the helping mom at the Brownie meeting, which was mostly taking pictures and bringing Capri Sun juice pouches since a troop of Juniors came to share their wisdom regarding camping, building fires and how to dress for a camping trip.  The Juniors brought the snack, which was various pretzels and snack cereal so that the Brownies could build a miniature camp fire on their plates and then eat it.  The mother-daughter camping trip is coming up the first weekend in June.  By the mercy of whatever higher power, it will be at the main house of the campground, so we'll have beds and indoor plumbing.  Thea is nervous about the camping trip for whatever reason.  At the meeting yesterday the girls had to put down who they would like to bunk with, putting down three names and with the guarantee that they will room with at least one; I was shocked to see how many put Thea's name down (which is sweet, but they have no idea that she sometimes snores like a water buffalo and talks in her sleep.)

After the Brownies award ceremony (i.e. more patches to sew on), we went to pick up Micah from EDP and then went right back to Wicoff for the End-of-the-Year Celebration.  Multiple bouncy houses and slides, a balloon person, DJ, pizza and ice cream truck.  (Thankfully no evil pony ride lady from the Fall celebration.)  Thea was allowed to run around with her friends, Micah hung out with his friends Charlie and Jeff, running, jumping and balloon sword fighting (after we stood in line for 45 minutes for the balloon lady).

We left as it was getting dark and much cooler and went to KFC for dinner.  Micah fell asleep in the car but revived once he remembered that he had a new Bey Blade waiting for him from the morning trip to Target, and I had picked one out for Thea, so they spent awhile having battles and then watching Phineas & Ferb and Penguins of Madagascar before crashing for the night.

Once upon a time. . .

. . . which was only about three weeks ago, we were on vacation.  Meals were as easy as just showing up, buffets meant that there was no whining about not liking what was being served.

 No beds to make.

 No homework to check up on.

 Sandals or bare feet all the time

Coatis and iguanas clambering around.

 A half dozen swimming pools meant that "I'm bored" was not uttered during that entire week.

A lazy river inner tube ride.

Using the children as my cover, I got to swim with dolphins (which they happened to enjoy as well) and I bought amazing pictures of my children with dolphins, snorkeling, holding macaws, iguanas and parrots.

I watched Thea climb on a rope line over water, twice, and got to snorkel with her and see that she loves it as much as I do.

And yes, there were a few not so magical moments: waiting on a bridge to take pictures of my family.  Waiting, waiting, waiting.  Until I figured they had taken another route back so I hiked around Xel-Ha to the floating bridge, which was bouncing away (? high tide) and only had hand-railings on every other section.  Visions of me and the camera getting bounced into the Caribbean danced in my head, and the humiliation cake was iced by the Xel-Ha lifeguard coming out onto the bridge asking if a) I had too many rum and Cokes and b) did I need any help?  (To which I answered a) No. (I hate rum and Cokes) and b) No, thank you.  Although my interior monologue, was telling him to be gone before I push him off of the bouncing bridge. Then after making it back to the main area, finding no family at any of the meeting places (not to worry, I had the key to the locker, so I had dry clothes and the cash), they come walking up, Steve with a huge smile on his face that I wanted to wipe off with towel that had cleaned the bottom of the seal tank.

The biggest feat of the vacation was going without internet access from Tuesday through Friday because in-room Wi-Fi was $100 per week.  (Seriously?  Internet access is de rigeur in this day and age.)  Wi-Fi at the Iberostar Paraiso Maya was found in a 20' x 6' area in the lobby, the closer to the window the better, which counts as one of the hotel's few faults.

All in all, a good week, until it was over 

Happy Easter & Passover

Easter weekend at our house has been pretty laid back.  Saturday night Steve, Thea and Micah went to the seder at Temple Micah; I went to The Sew Must Go On at Olde City Quilts.  It's usually 4 pm until 1 am, but I got there a little late, and most everyone was packing up and ready to head out at midnight.  I finished 32 more pinwheels, whose fate I am still contemplating - and since on a good evening at home, finishing 12 is an accomplishment, it was a good night.

