There and back

This past weekend, the kids and I took a trip to see my sister, her husband, and my youngest nephew at their home outside of Savannah.  It was a trip that I took with much hesitation.  I've driven to Laura's place and back several times, at least twice with kids.  It takes about 8 hours total if there's only a littel traffic in the major towns.  Sometimes I do it in two days and spend one night at my parent's house.  Once I flew from Nashville, with Emmeline when she was nine weeks old, but it's expensive and there's a layover and with three kids, it's that much more.  Plus, Laura and Reid don't have a vehicle big enough to hold all of us once there.  So if I was going, I was going to drive.  I planned the trip.  Then thought I wouldn't go.  Then thought I'd wait until we got closer to see how everyone's behavior was.  Then thought I'd just go for it.  I really wanted to see Laura and Reid and Maddox and let the kids do the fun things we'd get to do while there.  Laura had only seen Zola for a day or so before this trip, and Reid hadn't met her at all.  So I decided to go for it.

Within a few days of the trip, I talked with my mom, and then she with me, and she said she'd come with me so I had someone else in the car.  This turned out to be helpful in about a thousand ways.  She stayed at a hotel near Laura's house so that she could sleep comfortably, but it also meant that she could take a child with her.  So the older kids took turns going to the hotel with Grandma, riding the elevator, sleeping in the hotel room, and eating at the buffet breakfast.  It was great that they got to not only see their aunt, uncle, and cousin but also make some special memories with Grandma.  She got to hear the chatter one can only really enjoy when there's one kid at a time, and she even got to hear Emmeline's bedtime melodies, which I normally hear down the hall but was audience to in person when we stayed in Chicago.

The night before we were leaving on the trip, Emmeline sat at the dinner table and vomited everywhere.  I almost stopped packing the car at that moment, but she'd seemed so perfectly fine up to that moment I hoped it was just a random incident.  Wes said after the fact that she seemed like she chocked on some food and it hit her gag reflex.  Whatever it was, she wasn't sick for the trip.  Unfortunately, that wasn't true for all of us.

I'd decided beforehand to get up really early and drive to Atlanta before breakfast.  I thought the kids would sleep, and then we could meet some new friends at a park near my parents' house, have breakfast, and wait out downtown Atlanta traffic.  The plan worked pretty well, too.  Oliver and Emmeline were interested in the dark, but after a little while, they fell back asleep. I'd moved Emmeline to the back seat and turned her around for the ride there.  I wanted her to be able to sleep, and the carseat tips back better when installed rear-facing.  Unfortunately, Oliver is in a booster seat, and there was no getting comfortable for him.  He would fall asleep, and his head would bob around.  He was clear uncomfortable and got grouchy, and I felt so bad. I couldn't show him how to use the neck pillow or how to stack some pillows on his side to prop onto.  They all woke up just before getting to my mom's house in pretty good moods.

We met our new friends -- really a friend of a friend who I knew only online -- at a wonderful park near my parents' house.  Sheila brought breakfast, and I pulled out some of the food I'd included in the extensive packing I'd done for the trip, too.  The kids played beautifully together -- almost too well!  Somehow -- well, we knew it was happening... -- all four older kids ended up in the lake, soaking wet in their pajamas and clothes.  And Zola wound up with a scalp full of sand.  I managed to clean up Ollie and Emme and get them in regular clothes to leave around 9am, and with mom in tow, we headed back out.

I don't remember the rest of the trip being too bad.  Mom and I talked.  She helped Oliver try to get comfortable to nap some.  She gave Zola her pacifier and someone to talk to.  She handed out electronics to entertain and generally played games with the kids.  And I drove. And drove.  And drove.  We had lunch at Arby's and got to Pooler mid-afternoon.  I was so happy to just be there and know our driving was half done!

