adventures in miami

We made it to Miami!  We are settling into our house and neighborhood nicely but feeling overwhelmed by the traffic and city just a few blocks away.  (I didn’t photograph any of that!)

It’s very green.  We haven’t tired of walking around the neighborhood admiring all the crazy tropical plants, and stucco and tile houses.  Elsa loves all the lizards.  The air is warm, but smells like city.  Sometimes it seems kinda quiet, most of the time it doesn’t.  Certainly we are in environmental and cultural shock.  Country fish floundering in a big cosmopolitan city.  Luckily Andy and I can call on all our various pre-kid travel adventures and at least act like we know what we are doing.

One of the first things we did was take the kids to the urban “farm” we found when Andy and I visited a couple weeks ago.  It’s just a neighborhood over, in Little Haiti, and it’s funky as all get out.

They rent rooms in the airb&b treehouses.  They grow veggies and eggs and honey.  They rescue animals (the potbelly pigs were the most fascinating) and they have volleyball games and vegan potlucks a couple times a month.  We’ll definitely do some hanging out there.

Yesterday after school and music practice and some work for me, we ventured out to an urban state park, just a few miles from our house.  Weird to have acres of wilderness in the city, surrounded by highrise skyline.  But we revel in nature where we find it and there was plenty to admire.  Thousands of tiny hermit crabs, a lightening whelk, jellyfish and even stingrays in the lagoon (the girls weren’t so excited about the purple flag beach warning that means “stinging marine animals”). 

This morning we walked to the farmer’s market, a few blocks down along Biscayne Avenue with non-stop traffic whizzing by.  But we found organic veggies, and homemade kombucha amd tempeh, fresh squeezed tropical fruit juices, crusty fresh bakery breads and even free range organic eggs (for $7/dozen!).  There is so much to discover and we try to take it in in small bites, retreating back to our little house and fenced backyard to chase lizards and put out food for the feral cats, so that the world doesn’t feel so strange and new.

I think it feels like a vacation with a lot of uncertainty and fear and worry mixed in.  I know we are so lucky to be here.  To have the resources to “move” to Miami to get the best care we can find.  We work hard to count those blessings.  When the girls are in tears missing home, missing friends, missing pets and bickering with each other because they are just uncomfortable inside themselves, I remember this is hard.  Hard for all of us.  And I remember that there are some things we can control and some things that we can’t.  And it will always be like that.  And I continue to pray that this path is making us strong and resilient and full of compassion.  And I remember, with so much gratitude, all of you who send love and support our way.