The kids' Easter baskets were thrown together in haste at around 1:30 this morning.  Oma provided a good bit of the chocolate, a patient gave me a pink bunny and a yellow duck stuffed animal and chocolate bunnies for them, so I did next to nothing other than throw a few quarters in the plastic eggs (also supplied by Oma.)

Easter breakfast was the usual three-way split: Thea with her steamed eggs, Micah with cereal and pancakes for Steve, sausages and pineapple for all.

Then the kids and I got going on making food for Steve to take with him when he goes to visit Grandma.  Micah made matzoh balls with me, and Thea was in charge of the potato latkes and was fearlessly flipping them despite getting hit with a few pot shots of hot oil.  She also took on cooking the chicken for the soup without much in the way of supervision from me.  This was one of the first times that boredom didn't get the best of  either one of them mid-project; they stuck with me until the last latke came out of the pan and the matzoh balls were transferred into the soup pot.

Now it's just a question of airing out the house to get rid of the fried latke smell and getting back to trying to get a little bit organized.

Voiceless

From February 24, 2012. 

A cold virus began to take hold of the insides of my head last weekend, rattling through my throat, sinuses and nose.  A container of cranberry-raspberry juice kept it at bay while we were visiting my mother last Sunday through Tuesday, but the ickiness came back once I was back at work.

Leaving me today with an annoying rasp of a voice today.  So I spent my day off by myself, trying to not talk.

I sewed a decorative ribbon and a Brazilian flag onto small white totes I purchased at Michael's.  This weekend is the Girl Scouts' Thinking Day celebration and Thea's troop is representing Brazil.  Fortunately for us, the costumes are samba skirts for half the group and gauchos for the other half.  In case you need to have all the dots connected, I barely got Thea to wear the Maori skirt last year, so I was not looking forward to convincing her to wear a ruffly skirt.

Bugged Stomach

Yesterday I worked in the morning, picked up Thea at school at 3:15 and we went to the library so she could work on her Third Grade Inquiry paper and pick up Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.  We spent a couple hours there and then went to fetch Micah from Kindergarten EDP and made dinner.  Thea managed to finish her homework at the library, so they were free to play before and after dinner.

We started the getting ready for bed process at 8 pm, which counts for ahead of schedule compared with most days.  Since Thea finished getting ready, she wanted to read. Whatever Thea does, Micah also wants to do, so he grabbed his Harriet Tubman book and his Alligators & Crocodile book, and also hopped on our bed.  Just before sending them off to bed, I looked at the page number of the Harry Potter book and she was on page 446.  In a book I thought she had just picked up that afternoon.

After everyone was asleep, I went downstairs to sew.  Something did not feel right in my stomach, but I put it off on the way I sit while sewing: on the edge of the love seat, hunched over the sewing machine that sits on the coffee table.  It's a bit of an ergonomic disaster, but it usually causes discomfort in my butt and legs from sitting on the edge, rather than in the stomach.

I finished the twelve pinwheels I was working on, with the brain trying to remember if we had any Pepto-Bismal in the house.  And then all hell broke loose, and lunch, dinner and everything else that was in my stomach decided to relocate.  I question my choice of having the powder room painted green, not very soothing for those who are queasy.

Once upon a time I debated which I would dislike more, having cold symptoms for two weeks or so or one to days of a stomach virus - and at that time, the vote went to the stomach virus.  As of last night, I have reconsidered and changed my mind, I'll take head congestion and coughing anytime, anywhere.

And if projectile vomiting and dry heaves were not indignity enough, horrible chills came right on its heels and made me shiver and shake.   The normal two quilts, down comfort with duvet and fleece blanket could not make a dent in how cold I felt.  It took Steve coming home and putting three more blankets over me and warming up two rice / buckwheat pillows to finally over come the worst of it so I could fall asleep at 3:30 am.  And three Cokes with crushed ice to overcome the taste in my mouth that was telling me that my tongue had kissed road kill.

And for being out sick today, I really did just stay in bed and sleep.  No TV, no computer, no reading.   A whole day where I could have been at the sewing machine, and I just could not do it.  My first accomplishment for the day was sorting and putting away one basket of laundry and making the bed, which didn't happen until after 2 pm.  Second accomplishment was getting to Thea's school to pick her up and take her to religious school by way of Forest Jewelers to get a new watch battery for Steve's wristwatch and Wawa to get Thea a snack.

