Road Trip

We are down at my parents, which means that we get to see 45 minutes of everything on AMC or TCM (because that is how long we get in the tv rotation of two teenagers). I have now seen all of the Godfather, albeit in various parts completely out of order, and I am halfway through Guess Who's Coming For Dinner. Though, believe it or not, this is not the highlight of these trips. The highlight is the car conversations between Chad and I, and now Olivia as she listens intently from the backseat and tries to piece things together.

This week's topic? Are you glass a half-empty or glass a half-full and a heated debate over which of these qualities contributes to genius, or alternately success. Olivia interpreted this conversation as whether or not you are person who wants more juice.

Photo Dump

Assorted birthday pictures, yes I think that cake may glow in the dark/give the children cancer. Olivia climbing her first tree and one of the best birthday gifts of all time, getting to play with all of Aunt Kat's offical policewoman gear.

I Declare Today A Holiday In The Nation of Gendreau

We are finished with our home study! No more interviews, background checks, paperwork or home visits. No more searching for my marriage certificate or getting bank paperwork or hoping Olivia doesn't say something crazy like she hates black people. We will soon be acceptable parents in the eyes of the State of Wisconsin, or at least good enough to not waste anymore of our social worker's time.

Maybe it is a confused delusion, but I feel like now this is over what is next will be much easier. I know that it will be its own crazy, but I can deal with a confused, scared and angry kid a lot better than I can deal with an apathetic bureaucracy. We can get excited now, I am excited. Until that paperwork is finished you can always have that little unhinged fear that someone is going to come in and say that you can't adopt, you are not acceptable. Now I can move onto the fear that we will get the child and someone will then take it back, awesome! Or my greater, current fear that the children are overtaking me since I am now convinced that Olivia is smarter than I am.

We finished some huge house projects this weekend so for one week of my life I feel like we actually took one whole step forward without taking any back. Unfortunately for my poor beleaguered husband, that just makes me want to keep going full steam ahead. We can lay ceramic tile, honey! However, I value my marriage so I declare today a national holiday in the land of Gendreau and I will toast my fellow Gendreauians with spaghetti and meatballs to celebrate our one big step into the rest of our new life.

Aunt Karen To The Rescue

After a week of running around in Florida and one very late-night flight we are back home. Waking up and getting going yesterday was a little harsh so when I saw that Olivia had a package I thought, "Here is a reprieve!" Sure enough, Karen knows Olivia to an O and sent a great pack of Fancy Nancy and craft items, her two favorites which kept her busy all morning.

I am going to digress here and say that I love Fancy Nancy, she is a girl for modern economic times. For those not familiar with Fancy Nancy, she is a girl who likes to make herself "fancy" with common household items and bemoans the fact that her parents insists on being plain. She is singing Olivia's life with her words. Anyway, when the Fancy Nancy merchandise first came off the line it was a bunch of dress-up clothing, completely counter-intuitive to Nancy. Nancy believes in reusing, she would never buy something to make herself fancy when she could put more glitter on something she already owns. So that's why I was thrilled that Karen managed to find Nancy's Guide To Making Everything Fancy which essentially teaches kids how to re purpose broken or other castoff items.

Anyway, we are back with a vengeance, a to-do list a mile long, but with some motivation for change. The weather is warming up, we have so many exciting things on the horizon: our first family road trip, camping, the completion of our home study, a tax refund, that it is hard not to feel positive about what's to come.

I register Olivia for kindergarten tomorrow, we are going with her best friend Alex in case either of the mothers has to have a moment where we break down and bawl in the middle of the school gym. In Stephanie's school district the kids have to take some basic proficiency skills tests just to see if the kids might need special support. I don't think they do that in Madison, but if they do I am going to have her do it in three different languages interchangeably, just to see what happens, just because I want to see what the speech pathologist's face looks like when little white Olivia starts speaking to her in Mandarin. With my luck she will start speaking Spanish and they will put her in the ESL class, though maybe that wouldn't be so bad? There is nothing in this world Olivia loves more than showing off, so none of these antics will require prompting by me anyway.

Olivia explained to me today that her plans for tomorrow basically are to stage a sit-in with her cadaver book from Uncle Sean until they just let her start kindergarten. She believes that if she just refuses to leave registration, they will just let her start tomorrow. So this is going to be awesome, I can tell already. Good thing we leave for Florida on Tuesday, otherwise we would never get out of there.

New and Improved

So last Friday night Chad and I chilled independently and when we reconnected and compared notes on what we had done we realized that we had both spent the evening watching PBS. When your downtime includes "Frontline" you need a date night, stat. So Magnus here we come! I wonder how Congress will feel about me using my tax rebate to purchase a European cheese plate? I am comforted by the fact that i think that I may be single-handedly putting my babysitter through college.

This is what I am using as a screensaver to remember that there was one and only one warm day.