One Month

So much for “Update the Blog once a week” on my task list! Despite every effort to keep our schedule manageable and to avoid over-stimulation, I’m finding that there are no moments to spare. I thought we were busy before…

All of you parenting veterans will laugh your tails off at me, but I’m still holding onto the shred of hope that as Maria settles in and learns more English, she will become a little more independent, and I won’t feel as obligated to be there ALL the time. I also suspect that as that happens, I’ll get scared of her slipping away too fast and then really want to be there ALL the time. Laugh all you want, but you all have had the luxury of easing into this!!

All in all, I can’t complain. We arrived home exactly one month ago, and Maria is settling in much better than we ever could have hoped. She is learning English very quickly, and has a good attitude about it most of the time. We are learning what works and what doesn’t. We are not photographing every moment of our lives. We’re settling into a routine, culminating last week with both of us returning to work and Maria beginning to attend Day Camp.

Today, I’m taking my first business trip since our return (and using the uninterrupted “quiet time” on the flight to write this). It’s only a 2-day trip, but the tempest of emotion kept me up half the night. I thought perhaps this would be my equivalent to other mothers’ “first day of kindergarten” stories…sobbing as I walked away from my little girl for the first time. Instead, it was the responsibility of the new routine that chewed my guts up and spit them back out. The worry of the things I should have done and didn’t. We’re out of milk. I didn’t freeze a water bottle to keep her lunch cool. Is there a forgotten load of laundry molding in the washer?

I trust Mark. I am confident in his ability to keep things running in my absence. In fact, I suspect that Dad and his Little Girl will have a blast in my short absence (not literally, I pray). I just feel like I’m forgetting more than one something. I just have to remember that as long as he knows how to toast an Eggo (and he is capable of much, much more), the child will not go hungry!

So, aside from today’s angst, things are great! Over the past month, we have been keeping very busy. We’ve visited Fun Spot amusement park (the bigger-than-Ukraine-but-small-for-America “Extreme Park”). We’ve made the 3-hour drive to visit cousins Morgan, Dylan, and Gavin and spend a day at The Beach waterpark in Cincinnati. We’ve seen fireworks for Independence Day. And we’ve been swimming. Oh, man, have we been swimming. Hardly a day goes by that we don’t swim…the YMCA membership has been well worth the expense!!!

Maria has begun a short series of private swimming lessons, intended to catch her up so that she will be prepared for the Youth Conditioning team in the fall–a precursor to swim team season, which I’ve been told start in December. Her first lesson was last Friday, and we have been blessed with an instructor who has been an ESL tutor in a former life…so in addition to learning proper technique and strokes, we’re learning the English words that Maria will hear from coaches and team members (well, the appropriate, sport-related ones anyway!) She is soaking it all in, and practicing her streamline glides to perfection.

We have a school tour scheduled for Wednesday so she can meet her guidance counselor, start learning her way around, and get mentally prepared for school to start in mid-August. We are still discussing grade placement with the school, and have not discussed school plans in-depth with Maria yet. We are pleased to see that her anxiety about school seems to be waning a bit, and at times she even seems excited about school starting. We’ll see how long *that* lasts!

So I’ll say it again (knock on wood), all is well. We are happy, she is healthy. Before we know it, summer will be over and school will have started. Pray for us!!!!