Over the next few days, we had a lot of fun.  I took the older kids to the pool several times.  Emmeline got to use her new shark bite float.  Oliver rode his two-wheeler around the very flat and safe neighborhood, and Emme even got out on her tricycle.  Zola got several baths to remove sand from her hair.  We crowded all eight people into our mini-van to drive various places, twice to the marina to go out on Reid's new boat (the highlight of the weekend).  We had dinner at the Crab Shack out on the water, which went pretty well considering we had four young children with us.  We did deal with an Emme accident at the table, but since our table was outside, we were able to more easily remedy the situation.  On Saturday, we all went out to the beach on the boat and met a bunch of Laura and Reid's friends there.  We had a great time.  The older kids loved the water and swam without too much supervision (but life jackets), and the babies were happy at the surf.  Zola would sit with me at the edge of the water and just laugh every time the water came up.  She was covered in sand, all up through her diaper, but just as happy as could be.  Unfortunately, a nasty storm cut our time out a little short and made for a harrowing boat ride back into the marina.  I'll be honest, I cried a little.  I had Emmeline on my lap, a towel over her head to protect her from the stinging rain, and while I knew my brother-in-law was perfectly capable, the scene was just too scary to bear without a few tears.  Maybe it's my fear of dying in the ocean.

Sunday was a lot quieter.  We went to church, and that was my first indication that all were not well.  I left Zola in child care, fully expecting her to cry when I left, but instead she just sat there.  When we went to get her, after a long church service, she dead asleep in the middle of the floor, where she had reportedly been since I dropped her off.  I fed her lunch, and she was ready to nap again.  A nap that went on and on into the afternoon.  When I got her up mid-afternoon, she had a 103 fever and was clearly lethargic.  I dosed her with meds to bring down the fever, and we just all took turns holding her. She was so sad!  That night, Laura did a movie night for the kids.  She had little cups of M&Ms, a popcorn box, and they watch most of Underdog.  Everyone slept well the whole trip, which made for a much more enjoyable visit.  I put Zola to sleep in a playpen downstairs, and one big kid to sleep in my bed, then transferred -- Oliver to the other side of the bed, Emmeline to a little bed on the floor for fear of her rolling off of the fairly high bed.

Yesterday morning Zola was unchanged. She still had a very high fever and just seemed unwell.  We made the decision to leave a day early so that I could take her to the doctor today if she wasn't better.    I did most, but not all, of the driving on the way back.  My mom drove through downtown Atlanta. We were ahead of go-home traffic, but it was still really busy, and I knew I still had 3+ more hours to go.  Once at their house, my mom kept Zola at home to sit and play while my dad and I took the big kids to a pool to work out some energy.  We were there 45 minutes, but it was enough to wear them out a little.  Zola slept almost the whole way home still, and the kids did pretty well.

I'm glad to be home, though the doctors don't really know what's wrong with Zola.  I wouldn't worry as much except she had some other kind of virus a week before we left.  They think this is different, so it's probably okay, but always scary when a kid is sick for so long.  But mostly I'm glad we went.  The kids keep talking about the beach, the boat ride, and the fun they had.  We don't get to see family all the time with the distance between us, but I love the memories they're making when we're able to get together!

Hairy situation

Emme "lost" her barrette at lunchtime and said it fell on the ground. Could not find it anywhere. Just discovered it at the bottom of her cup of juice, sitting in the refrigerator.

The third, or about Zola

I have a special connection with each of my children because of who they are in the family.  Oliver is my firstborn, which means all of my firsts as a mom were with him.  Emme is the big sister, like I am in my family.  And Zola is the third child, also like me in my family.  And so I will hope she will forgive me that I have done such a poor job documenting her first few months on the blog.  Part of that is that, well, I now have three children.  Life is busy.  Part is that it’s been a different kind of transition, and I didn’t feel I was doing as good a job transitioning her into our family as I did with the first two.  And in my stew, I hesitated to write anything down that might suggest her addition to our family was anything was seamless.  But now that things are more settled I will attempt to document as much as I can – and keep up from here on out.

