Seeking God Knows What

I know everyone is more interested in seeing pictures than me blathering on about my life

So here are some from our trip to Virginia (click on the pictures to open a larger version):

I just realized I haven’t posted anything in 10 days, nor did I put up pictures from the camping trip!  I still need to upload them to the computer from my camera.  Time seems to be getting away from me this summer.  This past weekend was packed full of activities- birthday parties, open house for preschool, amongst our usual stuff.  We also had some happenings on the adoption front but at this point, it looks nothing is going to come of it. 

Of course, now I have a million things to do as we are leaving on Friday morning for Virginia to visit my sister M and her family for a week.  My in-laws have one of those vacation timeshare units and we swapped it to have a place to stay near her, rather than packing us into her house, although it has been done before!

I’m excited because they live near Colonial Williamsburg and I have always wanted to visit there plus we haven’t seen them in a year.  Widget has been counting down the days on her specially made calendar until we go see her cousins. 

I’ll try to post while we are gone but if not, I will be sure to update when we get back!

First, a quick update to my previous post direct from the grandma (my aunt)

“Good news on Z!!   He was released from [hospital] this afternoon.  Because he was 6 weeks early, he had more problems than the drs.first thought but now …no infections, temp is up, jaundice is better. 
 
S and J met with the dr. today and the baby is to have no loud noises, very little holding, no visitors, and be bundled up like its the middle of winter.  He is to burn no extra calories than necessary, eat as much as possible and grow!  They decided that the circumcision and hep B shot should have been done later instead of day 3.  Those were just too much for him.  But it looks like things are on the mend.  He is just beautiful….did you know I’m his grandma?!
 
J and H (Z’s brothers) are now at home and very happy about that!
 
Thank you all for the many prayers and please keep them coming.  He has lots of growing to do!”

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That said, we had our first adventure camping with Widget this past weekend.  We went with most of our small group from church, which was fun and we had some great times bonding as a group.  Widget spent the entire time being wild with the other kids, all equally covered in dirt and grime, no matter how clean they started out the day.  We did leave Saturday night instead of Sunday morning- Widget plus camping equals not much fun sleeping.

A few things I note about camping:

1.  It is a lot of work to get ready to go when you haven’t been in 5 years, especially when you are bringing a small child.

2. After about 3 days/2 nights, I’m sick of dirt and campfire smoke, which means any future camping will have to be done only in short distances from home.  Good thing my favorite place to camp is the Platte River Campground roughly 2 hours north of here.  The few years we went camping as I was growing up, we mostly camped here and it is where T and I have done nearly all our camping since we were married.  Of course, I have LOVE northwestern Michigan, so I’m a bit biased

3.  People have a lot of different ideas about what camping is.  We saw campsites with campers that had their air conditioning on full tilt and televisions going to tents and minimal gear. 

4.  I also prefer campgrounds with a little more seclusion per site than the one we were at.  It was nice and had fairly clean facilities but I felt like we were on top of the other campers. 

5.  Air mattresses are the best invention ever.  I didn’t have one as a kid but eliminating sleeping on the hard ground, totally worth it.

6.  I could never cut it doing true wilderness camping.  A couple of members of our group have done that including T but hearing them talk about it, definitely not up my alley!  I can do tents, I can do sleeping bags, I can handle bugs and dirt but I cannot do no toilets or even “rustic” toilets.

I’ll post some pictures once I upload them

I have a couple of prayer requests (both of which I learned today!)

1.  My cousin had a baby, Z, 5 weeks early on Friday 8-8-08.  I just found out today that he has been readmitted to the hospital to be treated for spinal meningitis.  I don’t know much more than that.  So please pray for him, my cousin and her family. 

2.  My baby sister went to the ER on Monday night because she had been very sick and in a lot of abdominal pain.  Turns out she had an ovarian cyst that burst and now has fluid in her abdomen.  She was well enough not to be admitted to the hospital but is still not feeling very well.  At least she is back here instead of 6 hours away where she spent most of the summer working! 

Thanks

Yay! My handy man computer husband has fixed my computer

We have a lot going on the next few weeks but I’ve also got some posts I’m thinking through, so stay tuned

My computer is broken.

Boo.

I have baby on the brain.  Well, really it is what nextbaby will need on the brain.  I’m trying to plan it out so we don’t get stuck having to buy a bunch of stuff at the same time as pay LARGE sums of money for our adoption but my problem is I can’t make up my mind what to get in terms of car seat, stroller.

We got rid of the travel system (car seat/stroller) we had for Widget when we moved last year because we really thought we wouldn’t be able to adopt again until Widget was in school and it would have expired by then plus we didn’t have room to store at the apartment.  So a car seat is needed.   I want an infant car seat because it definitely came in handy last time, plus I have a convertible from Widget (well, my sister has it at the moment) to use when nextbaby grows out of the infant seat and it should still be good.  A Graco would work the best because I have a LiteRider stroller still in excellent shape, I could use to make it a small travel system.  In fact, I found a car seat that would work, even though they only sell it online at Target.

But then I am trying to decide if I want to get something like a Sit’n’stand Stroller because I KNOW there will be times when Widget will need to be in a stroller as well as the baby.  One is the link above and the other is a deluxe version which can make the second seat into a real seat, not just a “platform” seat. Now the dilemma that I’m having is that I like my stuff to coordinate- the deluxe version would match the car seat I have tentatively picked out to match my Literider stroller.  Plus I can make a Graco carseat work with the Baby Trend sit’n’stand because according to their website, it is compatible so that is all good.  But I don’t know that I need to spend the extra $40+ for the seat because I think Widget would be happy with the bench seat/standing platform.  Target doesn’t carry the standard sit’n’stand in any colors but grey which would NOT match the light brown carseat.  See my silliness?  I want the two to match.  If I go with a grey car seat, it won’t match the literider stroller, meaning I’ll be wanting another single stroller to match the car seat. 

So I’m trying to determine which is MORE likely to be used.  The single stroller travel system or the Sit’n'Stand with car seat. 

I suppose I don’t have to buy at Target but that is where we started a small registry and where 95% of the people who might want to buy nextbaby something would shop.  I know their return policy is icky if you don’t have a receipt.  But IT isn’t hard to get gift receipts and if it is on my registry, I’m not likely to return it unless I get a duplicate or it is damaged.

And I haven’t even gotten to trying to decide what kind of babywearing item I want.  Originally I wanted a pouch sling as I really liked the new native one MK had with W but I also like the mei tai style like one of the moms on my forums makes.

Plus I’m still thinking about cloth diapering.  That is FULL of decisions to make too!

I will say T and I made one decision.  We did decide to buy locally  (article about the store as they don’t have a website up yet) and we are now a proud owner of a maclaren triumph in chocolate brown.  We are all in love with it