In Disney World Friday, September 25, 2009
Woah – sudden activity!
We got to Disney World on Sunday the 20th and we’re staying in the “new” Treehouse villas in the Saratoga Springs resort.
It’s been a nice trip, albeit a bit odd. We’ve got just a day left on the trip and we still have yet to walk into Animal Kingdom or Hollywood Studios.
Olivia has had a good time on the trip having a slightly better idea of what is happening. She’s met Daisy Duck, Pooh, Eeyore, and Tigger so far and has been delighted in the process. Each time she has gotten upset about having to leave her new friends, approaching them with confidence and pleasure.
We’ve eaten well, like usual. We haven’t taken many photos ourselves, leaving most of the photography to the Disney folks, so we’ll have those in a few weeks. The handful of personal photos aren’t playing nice on the upload process right now. I did get a video upload, though, so you can take a look at Olivia and the Pooh crew.
Many journeys on the same path. Thursday, May 28, 2009
I have a job. I start in about three weeks. It’s the position I wanted, in the area of my main interest (Cardiac ICU), with the appropriate hours, and has a healthy payrate. I am excited.
I am nauseous.
What… was… I… thinking?
Olive will have to go to daycare. I won’t see every wonderful thing she does on a daily basis. I will have to surrender her to people who will surely do their absolute best to care for her, but could never love her on such an infinite and overwhelming level. She will cry. I will cry. I’m reasonably confident she will get over it. I’m not sure I will.
I repeat – WHAT WAS I THINKING???
Oh yeah. Those pesky little things called BILLS. That silly business of the (no longer leaking – yay!) roof over our heads. The new gutters being installed this coming Monday. The exterior paint job looming in the distance.
I know, I know. She’s going to do fine. If anything, she’s going to love being around other kids on a regular basis. Matter of fact, she will probably demand an explanation of why she was not introduced to this sooner. And I will still get to spend loads of time with her, seeing as how I will be working three days a week, 7 AM – 7 PM and the occasional weekend.
But still.
What.
Was.
I.
Thinking?
No promises, people. Friday, May 8, 2009
It’s been a bit since I’ve written. It may be a bit till I write again. Sorry, folks, the last few months have not been conducive to blogging. That doesn’t mean that Olivia hasn’t been the most amazing, wonderful, smart, beautiful, talented, charming, loquacious, darling little girl in the world.
It means that there has not been time (or energy) to write it all down.
Seriously.
Here’s a smidge of what has been going on:
Hole in the roof.
Water through the DOWNSTAIRS ceiling.
Water through the bathroom walls.
Gutters and downspouts randomly giving up their rather tenuous grasp on life.
These and other things all lead to an estimated $17,000 repair bill. What does that mean? That means Momma (ie. Me) has to go back to work. What does that mean?
STRESS! *S*T*R*E*S*S
Granted, I had been considering making a return to nursing. Olive is a doll, but could stand a little socialization. She desperately wants to be around kids her age. You should see her lunge at other (panicked) children while playing on the playground or shopping with her parents. The child emphatically luvs other kiddos. That eased my guilt/worry/must-never-make-a-mistake nature into believing she might enjoy daycare. But there is a big difference in deciding to become a working mom and being pushed into it because the house might actually fall down around our ears.
Also, some of you might have noticed that there have been some global economic issues lately… some recession thingy… that could make landing job a bit more difficult.
All of this to say that our posting is probably going to stay sporadic until all this evens out. BUT, I am still plugging away with my cell phone camera. I have pics from a couple of regular cameras that aren’t yet uploaded. If nothing else, Olive’s adorable self will still be memorialized on our photo links for your viewing pleasure.
Mother’s Day Out Friday, February 6, 2009
So her mother didn’t actually get the day out of the house, but Olivia did spend the day away from anyone related to her.
Susan had a bit of GI upset starting very early in the morning, so I delayed the start of my work day and dropped Olivia off at the mother’s day our program we’ve been trying to get her well enough to enter. Everything went very smoothly with the drop off – I met the teacher, a couple of kids, left her bag of stuff, and backed out of the room while Olivia wasn’t looking. Apparently she never really did go looking.
When Susan went to pick her up this afternoon, Olivia had a great report card – she’s full of smiles, a pleasure to care for, and played well with everyone. She skipped taking a nap, but otherwise was an angel. She was excited to see her mommy arrive, but not in a panicked manner – she brought some toys over to show off.
She’ll be back at it this coming Monday and hopefully this time Susan will get some time that isn’t spent healing.
New and Improved! Now Rash Free! Thursday, January 15, 2009
Olivia’s rash is out of the picture. I haven’t had to medicate her for itching in 3 days. She no longer looks like a chemical burn victim. If you stare at her calves long and hard, you might faintly detect the outline where the largest areas were. Barely. You’d need to squint and get uncomfortably close to a toddler’s derriere.