Zola is ten months now.  She’s been with me for over five months, home for four and a half, and in my arms for almost as long as she was out of them.  She’s definitely attached to us, all of us, and I would say I know her pretty well, though as with all young children, I’m learning more every day.  She seems to be developing normally and is ahead of her siblings in some fine and gross motor skills.  She learned to sit well around six months.  She was rolling to get to things within a few weeks of that.  And shortly thereafter, around seven-and-a-half or eight months, had developed a crawl that allowed her to get around pretty well on our wood and stone floors.  She was truly crawling at nine months, but does so with her left foot and right knee.  When she’s on rough or uneven terrain, she crab walks.  She seems like she really wants to just stand up and walk, but we’re probably another month or more away, though she can now hold my hand and walk along next to me pretty well.  She still does this funny three-point sit on her hip with her legs over each other and one arm in the air.  It’s truly a Zola pose that she did from early on.  She learned to pull herself up around eight months and now cruises some around the furniture.  Her daycare teacher said she stood up and stayed upright for several seconds last week.  And last month she crawled up our stairs from the sunroom to the kitchen, though she doesn’t know how to go down them – safely anyway.  Fortunately, she seems to now realize their danger and usually sits at the top and fusses.

As far as personality, Zola is a bit of a mix.  She is really happy and sweet when she’s not tired or hungry or wanting someone to pick her up.  When she is any of those things, she can be very fussy and loud, and her cries are particularly painful.  She has a whine that drives me bonkers and I really hope goes away when she learns to talk.  I’m trying to teach her some signs now – mostly “more” and “food/eat” and “please.”  Zola has always been a very curious baby.  She watches people very closely, stares even.  When she’s in the back carrier, she’ll lean over hard to one side to see around me at whatever is the focus of my attention.  She likes textures, always wanting to touch everything and run things through her fingers.  She’s a toddler, and like most, loves to put things in her mouth, but with a zeal I’ve never seen before.  She’s extremely determined – to get to the one thing you’re trying to keep her away from, for example – and she cries when I tell her “no” too sharply or take what she wants.  But in general, she’s a happy baby when she’s not unhappy.  She’s got this hilarious belly laugh that comes out when she gets giggling really hard.  She loves being with her siblings and is usually pretty content if being held or carried by me or Wes.  She seems to know her grandmothers well enough not to fuss for them now.  And she’s more or less adjusted to daycare in her first five days.  She cried hard the first two days at dropoff but calmed down after I left.  The third day she didn’t fuss at all, and the last two days it’s just been a little wail when I walked out the door.  It was both a blessing and a curse to see her cry as I left.  I hated that she was so sad, but it also meant that she knew me as her mom. She didn’t cry once when she left her foster mother.  She smiled at me, and she was happy with me thereafter.  And it wasn’t for a lack of attention from her foster family, as they clearly loved her very much.  But Zola seemed to adjust very quickly to her life with me and in our family, perhaps even faster than we did to her.

Zola is still a thick baby, and while I think she’ll eventually thin out a bit, I don’t doubt she’ll always have a fuller figure than Emme.  It’s just how she’s made.  She does seem a bit more trim as she’s moving so much more.  She eats very well, though, and after waning a bit after learning to crawl, her appetite is once again pretty big.  She has breakfast, lunch, and dinner with table food and some baby food that she can self-feed, and then two 6-8-ounce bottles mid-morning and mid-afternoon.  She does really well with table food and seems to prefer it to the baby purees (though I mostly use them to get her lots of fruit and vegetables).  She can drink from a sippy cup but doesn’t hesitate to hold it upside down and let water or juice drip out, so it’s still just at the table.  She can drink from a straw, so I’ll give her yogurt smoothies or sips of my water that way.  She still has an unnatural attachment to her bottles. She freaks out when she sees one and will not calm down until it’s in her hands.  She’s been able to hold her own bottle pretty well since around six months if lying on her back, but now she can also drink the whole thing sitting up.  She almost always cries when it’s gone.  It’s the one thing I – whether at all true or not – think is somehow connected to her experiences in Congo – of being hungry and just not having enough. 

