Other recent developments

Not quite fitting with the last post, but I thought I would write a quick post about these two developments as well.

#1, we have our first official new scratches on a guitar.  Thankfully, it's the old cheapy Epiphone and they're mostly contained on the black pick guard as opposed to being on the finish.  Contrary to what you may be thinking, I don't get too bent out of shape about scratches on guitars. They're tools, not museum art so they are meant to be played. Much like us humans as we age, they get bumps and bruises through the years and it adds to their character as beauty marks and memories.

#2, Here is the mighty powerful and attractive Marvin McNutt letting the ghastly beast lick his hand! This marks MUCH progress with his trust of little Rosey.  As you may recall, he was deathly afraid of her at first to the point of trying to climb on top of your head at just the notion of Rosey entering the same room he was in.

Grandpa Jim got him to at least sit in the same chair with Grandpa and Rosey, although there wasn't a whole lot of relaxation going on during those times.

M. McNutt has been inviting Rosey up to sit with him and other things but he still gets a little weirded out when Rosey looks him in the eye!

So these happenings of him willingly putting his hand out for her to lick is huge. Oh sure, he's still not to the point of giggling as it happens like most young'ins, but we're getting there, one lick at a time.

Ordinary happenings around Pleasant Hill

Greetings all!  Hope everyone had a good Christmas and I really hope everyone has a nice quiet new years weekend. As I get older, quiet gets more and more "gooder".

As for us as a unit, we're just fine and dandy here in Pleasant Hill.  Robby and Caleb become more "brotherly" everyday. I mean that in a way that Robby gets a little rougher with him, Caleb gets more sassy with him, they get louder and louder together and thus interfere with my aforementioned quietness.  But that is okay as I've said in several posts already, it's great to watch. Piles of fun for everybody.

This blogpost has taken about 1.5 hours so far and as you can well see, it's not anything special. It's just that I have two little critters attached to me and pulling on my arms to go look at stuff, football replays on the Wii, take the matchbox cars suitcase downstairs, bring it back upstairs, take the dog out, help change shirts and so on...

We had a few fun outings this week.  On Thursday, Lesley was meeting some friends for lunch downtown, so she brought the boys down along with Grandma E., my mom, and we went to Smokey D's for some b-b-q.  Caleb gobbled down some pulled pork, Robby had the sausage, mmmmm...  sausage...  and I got both boys a side of mac n' cheese.  Caleb looked at that stuff like it was poison and when I finally got him to try a bite, he got a disgusted look on his face and indicated through motions that it WILL be spit out just as soon as he can find a nice spot to deposit it. 

I then took them up to see my office space which is not exciting to me, but Robby just loves to see where daddy works. I get it as I always wanted to see where my dad worked but beings he was a factory worker, I never really got the chance (until years later when I had a job moving office furniature). I'm not sure Caleb understood what he was seeing so much, but there was Christmas candy up there so it didn't matter all that much.

Caleb was not all that happy when everyone but Ba Ba got back in the van to go home, but I got a heros welcome when I came through the door that evening!

A few photos for optical pleasure.

This is Mr. C. RongBo in his Rams pj's with a Rams jersey over the top, just for good measure.  That's a gob of silly putty in his hands.  He would hand the silly putty to me, wanting me to roll it into a ball for him. I would roll it into a ball and then, just before handing it back to him, squish it. It would drive him batty that I kept doing this, but yet he kept handing it back to me. I should probably feel a little worse about that "game" than I do, but it was fun!

Oh, and just so everyone knows, I did eventually hand him a perfect ball of silly putty.

Here's little Marvin McNutt, the performer.

One of the days this week, Momma & Grandma took the boys to the park at Clay Elementary to meet up with my sister Dianne and her boys, Sam & Jonah. They had some good fun as the pictures should hopefully indicate.

Here's proud big brother with his protege.

Here's little cousin Jonah and his stylin' lion hat.

Here's cousin Samuel showing off his stuff on whatever you would call these things.

Robby, not to be upstaged, is showing off his wares on the same apparatus.  Practicing for his professional role as Spider Man one day.

Here's Robby after finally making it to the the top (or very close, anyway) of this spider webby thingymabob. He's been intimidated by this thing for some time and makes it a little higher each time that we go there.  I think another visit or two will see him at the summit!

 

So there you have it.  Life is getting back to whatever normal is currently defined as.  I look forward to the 100-day stretch, as I call it, after New Years when we go back to work and there's no days off until Resurrection Sunday. 