This is a mighty good thing for many reasons. The foremost being that it nearly broke my heart to see her so uncomfortable. It just about killed me to have my baby in pain and not be able to do anything about it besides dope her up and wait it out. The thought of having to do so for weeks, possibly months…
<shivers>
The other great thing is that Olive is now healthy enough to attend a Mother’s Day Out Program. She’ll get some socialization with other kids and I’ll have a regular block of time to myself! Win-win all around. I’ll be visiting the program this Friday (after a dental appointment… 
) to check it out. I’ve already talked over the phone with the head honcho and the lady who would be Olivia’s teacher. They were exceptionally nice and very enthusiastic about having her in the class. As long as I like what I see, she’ll be starting come Monday.
………………………..
My dad’s birthday was yesterday, so….
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, DA!
Triumphant return! Tuesday, January 13, 2009
Hi there! Remember me? Susan, the slacker-blogger extraordinaire? No?? I don’t blame you, people. I’ve been a non-entity for a very long time now.
You see, I’ve been struggling with the “mommy” thing in the past few months. It really threw me off balance. I’m not a perfectionist, but I do demand the best of myself in the important areas of my life. I’d say raising Olive to be a good person pretty much tops that list. Unfortunately, a lot of other things had to fall along the wayside so I didn’t, oh I don’t know, RUIN THE BABY FOREVER.
I’m more zen about it now.
Sure, I still bust a freakout when I see her eat a dead bug, but I don’t hyperventilate when she eats a butt cheerio. For those of you not in the loop (everyone), a butt cheerio is an errant cheerio that Olive pulls from under her heiney and pops into her mouth while I strap her into her booster seat. Some of them are already half-eaten. No big.
I am trying to focus on how happy she is. I have to be doing something right, because my daughter smiles 99.9% of the time. The other .01% she flings herself into piercing screams. No one is perfect.
My new theory of parenthood is that if she’s smiling a large majority of the time and is reasonably healthy, I’m doing great. And if I’m doing great, I shouldn’t feel inordinately guilty for wanting to have some time for things other than my outrageously cute daughter. Like, say, my outrageously cute husband. Or my outrageously neglected social life. Or a shower now and then. (I’m not kidding about how much has fallen along the wayside).
Even the occasional blog post.
I’m not naive enough to believe that this new perspective will prevent all future blowouts regarding parenting vs. having-a-life. But I am hopeful that it might keep me from becoming completely unhinged at the end of a long, long day.
Anywhoo, just wanted to say hi. I’ve missed you.
Photos, etc Monday, January 12, 2009
A few quick things:
Olivia is improving, much less itchiness and much less visible rash. I think she’s off the meds, but Susan would have to say for certain.
Olivia and Susan will be visiting a mother’s day out program on Friday and, if we’re lucky, Olivia will be attending as soon as next Monday. That will offer Susan a break on Mon / Fri every week for about 6 hours each day.
My 365 project continues, but as a benefit to everyone else, there have been a lot more photos of Olivia lately. You can look at her 2nd year set to check them out.
Neglect! Tuesday, January 6, 2009
Ok, so yes, the blog has been neglected really, really badly. But no – tonight just isn’t the night to correct that neglect!
I’m stopping by for two reasons. We’ll start with the fun news first – our Disney PhotoPass CD showed up today, and I’ve pushed all those up to Flickr in a set all their own.
So now for the news that isn’t so fun.
We found out this morning that Olivia has a viral rash over a large portion of her body. It may actually be two separate viral rahes, but they don’t really know for sure. However, just like the cold virus, there isn’t anything to do except make the symptoms bareable. And how do you do that? With antihistimines. And how do those make you feel? Sleepy.
So you ask, how long will it last? They aren’t sure – the doctor has seen a patient that had it last for a couple of months. The short end of the scale is a couple of weeks. That’s a couple of weeks to a couple of months of a baby that wants to peel her skin off because it itches. A baby that screams the majority of the time she’s awake. A baby who can’t visit most of her family or friends because they’ve got easily compromisable immune systems…
So… that’s us.
Oh – and if you’re watching the Flickr stream, don’t mind the over abundance of photos of me, some of which may be odd – I’m participating in the “365 Project” where I’ll end up with a self portrait every day for the rest of the year. I’ve started it once before, but I’m hopeful to make it through this time…
We’re home… Sunday, December 14, 2008
After a very trying flight home, wherein Miss Olivia screamed for the majority of it, we’re finally home.
I’m not really feeling like writing a long post, so I’ll just share a couple of links:
Garrett’s photos from the trip are here.
The combination of mom’s, Susan’s, and my cameras are here.
The longer videos that I took – with my cell phone 
– are here.
I think we may have gotten a whole 5 minutes worth of real video, and most of that was in “night shot” mode. The battery got drained at some point but I didn’t know until we were at Pooh’s breakfast, which was the biggest thing we wanted to video. At that point I was discouraged and didn’t charge that battery…
We have the Disney PhotoPass pictures in a few weeks, and I know I’ve got at least one more batch of pictures to upload this afternoon. All told, I think we’ll have nearly 1000 pictures from this trip…
I’ll write more later, for now, its back to laundry.
Disney update Thursday, December 11, 2008
Its been several days since we last posted and we’ve been having a fun time here in Disney World. I can’t say we’ve had smooth nights, but the days have been very nice.