The other thing Zola loves to do – and is painful without – is sleep.  There are days when she still sleeps as much as a newborn.  When she first came home she would take naps on and off throughout the day without too much of a schedule.  She was up several times at night for a bottle until she really started eating baby food.  With some effort (swing + pacifier + letting her fuss and hoping she’d go back to sleep), I got her down to one middle-of-the-night bottle, and when my mom kept her while I was at a conference in Caly, she got rid of that feed, too.  We tried having her sleep lots of different places – in the cosleeper, in the cosleeper in the master closet, in her crib in the girls’ room, in a playpen in our room, in a playpen in the basement bedroom – and eventually found that she and I sleep best when she is in the basement bedroom.  She might be fine back upstairs now, but I’m hesitant to try it out for fear of upsetting her routine.  Downstairs, she sleeps in a perfectly dark, quiet, cool room without anyone interrupting her.  Upstairs she would go to sleep but inevitably be woken by the older two going to bed themselves.  Or she would wake in the middle of the night for a 20-minute chat (with herself?) while I lay awake in bed waiting for her to go back to sleep.  There was definitely more crying involved in getting into our final routine, but now that it’s done, I don’t regret it.  I think she would have kept waking up to eat as long as I let her.  And I’ve never found anything that helps her fall asleep when she’s fighting it.  Holding or rocking her calms her down, but it doesn’t help her sleep.  At this point it’s not an issue, though, and she usually lies down, head down on the mattress, butt up in the air, just waiting for a blanket.  She likes one to stay warm but also to hold in her hand while she’s asleep.  Since starting daycare, she’s definitely  more tired in the evenings.  She went from about four hours of nap per day to 1 ½.  We’ve been putting her to bed earlier at night and letting her nap a lot on the days she’s home, but overall she’s adjusted to the shorter naps pretty well.  I think that, like with Emme when she was in the infant room, there’s just too much going on during naptime for her to sleep outside the midday one.

Like with Oliver and Emme, Wes has given Zola any number of nicknames.  She’s usually Z or Big Z, but she’s also Squeezy, which seems to fit her.  She knows her name and will turn her head when called – if there’s not something more interesting nearby.  More than anything, she is uniquely her own.  As much as Oliver and Emmeline are distinct personalities, Zola is yet another that is unlike either of theirs.  She’s loud.  She loves to talk.  She loves people and being with them.  I don’t see her being as shy as either Oliver or Emmeline are as toddlers and preschoolers.  She’s not quiet like Ollie, but she’s not reckless like Emme, either.  She has the single-minded focus that Oliver sometimes has, but the stubbornness that Emmeline does.  Every day reminds me that’s changing, though.  It took months – and listening to at least a  hundred different people tell me, “Looks like her top teeth are about to come in” – for her top teeth to emerge.  But now they’re there, and she has an adorable gap between them.  And she got two more bottom teeth at the same time.  Her hair has grown in around the back, making it necessary for me to once again consult websites about easy baby hairstyles for African hair.  If Zola has taught me one thing in her few months home, it’s that just because she’s the third doesn’t mean I don’t have lots still to learn about being a mom.

Face it

And then there were three

2nd Annual Self Family Cabins Trip

Seven days, six nights, eight movies (including two on VHS), eleven hours of driving, several mil hiked and almost 20 biked, thousands of calories consumed, and another family vacation later, we are home.  Last Saturday, we left bright and early for our second family vacation in the mountains of Virginia.  We left this year after dawn instead of before, in the sun instead of in the pouring rain, in a bigger car, and one kid heavier.  We had a bit more rain, fortunately in the second half of the week after we’d gotten to do most of the important things – hike in Grayson Highlands, bike the Virginia Creeper, throw lots of rocks in the pond, and have ice cream cones on the porch.  We’d hoped to do a bit more, but rain precluded it.  Even when the skies cleared in the afternoon for a few hours, the trails would have been way too wet for little people to pass over them.

