Up to Speed Update

So. Again it's been a long, long while since I've updated, but I'm going to have to train myself to get better at this soon before we have another baby in the house. Steve and I are going through the process of being licensed to do foster care with the goal of having one infant placed with us and then adopting that infant after the court has terminated the parental rights. It's going to be a long and intersting process, and because of the circumstances we won't be able to share much, if any, information about our new little girl until after the adoption finalizes. So... be prepared for changes - like making this an invited reader only blog. But not yet.

The girls are both getting bigger, smarter, and funnier each day. Olivia can have a conversation in simple sentences now, so we get lots more interactive play and laughs. She cracks us up daily. It's hard to believe that we have less than a month until her second birthday. She is starting to have hair and desperately wants to put it into a pony tail, but it's too short. And she loves her Bitty Baby that she got for Christmas. She takes Sally all around the house and sometimes even takes her to bed. Olivia is excited about "baby sister" but I'm pretty sure she has no idea what that idea really means.

Abby has been flying through her Cubbies book and will randomly tell me the verses she has learned this year. She loves spending time at Cubbies and learning more about God. One of her favorite games to play is pretend church or pretend Cubbies. What a blessing to this mom. She aslo has discovered chapter books and loves the new adventures we can go on in the pages of books. I purchased a book called Honey For a Child's Heart and I highly recommend it - we have so many great books on our radar because of the recommendations made in the book. We just finished Stuart Little and we have been enjoying lots of good imaginary play with our invisible mouse brother Stuart. There is something very exciting in watching a child learn to love books, especially when you are a book lover too! Abby is also very excited about a baby sister. She frequently asks when we will be getting our baby, whose belly our baby is growing in, and whether she can care for the baby when it arrives. We have had to disappoint her several times when we took papers to the Department of Human Services or had caseworkers come to our house and didn't get a baby right that minute. The concept of soon is much different for a girl of almost 4 compared to an adult who has gone through a pregnancy.

We've had a ridiculous winter up here - barely any snow. We didn't get our first accumulating snow of the year until after January 1st and we've had not much snow since then. I think Steve has pulled out the snow blower once or twice - not what you'd expect when you live in the upper peninsula. Not that I want to be buried in snow... but if it's going to be wet I'd rather have snow than rain or ice.

Steve is off to Guyana in a few short weeks for another missions trip with my dad and the team from Grand Rapids. I'm excited for this opportunity for him, but not looking forward to a week of parenting without his help. He's pretty essential to my sanity. Before he takes off though, we get to spend a long weekend (Tuesday through Sunday - yay!) in Chicago for the mid-winter dental conference. I'm looking forward to catching up with some dental school friends and introducing the girls to the wonderful world of museums (and big cities). They are pretty excited to go see the animals at the Shedd Aquarium.

Our Cubbie

Bring On Fall

So, it's been a month almost since I posted... and I was doing so good at being consistent there for a while. Oh well. Since our last post we enjoyed a long weekend camping with friends, made a trip down to Hastings for Labor Day, and got some additional work done on the kitchen (including replacing the fridge with a shiny new one that I got to fill up today). So... here's how it went.

We spent the weekend of August 19-22 out camping at Muskellunge Lake State Park. I'm not one for staying the semi-modern state parks - I would rather have my space than flush toliets and electricity. In fact, while we were there we did not plug in the camper and we were closer to the outhouse than the bathrooms, so our family made equal use of the running water and non-running water facilities. After all, it's camping - the goal is not to be squeaky clean and all. And the girls got good and filthy having a great time with all their friends. They played in the big lake, the little lake, the playground, and had lots of fun picking blueberries. And over that weekend Olivia started saying Abby and really took off on the use of words with her mouth open. She's becoming a little talker.

We went down to Hastings for Labor Day - it was a good trip, even though it always leaves us worn out. The girls had lots of fun playing with cousins and seeing almost all the grandmas, grandpas, and great grandparents. And we finally got to swim in Grandma Mary and Grandpa Scott's pool. Olivia and Abby also got to take a tractor and 4-wheeler rides at the farm and Grandpa Scott took Olivia to see cows, which is now her favorite word. She looks for the cows in the toy box and walks around the house telling me about her cow. She is even figuring out how to moo on command. We got to bring back most of a pig that was butchered for us (yummy!) and a spinning wheel that belonged to my grandpa's family (I'm not sure how far back it was, so I can't tell if it was a great great grandma's or just a great grandma's). Either way, I now have a great wheel and I'm pretty excited to try and get it spinning this fall.

Abby starts Cubbies tonight - it's weird thinking I have a kid big enough to go to Awana already. It goes so fast. She's got her book, vest, and book bag ready, although I am not sure about how well she will do when we get there. We tried to sign her up for dance this fall, but every time we talked to her about it she told us she wanted to go "when I'm five." She's saying the same thing about Cubbies, but we are making her go, even though we decided to let her skip out on dance for at least this year.

The Very Hungry Caterpillars

We have been raising some very hungry caterpillars into monarch butterflies for the last few weeks. Great Aunt Carol and I caught the caterpillars and we have them hatching in a mesh caterpillar environment. The girls enjoyed watching them at the caterpillar stage - they only eat milkweed so we had fun harvesting the leaves and feeding our friends.

