Colorado Card Revoked

We've had a lot going on with Nora over the last month. First and foremost, we're all finally healthy and had our first weekend with no illness in months. We had a great day on Sunday when we celebrated a friend's birthday with a hike up to Devil's Head along the Rampart Range of Colorado. (Here's a link to the trail for my Colorado folks.) This was our first hike with Nora and she's almost 9 months old! I think I'm going to have my Colorado-native citizenship revoked for waiting an entire 9 months to take Nora hiking. This my friends, is blasphemy in my fair state.

Nora had a great time on the hike. Joel had her in a hiking backpack that had her slightly elevated so that she could see out. She stayed awake for the entire hike and always made sure to look back to see if mommy was still bringing up the rear. It was so fun to be able to have her experience the outdoors and get outside and enjoy some sunshine and fresh air. Hopefully, this is just the first of many hikes this summer. We're hoping to get up to the mountains a lot more- especially to do some mushroom hunting. It feels so good to be out and about and healthy again!

P.S. My friend has all the photos on her camera so I will post when I get them.
P.P.S I had really hoped to post this as a Perfect Moment Monday but alas it's Tuesday- maybe next week!

Sister Time!

As a surprise for my mom, I arranged for my sister to fly out for tea this last weekend. Since I know my mom reads my blog,, I couldn't mention how EXCITED I was for my sister to come out and I especially couldn't mention that we'd then be going on a trip to celebrate her 30th birthday.



My mom was completely surprised to see my sister on Saturday which was great. We then enjoyed a phenomenal tea together. My sister and I then headed to New Mexico the following afternoon. We stayed at Ojo Caliente hot springs and it was fantastic for the first day. We enjoyed a soak, went to Taos, toured some earthships and then headed back to the room for a great dinner of cheese, olives, meats and wine. Sadly, that evening, my sister came down with the stomach flu. She slept most of the next day and we headed back home yesterday. Of all places, it was definitely the best location to be sick since all there was to do was relax anyway. I felt bad for her that she wasn't really able to celebrate her birthday.




We feel that there may be some sort of curse against Stephanie visiting NM. Years ago we had a trip to Ojo planned and Steph came home with mono. I got sick Saturday morning but miraculously rallied but poor Steph really got hit with the flu. Despite all the illness, it was still great to be together and spend time with one of my favorite people.

Girl Day

Tomorrow Nora, my mom, Joel's mom and I are all going to have afternoon tea at a local hotel famous for their traditional tea service (although I usually have the champagne). It's our post-Mother's Day mom outing and I'm really looking forward to a relaxing afternoon with the ladies. It feels like life is coming at me at a million miles an hour and I just can't keep up. Taking a little hiatus and enjoying time with the family will be perfect.

I'll try to be good and post some tea photos tomorrow.

Sickness Round 2

After thinking I was finally in the clear after well over a month and a half of sickness - it began again. Thursday Nora threw up at daycare. Since babies can be a little pukey, I didn't get a call and they thought nothing of it. Thursday evening I fed Nora her brown rice and peas and a half-hour later, she started coughing so violently that she began to gag and projectile vomited peas all over me, herself, our couch, coffee table, rug and everything else in a 5 ft. radius. It was really scary as she was gagging and gasping. I ran to get Joel in the garage with peas all over Nora and I from head to toe and promptly called the after-hours line at her pediatrician. Nora was then sick throughout the night with vomiting and a fever but my biggest concern was her cough which she has had off an on for awhile.

I called the pediatrician's office the moment they opened the next morning and got her the first appointment of the day. I'd already missed three days of work last week before with her last cold so I had my mom come over to watch her and come to the pediatrician's office with me so she could hear what needed to be done for the day. (What a great mom!). I have literally been to the pediatricians office almost once a week and was beginning to feel like an over-the-top paranoid mom. However, my instincts were correct. Nora has bronchitis and is now on a course of amoxicilin. My mom and I finished our appointment when we got home Joel was coming through the door. He went to work and left an hour later with a stomach bug. He went straight to bed and my mom watched Nora and I reluctantly went into work.

I left work a little early to get back and take over for my mom and take care of Nora. I stopped at the grocery store for provisions and laughed at my cart. Everyone else had fixings for a bbq or dinner for the night. I had Pedialyte, infant Motrin, Boudreaux's Butt Paste, chicken soup, Sprite and crackers. Joel and Nora are both slowly on the mend and I'm really ready for an illness free weekend! Fingers crossed for next weekend.