Like last year, we had to do some creative sleeping arrangements to get five people and one dog asleep in a rental mountain cabin.  The cabin we stayed at this summer – Cave School Cabin – had more actual beds but the same number of true bedrooms – just two.  Wes and I slept upstairs in the lofted bedroom the first two or three nights, but the bed was too firm and the room too bright – even at night, thanks to a full moon while we were there.  In the end, Oliver slept in one room, Emme in another but was then moved after deep in sleep to a toddler bed in Oliver’s room.  Zola slept in a playpen in the half bath/laundry room (this girl has slept in any number of strange places!) without much complaint.  And Wes and I, after our first few nights of poor sleep, moved to the king-sized bed where Emme would fall asleep.  (I’ve got to get at least two of these kids to learn to fall asleep in the same room!)  Zola fussed some with the change from her cool, dark, quiet basement bedroom at home, and Emme was up one night until well after 9PM rearranging everything in her room, but by and large everyone did okay.

We made the drive up on Saturday in eight or nine hours with lots of stops, including two to fix and then remove the old blue tarp we had covering the suitcases on our roof racks and one to adjust seats so the two older kids could watch a movie together on the iTouch (read: It may be time for an iPad).  We made it three hours before we stopped for breakfast at a Cracker Barrel, where we finished off five pancakes, four slices of French toast, eggs, a sausage, some bacon, and a berry and granola yogurt parfait, plus two glasses of orange juice, a mug of hot chocolate, and some coffee for Wes.  Oliver was still hungry when all the food was gone.  I drove the second leg up to Bristol, where we stopped at a McDonalds with a playland for more caffeine and smoothies for the kids (which they finished!).  Wes drove up the mountain to a Food City in Abingdon where we stocked up on food for the week.  It was Kids Day, and there was still an inflatable slide and bounce house outside that the kids took advantage of.  From there it was just shy of another hour before we got to the cabin itself.  It’s much bigger than the one we had last year, well off the road and surrounded by woods and some Christmas trees.  It’s far less shaded, which I miss, but much more set off to itself, which is nice both in terms of quiet and keeping Lucy off the main roads.  Saturday evening was spent unpacking, making a hasty dinner, and trying to figure out sleeping arrangements.

On Sunday we visited with my brother, Jon, and met his girlfriend, Tammi, and their new puppy, Faith.  The kids don’t really remember Jon as it’s been two years since they’ve seen him, but Oliver was happy to trot around the pond with him, and Zola was ultimately persuaded to let him hold her without her crying.  In the morning before Jon came, we played outside – exploring the woods, checking out the pond, and playing Ring-around-the-Rosie and Red Rover (yes, with four people). After they left, we took a walk up Massie Gap at Grayson Highlands, where we saw some wild ponies and climbed some big rocks.  Oliver surprised us by being a super walker, while Emme (who was exhausted) got carried the whole way.  On Monday I slept in late after the days of poor sleep (before and after getting to the cabin) caught up with me.  In the afternoon, we went back to Grayson Highlands for another hike, this time doing the Cabin Creek Trail, which turns around at a gorgeous waterfall.  Emme did more walking this time on the even parts of the terrain and did pretty well.  She’s still pretty small and unsteady, so she crashes a lot where there’s too much rocky terrain.  Zola was amicable on both hikes, thanks to being strapped into the carrier.  We did leave Lucy at the cabin – three kids with two in carriers are enough for the two of us to handle!

On Tuesday we braved the weather – which looked daunting – to bike the Virginia Creeper.  We checked the forecast beforehand at the new (six years old) Whitetop library.  They have a great early literacy area for young kids, and save Zola’s happy screams, the kids did okay while Wes was on the computer.  On the trail, Wes hauled one child (mostly Oliver, but briefly Emme towards the end) on his bike, and I pulled two plus the necessary baby items in a trailer, and somehow we made it through in about 2 ½ hours.  My butt didn’t hurt nearly as much this time, but my thighs were definitely burning.  I pedaled a lot more, and a lot harder, this time than last, especially towards the end with about 75 pounds of kid and trailer behind me.  Nonethless, it was beautiful, and the weather was gorgeous beginning to end.

