Olivia meets Pooh & Friends!

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.

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?

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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…

Photos here.