Gardening

I love to garden. I discovered gardening a few years ago when we were still living in a north-facing high-rise where we could barely grow shade plants on our balcony. My husband mentioned to me that a friend of his was going to be joining a community garden and did we want to join as well. I knew nothing of gardening but I do love the Farmer's Market and cooking so figured I'd give it a go.

Our community garden was about a mile from our house as they are fairly popular and it was the only one we could get in to. Coincidentally, or not so much, we were given a plot that was literally a weedy field. Joel went to great lengths tilling and prepping the soil, adding organic matter and breaking up the clay. We sowed our seeds and watched the plants begin to emerge. I was completely hooked.

This was the same time that we were on the tail-end of fertility treatments and were beginning to explore adoption. With no control over my own ornery and stubborn fertility it was nice to be able to have a small hand in creating and producing something.

It was an extremely therapeutic hobby. I loved quiet mornings by myself in the garden weeding and monitoring the progress of our food. We grew lettuce, carrots, beets, Swiss chard, broccoli and a lot of herbs. I decided that gardening was the perfect hobby for me. We stayed in the community garden for a couple of years. There were high and low points of being a in a community garden. There was a lot of theft of vegetables, vandalism and water would arbitrarily be turned off. This wasn't the best experience for someone projecting their fertility onto a plot of land.

Last year when we bought our house, we still had a large plot in the community garden and the owners of the home we bought had planted a small garden with squash, eggplant, tomatoes, kale and lettuce. We had two gardens and it was heavenly.

This year we are focusing on the garden in our own backyard and freeing our space in the community garden for someone else. Joel spent last weekend preparing raised bed boxes and we've been growing our seedlings since February. Nora, still a bit sleepy from being sick, took a two hour nap and we were able to plant most of the garden. It was such a great experience for Joel and I to have time together and to know that we won't be making runs to the grocery store for produce all summer. I've already begun to harvest the lettuce and peas that I planted in March and the Swiss chard isn't too far behind. I'm so excited to have our own garden right outside our back door this year and I can't wait to share my love of gardening, cooking, food and eating with Nora.

Meetings and Sickness

It's been a crazy week and a half in our house and I've had so many things to blog about but so little time.

The first is that I had the opportunity to meet a bloggy friend for a beer a little over a week ago and it was great to chat and discuss adoption and our lives. It's so amazing how you can meet so many interesting and great people through blogging.

We met with C and J a little less than a week ago. It was a good meeting but in the evening so Nora was a little tired and fussy. They are doing great and it was such a relief to see. We exchanged email addresses so communication in the future will be far easier. Now, if they want to see Nora or if we want to ask them a question we won't be playing telephone through our agency. I feel blessed to have such a good relationship with them and to really like them.

The morning after meeting C and J I took Nora to daycare as usual and headed off to work. It takes me an hour from when I leave my house to get Nora to daycare and get to work. I had just reached the parking lot when I got a call from daycare that Nora had a low fever. I assumed she was just teething since she hasn't cut any teeth yet. I walked into work and a few minutes later got a call that she was lethargic, pale and her fever was 101.6. I turned around and went to go get her. Nora was then sick with a fever for four days straight. She's never had a fever before and it was really disconcerting to see her so lethargic and hot. Her top temperature was 104. Nora isn't a snugly baby so I could really tell that she was sick when I held her for days on end and that's all she wanted. Usually, if I hold her for more than a few minutes, she squeals and arches her back to be put down. She's doing much better now but it's been an exhausting week/end. I think this is the curse of daycare. She's moving to another room and has been transitioning so I think she's transitioned into all the new germs too. The upside, I guess, is that we both survived and when she's school aged all these bugs will be nothing to her.

Clean

I got so much done yesterday on my day off that I feel like a whole new person. I made a book for Nora all about her adoption on Shutter.fly, picked up the dry cleaning, bought the dog his special food at the dog food store that's almost never open, picked up some prescriptions, ran to the grocery store, deep cleaned the entire house and hosted a wine and cheese happy hour for my parents (who just got back from a trip and were dying to see Nora) and finished it off with homemade soup. Whew! Done! (I promise I'm not on meth - waking up at 5 am with Nora helps to give you a head start on the day).

Today, Joel fed Nora at 5 am and she went back down until 7 AM! Hooray! I woke up to a happy baby and an amazing latte that Joel made for me. Even though it's a little bit cloudy today I can already tell Nora and I are going to have an amazing day off together. It's remarkable what a couple of days off can do for you.

P.S. The image is a piece from my thesis show. I found it to be ironic and funny when I glanced up at it while mopping. What little I knew in college.