We are now at the cocoon stage - we have two caterpillars of the four that have successfully made it into cocoons. We did have three, but Abby got really excited about the first one and ran, with the cage, to show me. That cocoon fell down and oozed a lot, so I'm not sure it will make it into a fully developed butterfly. But the two that are cocooning are changing - you can see the patterns in their wings through the cocoons. It has been a fun process to watch. And... we even had a little caterpillar hatch from an egg in the last few days. We took it out of the environment in our house and released it in a patch of milkweed in town, since we had used up all our picked milkweed and the other caterpillars had already cocooned. Now... the wait for butterflies is on :-)

No Shot Monday

This is the first Monday in a four weeks that the girls haven't needed to have a rabies shot. I don't even know what I am going to do with all the free time I am going to have today because I am not waiting in a waiting room and then spending the afternoon comforting two little girls and discussing in great detail Abby's bat obsessions. I'm hoping that after next Monday's shot (the last one) that we will be able to finally get over the bat/rabies talking that has been a daily occurrence around here.

The girls and I got to spend a day with my parents and littlest sisters on Mackinac Island on Friday and we had a great day. We got to explore the local shops, rode bikes all the way around the island, enjoyed the pool and saw the inside of the Grand Hotel where my family was staying, and got to ride the ferry boats twice. The girls really enjoyed time with Grandma Mary, Grandpa Scott, Hannah, and Emily the most. It had been 14 years since I rode a bike and I will probably not be on one again for about another 14 years - my knees were not appreciating my efforts on Saturday.

The Osgood Annual Camping Trip

We spent last weekend at the Blind Sucker Flooding with Great Grandma Jennie & Grandpa Steve Osgood, Grandma Mary & Grandpa Scott, Melissa, Jack, Emma, Hannah, and Emily (and some other cousins and aunts and uncles too - too many to list). The girls had a really good time playing outside and being spoiled rotten by all the relatives. And Grandpa Scott found us an old pop-up camper that our car can pull, so Abby spent the weekend reveling in her camper, which could have been the Taj Mahal with as wonderful as she thought it was. Steve and I weren't as impressed (don't get me wrong, we both like it a lot), but with a little work it should be lots of fun for the next few years. We had some minor mishaps like forgetting to put the back jacks down so that it flipped up when everyone was checking out the back bunk (neither Steve nor I were in the camper for that trick. The top also dropped once without being triggered. It didn't fall all the way down and with some supports it's now totally safe. And then there was the incident where the tire fell off on the dirt road on our way home. Luckily we were only 4 miles from the campground and no one had left to go fishing yet so we were able to get some help putting the tire back on and getting home.

Both girls got to catch a fish - they were very small, but the girls still had fun. And we had lots and lots of blueberry pancakes and smores. Yummy!

Beach, Peach

We had a rhyming picnic at the beach today! The girls had fun playing in the sand and waves at Brimley State Park and we had a picnic lunch while we were there. It was a lot of fun. Abby loves swimming and Olivia loves the sand, so it was a good day for everyone.

Sand Monster

Bats Are The Bane of My Existence

It's official. I hate bats. Really hate. Hope they all die. I don't even care that they eat bugs. Neither do my babies who now have to get five shots each on the off chance that the bat from their room had rabies and potentially bit them. It's a long shot, but, since we were not thinking straight at 12:30 am when we caught the bat and neither kid seemed to have bites, we let the bat go without having it tested. And since rabies is 100 percent fatal once symptoms show, we decided that it was better to err on the side of extreme caution (with the advice and agreement of our doctor and a friend who is also a family physician). So... our kids have had 1 of the 5 rabies shots they will be getting over the next few weeks. They did pretty good, all things considered. So here's hoping they do okay on Thursday when they get the next dose.

It was a nightmare getting the vaccine - a true test of my patience. And I'm afraid my score would have been low, especially toward the end of it. I called the health department at 8:30 am, again at 1 pm, and finally about 1:15 got a call back and was told that our girls needed the vaccine based on their exposure to the bat last Wednesday night/Thursday morning. We were directed to the community walk-in clinic (I also checked with my family practice but they don't keep the vaccine on hand). So off we drove to the walk in clinic. But they can't start the rabies series there, so they sent us to the ER (we will be getting the next 4 shots there though). Thankfully, our family physician was covering the ER today, so I know we got good care. The downside was that we arrived shortly before 3 ambulances, so being non-critical we had a long, long wait. Like 4 1/2 to 5 hours. It got a lot trying since I came ill prepared to keep kids occupied for so long. And Olivia missed her afternoon nap, so that only increased the chaos. But it's over, they have the shot, and we can sleep without worrying about another bat ending up in their room.

So, here's what I know now that you should remember:

1. Always try to catch the bat or wild animal to have it tested. This is especially true if you get a bite or if the animal is around a child, deep sleeper, or a mentally incompetent adult who may not notice or be reliable in reporting a bite. And try to keep the animal alive to make testing easier and potentially faster.

2. If you don't catch the animal, you should seek treatment if: you or your child was bitten; if a child, mentally incompetent adult, or someone who was sleeping deeply (medicated or alcohol induced generally) was found to be asleep or alone in a room with an animal; or if you come into contact with bodily fluids or mucus membranes of an animal that wasn't tested.

Less than 5 cases of rabies are reported in the US each year. And my kids aren't going to be part of that number thanks to their immunizations. Yay for shots, even though they hurt.

Bat Man!

Steve is two for two in bat catching in the last two days, which means we officially have a bat problem (at least in my books). Tonight's incident started with an Olivia freak out around 11:30. I normally let her cry it out but she sounded extra frantic, so I went in to check on her. The bat was flying circles in the room when I opened the door. Yuck! And I'm sure this was a new bat, because the first one is dead on the street in front if our house.

So... We moved the girls into our bed, shut the door and Steve started bat hunting. But in the move the bat ended up in the "safe" room with the girls and I. It stayed hidden for about 20 minutes before I startled it out and it startled us. Steve made quick work of the capture and got the bat released outside. Now for the tough parts - getting Olivia back to sleep and figuring out where these crazy bats are coming from.

This is where renting was so much easier... Now it is my problem since it's our house. Any good bat removal/prevention ideas would be greatly appreciated!