Hopefully, that will establish a few more routines in Calebs life and he can develop and blossom as little people should!

God bless!

 

Caleb's First Christmas

Christmas 2011 has come and gone.  There's a little boy named Caleb who has entered our lives like a tornado in a trailer park.  He's wild, unpredictable, and there's no telling what kind of damage that can be done in a very short period of time.

He's also incredibly sweet, cuddly, loving and fun. He has what seems like a genuine love of daddy playing guitar, which is cool.


bsp; Now I have a boy who's always barking at me to play football and another who is making hand motions to play guitar for him.  Two of my favorite things!

Oh yeah, he's a button pushing, light switching, lever pulling little bugger too.  I thought I would go broke replacing the can light bulbs in the basement from Robby flopping around playing football upstairs and breaking the bulb filaments in the basement. Now that I had him settled down, I have Caleb, "Master Of Switches" turning lights on and off as if we needed strobe lights in our otherwise mundane existance.

Christmas was fun (as is the incredibly loud screaming and fighting going on in my ear as I type!).  Robby was bouncing off the walls with giddyness in anticipation of opening presents and Caleb wanted to eat.  As is our custom, we get up, take care of necassary business, eat and then open presents so Caleb was content. Robby, as most of you well know, was wound up and therefore even more talkative than usual, so his breakfast took nearly forever to eat. The fact that his own excitement was causing him to take longer to eat due to his verbal spillage, which in turn was delaying present opening, which in turn was causing anticipation to build even further, was completely lost on him.

So we get to opening presents and the boys start with their stockings.  Caleb went first and had a blast pulling stuff out of his stocking. Rob went next and Caleb had a blast pulling stuff out of his stocking too!  They got to some night vision goggles and that's where it ended for Caleb.  They were Robby's, but not to him!  He was pushing buttons, pulling the light up, and everything else with them and it was a battle when Rob wanted'em back!  The idea that certain things belong to certain people is not something that he's used to yet.

We opened some other presents and while the blocks that Rob got Caleb were a big hit, they didn't quite measure up to the night vision goggles.  Battles over those are still ongoing nearly 36 hours later.

Caleb also got his first jersey, an Iowa Hawkeye's number 7, Marvin McNutt.  Robby's new nickname for Big C?  Yep, Marvin McNutt.  It fits. Well.

He also got some St. Louis Rams pajamas that are absolutely adorable on him. He got excited when Momma put them on him and did some little bouncy dance that would be very hard to describe. It was hilarious.

He's also refused to take his Rams pajamas off now and it's 24 hours later. We'll see how tomorrow goes.  He has managed to put a Rams jersey shirt on over the top of them so he's assimulating quite nicely.

As for the boys and how they're getting/not getting along?  They're doing pretty good.  Robby assumes the role of big brother with ease, bossing Caleb around and trying to force him to do what he wants. Caleb assumes the role of little brother with ease by not doing what Robby wants and occaisionally standing face to face with him screaming.  It's delightful.

The boys were racing around the circle of our house tonight (front hallway into the kitchen, thru the dining room, into the living room and back into the front hallway). Around and around they would go. Loud, screaming, laughing and sometimes battling, but it was great to watch. At the end of it all, there was  a small accident.

It's the case of matchbox cars laying at the bottom of the basement steps, spilled all over and when I asked how it happened, Robby screamed, "It was his fault!", pointing at him, with Caleb standing there, grinning, pointing right back at his big bro!

Working as designed...

He Fits

Almost a week home and we are all settling in.  Everyone is sleeping better and it kind of seems like Caleb has been a member of our family forever.  He is SO very different from Robby and yet he fits so very well.  He likes to push buttons on everything:  phone, microwave, dishwasher, computer, CD player, remote, camera, dryer.  Who knew there were so many buttons to explore? 

Caleb is also mimicking us a lot.  He likes to do the letter puzzle and he is wild about Mickey Mouse.  It is fun to see him learn new words and to understand what we are saying.  He is also a big thumbsucker.  Robby was too and it kind of makes me smile. 

He got to meet his Grandma Elaine today.  He was very happy to see her and was all too willing to eat the cookies she brought as well.  He has a little spunk in him and it is so funny when we are walking from the car into a store because he skips.  It is awesome to see the joy on his face. 

Caleb progress at home

After 3 days at home, I thought I would write a brief update on how the boy is doing.  He slept good on Friday night when we got home, but I think that was because everyone was so exhausted from the 29 hours of travelling that there was no other option.