Olivia’s schedule, as we can all imagine, is a little off right now. She’s in an odd place, with lots of people, and a small room. Getting her to sleep has been a difficult task, complete with plenty of screaming. Even when she naps, she ends up moving toward meltdown about the same time every night – about the time we order dessert at the dinner table!
A couple of fun things from the past few days – Olivia loves to sleep under the stars. On Tuesday night, during the Christmas party, we went through the TTA and when we pulled into Space Mountain, she saw the stars and passed out. Last night, Wednesday, we went into Spaceship Earth for a quick ride and when we hit the stars, she hit the sack. Fun part? She adores Spaceship Earth’s scenes. She watches them with great fascination and cranes her head as they go by.
This has been a very different trip from previous ones – Olivia changes a lot of the dynamic. That, combined with the fact that Susan is the only person that will ride the fast rides with me, makes our time in the parks a little different. It’s not that we’re spending lots of time on the kiddie rides – Olivia doesn’t care one way or the other, really – its just that it seems like we’ve been a little less organized about our time in the parks.
Food has been great, and I was very happy to find that Tokyo Dining served my favorite shochu, of which I’ve bought a bottle, by the glass. The food there was good and plentiful, but sort of short on sushi. With the dining plan, you can order their pre-set sushi platter, but the sushi selection isn’t exactly adventuresome… which, I suppose, should be expected. Le Cellier in Canada was nice, but Susan and I preferred the New York Strip steak she got in the Coral Reef. Not that the one we had in Canada wasn’t awesome, there are just varying degrees of awesome.
I’ve posted a few videos - fireworks and Christmas stories. Of course there are a few hundred photos (400+) already uploaded, and that doesn’t even count Garrett and Amy’s photos or the PhotoPass photos we’ll have after the trip.
Today its raining very hard, and we’re technically under a tornado watch. It should be wrapping up by now, so we’re talking about what we’re doing today. Yesterday was a bit of a wash, and today got washed out, but we’re still having fun!
We’re in Disney World! Monday, December 8, 2008
As I’m sure plenty of people know, we’re currently in Disney World! I’m not going to write up a report (or even a brief) right now, but I can say that we’re having lots of fun and eating well. Olivia has enjoyed several rides, watching the scenes going by with great interest.
We’re pushing a lot of pictures from our phones, so the quality isn’t amazing, but I’m also trying to put our “real” photos up each morning. Like usual, they are in a set at Flickr.
Turkey? Eaten. Saturday, November 29, 2008
And man was it juicy. I really don’t want to brag, and I don’t remember if it was quite like this last year, but I can say for certain that this was one juicy bird. My first cut into the breast meat had liquid flowing like a fountain. I extended the brine time by an hour, but I don’t know if that made any difference. Like I said, too, this may have been the situation last year, I’m just not certain.
We had a great time, but missed having Susan’s parents and Aunt along for the celebration. My dad supported me in the kitchen all day long, so that made the process much easier to handle. We managed to get everything cooked, some for the first time, and delivered to the table on time. Dad tried his hand at cornbread stuffing and giblet gravy, each for his first time at the helm. The stuffing left a few minor things to be desired, but overall went extremely well.
In addition to Thanksgiving dinner, we had a little bit of early Christmas. Basically there was a severe shortage of vehicle space, so things needed to be delivered when the opportunity arose. Olivia got a “magic fountain cottage” from my parents and it was brought up by Susan’s parents on Thursday. This stayed in the box, rendering it basically invisible to Olivia, until today when my mother could assemble it. You’ll notice the photos on flickr.
For Susan and I we got a new chest of drawers and bed from IKEA. This was a complete surprise to me, and we haven’t tackled the process of putting them together just yet. We decided instead of furniture construction, we’d spent some family time together. Amy, Garrett and Geni took a quick trip to Target and bought Apples To Apples, a game Matt and Richell had introduced us to a while back. We spent several hours playing, laughing and taunting one another.
Miss Olivia had a delightful time today, playing and visiting with all of the family. She and Harvey got to spend time together, as well with everyone else – she’s even starting to warm up to my dad finally. It may have been helpful that he was on her terrority this time, but she certainly was a lot less shy about being around him.
By about 5 or 6p, though, she was exhausted. Someone swept her off to bed and she hasn’t really woken up since then. Apparently being charming for so many people, and taking ownership of a new home, is quite tiring for a young girl. I’m sure she’s just resting up to tackle the cottage anew, tomorrow morning.
Even with all the changes of plans (which everyone knows frustrated me greatly), it all turned out very nicely. I hate that we couldn’t have quite everyone at the same time, but we did get to see everyone around the same time. I’m thankful for a home that can fit so many people and for families that will travel to be together.
Turkey? Dunked. Saturday, November 29, 2008
The turkey, like last year, is going to be brined. I rose at 3:30a, removed the bits stored in the turkey, and dunked him in a bucket of ice water and flavor agents. In about 3 hours, I’ll wake again to turn it over for full effect. By 10a or so, we’ll be ready to cook… but I suppose I’d better wait a little longer so I can time it better based on arrivals…
I’m ready to go back to sleep now.