Wednesday and Thursday turned out to be rain. Wes and I each took half a day to do some work at the library, read email, and have a few hours of quiet.  Wes slept late one day to do some catching up of his own. The kids were content to watch movies (something we mete out sparingly at home), play with a few new toys, and get outside when they could.  Everyone needed to nap more than they did, but we avoided too many full meltdowns.  We did lots of puzzles, including a 150-piece Disney puzzle.  While Zola was napping, the four of us played ABC Go Fish in pairs.  I even did Emme’s nails, which are now painted a color I imagine more on a 45-year-old recent divorcee heading out for cocktails than on a 2-year-old.  But hey, it was vacation.  While I was at the library Thursday afternoon, Wes and the kids

put up our six-man tent in the sunroom and pulled around some other furniture to make an extensive fort.  We took advantage of a little sun in the afternoon to go to an old playground in Green Cover.  We stop there on our bike ride, too, but drove over for a quick outing this time.  In the evening we had shish kabobs on wire hangers since I couldn’t find any actual skewers.  Wes kept the kids on the porch while I worked in the kitchen, and Oliver got Zola to laugh and laugh by banging the chairs to make the porch vibrate.  She’s developed this wonderful belly laugh that comes out when she’s really worked up, and it’s hilarious to hear.  The kids got much-needed baths and were in bed late but exhausted and so succumbed much more quickly to sleep.  Wes and I watched some of the NBA draft and then a little

television before bed.  We sat on the porch for a while after the kids were asleep, and the fireflies were unbelievable.  It was like a paparazzi of fireflies, with their flashes going off constantly all over the place.

Friday morning we woke up to more overcast skies, and Wes made the call to head back to Nashville a day early.  The kids seemed to be going a little stir-crazy with all the rain, and going home sooner would give us the whole weekend to settle back before work and school and daycare on Monday.  There was a lot to pack and clean up before we left, but we were on the road by noon.  All of the kids slept at least some, despite some torrential rain on parts of I-81.  Unfortunately, out luck ran out at the end of the trip, and Zola cried easily two or more hours, painful for both her and us.  I put her to bed the minute we got home and she slept soundly until morning.  I got the van emptied (and today did a super-duper vac job on it after having the dog in there all week) while Wes wound the kids down and got them some dinner.  Everyone slept soundly last night, despite the house being a little warm after a week with no air conditioning.

In the end, it was a wonderful trip, and it’s something I’m sure we’ll make an annual event.  Zola is only ten months, which means each year from here will only get easier – until, of course, someone gets bored with going.  Right now, though, it’s the highlight of the kids’ summer.  Oliver loves the anticipation of the trip, and all the kids enjoy the long stretch of time with Wes and his undivided attention.  Zola got to bang open the screen door and play with the cabinets for untold hours.  And Emme loves the freedom to just run and play for hours on end.  And we love it, too.  We’re making memories and, in my case, remembering old ones.  I told Wes that the smell and sensations of being out on the trails bring back memories of me and him, talking and walking and falling in love on the New River Trail.  I can imagine us coming here for vacations well after we have young children to tote along.

For now, it’s back to life on Stonewall.  The kids will be happy to see their friends at daycare and be back on their regular schedule.  I have house cleaning already waiting for me and am looking forward to being back in my office in a week when Zola starts daycare also.  We all need our own beds, and I think even Lucy – who perhaps loves it out here most of all – will be happy to be back with her bunnies in the backyard.  Until next year!

Rain, rain, go away

Overhead at the breakfast table: "It shouldn't be raining while we're having banana bread."

Cry baby

She didn't cry the day I met her. She didn't cry the whole way home. But nearly five months after meeting my youngest daughter, I left her crying in the infant room at daycare. For an adoptive momma, it's both a blessing and a curse -- to know that your child now knows you as her first source of comfort and then to take it away and know that it's so confusing for her. Hoping she calms down soon and comes to love the wonderful women who were also Emmeline's first daycare teachers!