In the nights since, he has woke up around 2am both nights. On Saturday night/Sunday morning, I woke up to Robby singing to him in an effort to get him settled down. Very cute. It was ineffective this particular time, but very cute non the less.

I went in to settle Caleb down figuring that Robby would go back to sleep...  It didn't quite work out like that.  Roughly 30 minutes later, there was all three of us boys together in the one bed and there wasn't one of us who was close to going back to sleep.  Eventually, momma came into the room and ask for a status. I replied, "three boys, all wide awake".

They never did go back to sleep until later during the day.

Last night, I woke up about 2:05, within one minute I heard Robby stirring and it wasn't probably 2-3 minutes after that, Caleb started sobbing. Robby started singing to him again but I wanted to get over there as fast as possible so Robby wasn't fully awake.

Robby went back to sleep within 3 minutes or so, but it took me a good 35 - 40 minutes with Caleb.

After that, I was wide awake so I just jumped into the shower and was into work before 4am.  I'm paying for it now.

The other thing about Caleb is that he is deathly afraid of our little dog Rosey. It's the same irrational fear that I have of snakes. I say that because I recognize the ridiculous of his actions.  He's making some progress on that as you'll see in the photos below.

He got to meet his aunts, Doris and Dianne, uncles Frank and Derek, and cousins Samuel, Jonah, & Zoey (whose name, it just occurred to me, I don't know how to spell).  He did good with meeting all of the people.

We're home!

Greetings from Pleasant Hill!!!  We're home.

According to my calculations, we were "on the move" for roughly 25 29 hours on uh, Friday...  I think.  We left our hotel around 8am Friday morning in Guangzhou, and walked into our kitchen around 11:30 pm, still on Friday, but we gained 14 hours in there somewhere, someway.  I'm still trying to figure out what happened when we first got there and what day that was, so I'll likely have to come to grips with the fact that these 3 weeks, or there abouts, are just going to be a whirlwind of adventure that saw a wonderful little boy officially come into our lives.

The day was at times hectic. At times flat out boring. At times stressfull, funny, sad, exhausting, and whatever else you can think of.

I won't say that the day was without incident, it wasn't. But it was nothing that I haven't encountered previously as a dad.  Perhaps different circumstances, but no worries.

Her is Caleb feeling pretty spry and sassy.  This is fairly early on the first flight this morning.  That's my belly off to his left.  That's the results of nearly three weeks of... wait for it...  sausage and bacon!!

Here are the two boys not feeling so spry anymore.  This is probably 6 or 7 hours into flight number two.

And ta-da!  Home at last. We're back, baby we're BACK!!

Walking Caleb around the house tonight was fun. He was stroking the front of the refridgerator so I opened the door. He said, "woooooowwwww!".  I showed him the bedroom that he and Robby will be sharing.  He was shaking his head no for that but I think that's because every night at bedtime is a bit of a war.

I showed him the bathroom to which he replied by grabbing himself and saying "niao niao" (potty). So, we went potty on our tour.  Showed him how to use the soap dispenser which seemed a little stressful to him compared to the bar of soap he's grown accustomed to in our hotel rooms.

I took him to the basement and he nearly crumbled to the ground in a heap of joy at the toys on the floor.

I took him to Daddy's side of the basement with all of the cd's and music equipment. I explained that this was "Ba ba's toys, the ones on the floor were Caleb and Robby toys". He shook his head in agreement so I doubt we'll have any troubles there. *wink wink*

Then I showed him the pool table. I rolled a ball gently in his direction and the look of amazement on his face was priceless.  He responded by picking it up and hurling it halfway across the table back at me! I can see this is something we'll have to revisit early and often!

I knew that everything would be new to him, but to see how everything is new to him is stunning.  I'm not sure if he has ever had any toys of his own. Watching his interaction with stuff, I would say that he has not. He's a bit of a hoarder, which is quite common with foreign adoptees.

I could go on and on, and I probably will in the next couple of days as I intend to mark his progress, but it is now 1:38 Des Moines time (3:38pm on Saturday China time) and I need to go to bed... I think.

Goodbye from China

The final post from China.  Oh sure we're not really leaving for about another 10 hours, but I need to sleep and get to fiesty little buggers up and fed before we leave for the airport so I'd best be heading in that direction.  We're mostly packed at this point. Mom is not only sick with a head cold, but she also hurt her back today. Oddly enough, my back has been bothering me worse today than it has the rest of the trip so the 25 hours of airplaines n' airports ought to be just grand!

