Solo

V-Day Bliss is Cleaning Solo

I got up when Avery woke this morning, but instead of getting up (6 am is too early and she keeps waking up at 6/6:30! grrrrr), we took our usual nap in the chair.  I guess, thinking about it, we've gone through other early waking stages like this and one day she just goes back to sleeping until an acceptable 7 am.  In any case, when we finally got up from our chair snooze at 8:15, D said to me that he was happy to go to the gym with Avery so I could stay home and take a nap.  I was all over that idea and gave him a gigantic hug.  By the time he was ready to leave, however, I was pretty much awake and felt like cleaning.  I was able to clean, uninterrupted, while listening to an episode of This American Life.  Pure Valentine's Day bliss!

I met D and Avery down in the Pearl District for a V-Day lunch.  That concludes the V-Day celebrations for us.  

Visit

Avery great grandmother (Ruth) came to visit, along with her husband (Jerry), yesterday.  Jerry is not biologically related to Avery.  Ruth is quite tall, so this might explain why Avery seems to be taller than one would expect given Nikki & Mike's heights.  We learned a bit about Avery's family on that side and talked about the adoption and few personal things.  Avery took about five minutes to warm up, but when she realized that these two people were there to watch her do whatever she wanted, she went into performance mode!  So much attention all for her!  While we were eating lunch, Avery got out my iPhone.  Ruth and Jerry were quite impressed with her ability to navigate the phone.  At one point, Avery was showing Ruth how to use a particular application, and Avery pushed the phone towards her and explained it was her turn to "touch here!" 

Anxiety

Now that I've got two-years worth of visits with birth family under my belt, I know that I experience a level of anxiety before all visits.  The anxiety is worse when a visit is at our house than when we go to their house, or to another location. When we host at our house, the anxiety I feel multiplies exponentially when I feel (internal) pressure to cook a meal for us all to enjoy. 

It takes some thought for me to come up with a full meal to serve to guests. Since the sooner I start thinking about the visit in any sort of detail, the sooner I start to feel anxiety about it, I tried not to think about the visit much before the day of the actual visit.  At the grocery store the night before the visit, I tried to remember ingredients for a chicken salad that I thought would work nicely.  I missed one key ingredient, but two hours before their scheduled arrival, I nonetheless attempted the salad with a substituted ingredient.  When I tasted the result about 30 minutes before their arrival, I had to abandon the salad since I was missing an ingredient that might have made the substitution edible.  I ended up running to the grocery store 30 minutes before their arrival to buy prepared foods to serve for lunch. 

From this lesson, I have decided that I am going to completely abandon all cooking efforts for any future visits (except baking because baking is easy for me).  While I would love to offer something home cooked and warm, and while I'm perfectly capable of doing that in other situations, it just seems to elude me for these visits.  I can't handle the emotional overload in combination with the cooking.   I figure since I can't do anything about the emotional overload of seeing birth family, I might as well do something about the things I can control.  If that means I have to serve store bought food, so be it. 

Avery

No post is complete without Avery details.  For the past few weeks, it felt as if Avery's verbal progress was on a plateau.  In the past couple of days, it seems like she has started to use more complex phrases (complex is a relative term, of course).  Now that I type this, I can't think of the things she's said that make me think this, but this type of information in this blog is mostly for historical purposes, anyway.  Oh, I know.  Yesterday, she came into my office and said, "Mommy, may I have more milk, please?"  I said, "Yes, I'll go get it."  The she said, "Avery not coming," and sat down on the floor of my office.  A week or so ago, she would have expressed this desire with a simple, "No" or simply not followed.  It's a minor difference, but one I still noticed.

She also is starting to use "are" properly.  I can't say I've noticed her using "is" inappropriately, but I also don't remember her ever saying, "Those are my bibs!" as she said this morning.  She was pointing to two of her bibs and said "are" rather than "is."  Like I said, I'm not sure she ever said "is" in this type of situation, but I did notice the "are."

Her counting is also improving. She's been able to count to ten for several months and has even counted to twenty on her own.  However, mastering that one-to-one concept isn't yet there.  She is making progress with that, though.  Today, D said she counted each of the ten steps they went up.  Her obsession with bibs means she often requests TWO bibs and she knows if she has more or less than exactly two.  She also definitely knows what two M & M's means, but I could be convinced that is more a memorization of what two M & M's looks like rather than knowing that there are one, two in her hand (not sure if that makes sense to all of you, but I am hoping it will make sense to Future Megan when I read this post at a later date).