Fortunately, no one else in the house has come down this with this - so I'm blaming the lunch food at work yesterday.

Back to the Winter Routine. . . .

Thea is off at skating lessons - she is in Alpha 2 and is happy as a clam that her friend Jeffrey will also be in the class.  Jeffrey was one class ahead of Thea but he didn't pass Alpha 2.  Micah went along to the rink (he's no fool, he wants the hot cocoa and the french fries without having to do the ice time to earn them).

The decorations and lights came off the Christmas tree, so this afternoon we'll see if the tree bag helps contain the mess or whether needles will be vacuumed up for the next six months or so.  It was a great tree, so the job of tree selection is Thea's.

Yesterday Thea's Brownie troop had an awards ceremony to give the girls the Try-Its and patches they'd earned over the past four months.  Thea had nine, so rather than hand-stitch them, I broke out the sewing machine and sewed them on. (Yes, I do know the badges are allegedly iron-on, but it doesn't last, and why buy 'Patch Attach' adhesive when I have a sewing machine.)  I have one thing to say to those who design the patches to commemorate the events: squares, triangles, and rectangles.  Sewing my way around a little reindeer was a complete pain in the butt.

Micah and I made the trip up the Turnpike to Englewood to see Dr. Choe.  Micah sat patiently while the debris was plucked from his ear canals, went off with Courtney the audiologist to the booth and back in to see Dr. Choe.  The audiogram is about the best result that a person who has had bilateral atresia repair can get: mild conductive hearing loss, meaning Micah is within 10dB of someone with normal hearing.  For his 'pain and suffering', we made a trip to Target.  (There is neither pain nor suffering, I no longer even help hold his head still; he giggles and says it tickles.)

Closing Out 2011

It's Hanukkah already?  Micah's first year lighting candles on his own.  We live for danger, and the fire extinguisher is just ten feet away.

And so it begins. . . .

Seriously, Mom?  A puppy hat?

Christmas Day, after starting to cook dinner but before we remembered the stockings.

Dinner, with stuffing recipes courtesy of Mom and Mina

Creamed Spinach, Mom's recipe again, two thumbs up from Thea and it only took one call to Florida

The stunned look of people who realized that Mom cooked an entire holiday dinner and it's actually edible.

Photo by Emad Al Junaidi:  Dinner stop at Annapolis Mall on the way home from dropping off Oma.  Front row: Micah, Nadia and Thea, back row: Norah, Janet and me

11:59:59 pm New Year's Eve, Rocking in 2012 with a gang who knows how to party

Thea's contribution to the Third Grade Heritage Festival on December 23, 2011, German cookies

Second Night of Hanukkah

Christmas Eve, after the children were snug in their bed

The 2011 Christmas Card Photo

Our last day of 2011 included a trip to the Apple store at Freehold Mall to sort out an issue with an iTunes card.  It affirmed all the reasons why I prefer shopping online.  Noise, chaos both in the mall and particularly in the Apple store, and no parking.  Fortunately the geek girl helped me sort out the issue and by the time we were home, the email with the resolution to the problem was in my in-box.

The holidays were good, it was the first Christmas spent in New Jersey for us.  We're usually in Maryland with my mother - and I have been with my mother for every Christmas, ever.  And this year was no different because after opening presents, making Christmas dinner, I flew to Tampa to fly home the next day with my mother who was visiting her cousin.  Sauerkraut, red cabbage, lentil soup and roast pork - a second, near midnight Christmas dinner.   Sauerkraut and lentil soup for breakfast.  Heaven.

Oma spent another night with us on her way home to Maryland, which the kids loved - though out six hour drive in the rain down I-95 back to LaPlata no one loved.  On our way back home to New Jersey we met up with our friends at the Cheesecake Factory, and the kids got to torture Uncle Emad while I got to catch up with Aunt Janet.

Good-bye to 2011, you were a decent year, for me at least.  The kids are doing well, are happy and healthy.  Micah is in a 'regular' kindergarten, Thea is in third grade at Wicoff Elementary. This is the last year they will be in the same school until Thea's last year of high school and Micah's first.