Some random photos to send you off with.

First up is Robby and Liena's play date this morning at 10am.  That's Liena in the background keeping pace with Caleb.  They left around 4pm today along with many of our other new friends and they're missed already!

Caleb and Rob on top of a grand boulder in the walking park this afternoon.

Another shot of Robby looking cool for his play date.

The last family photo of the Schmitz Mobile Chaos Unit in China. We had a group photo of all the adopting families and their kids this morning on the steps that you can barely see in the left'ish background of this photo. We had a couple of seperate photos taken by the big tree.

Robby and Caleb playing hackey-sack with the locals at the walking park today.

The whole purpose of returning to the walking park was to find the statue of the five goats. We found it.  I felt a little like Rocky Balboa climbing the steps to get up to this thing!  Of course, I had a cantankerous little Caleb in my arms while I was doing it too.

And finally, Caleb making a face that pretty much demostrates how we all feel about the airplanes n' airports day we have tomorrow.  He looks a little like he's ready to hurl, but really he has a mouthful of dry oatmeal, cereal and sip of water just to make sure he didn't "cement up".

That's it!  Goodnight and goodbye from Guangzhou, China.  We'll see everyone very soon!

Take care.

The beers of China

The post everyone has been waiting for!  The beers of China post!!  Okay, I'll admit, this will likely be the least read post of all, and I don't blame anyone for that other than the Chinese for not demanding more out of their goverment fed beers.  Geesh...

There is one notable beer missing from this list. It's the Guiness Extra Foreign Stout.  I don't recall the word 'foreign' on the American cans so I was tempted to buy this at the 7-11. I didn't want to buy anything that I can get or have had at home, so I passed.  Then, last night when we had supper with Liena's family, the restaurant had those Guiness E.F.S.'s on their menu, so I ordered one. The first sip told me it wasn't the same stuff that we would get in America and Liena's dad agreed.  I tried to grab one at the 7-11 on the walk home, but it would figure, they were sold out.  Just as well... it's one of those memories that will become sweeter and sweeter with time.

On to the beers.  This first one is a Chinese Wal Mart brand beer. You could buy a twelve pack of these for 12 yuan, about 2 bucks.  I didn't do that so that should tell you something about the beer itself. It wasn't bad, but there was no need for another.

This Harbin is a Wheat beer. Not bad at all, but it had just a hint of a flavor that I don't care much for.

This Harbin was a light beer. Forgettable at best.

This beer was my favorite. It was a dark wheat by Donners Berger. It was the "biggest" tasting of the beers that I had, including the aforementioned Guiness. I risked walking across the street a second time in Changchun to grab a second bottle at the Wally Mart.

Tsingtao, we have this one in the States but it's the 'go to' beer here in China. Dirt cheap and for a good reason. They've somehow managed to cut the alcohol content to 2.5.  Many people panicked when they set these in front of them in the restaurant, but they're easy to drink with virtually no effect at all.

Pearl River, beer number 1. The second 'go to' beer in China.  The pearl river is the river where we had our dinner cruise a couple of nights back.  It's a good beer but much like Tsingtao, the alcohol content is well south of 3%.

Okay, okay...  this is technically a Japanese beer but after the difference in the Guiness at the restaurant I decided to get one of these once I discovered they were out of Guiness.  This is always a good beer. Kinda dry in the States, really dry here.  Good beer.

This was a good beer too. It's brewed by Tsingtao and is called 1903.  Nothing special but just a good, drinkable beer.  This would be outstanding on a hot summer day of mowing.

Here's another Wheat beer. It wasn't good as it seemed to have a LOT of a flavor that I don't care for. Oh sure, I drank the silly thing, but I was happy it was gone when it was gone.

Pearl River beer number 2. I really couldn't tell you what the difference was because everything on the label, sans the Pearl River you can see in the photo, was written in Chinese. It's darker.  It had a hint of a bock flair to it but I'm not sure if it was intended or not. If I had to choose between the two, I would go with this one as it had a bit more flavor to it.

Wal Mart brand Snow beer number 2.  I honestly think it was the same beer in a different label. The one above was on a huge pallet display up by the register lanes while this one was available back in the beer aisle. Very forgettable.

So there you have it.  Nothing too exciting and nothing that really knocked me out. 

I met several dads and the occaisional mom who were beer drinkers here and we all agreed that it's time to get back to the states for something with a little weight and flavor to it. 

Cheers!

Safari Park 2