Happy Birthday to our "eldest", Mr. Robby Schmitz!

Happy Birthday Robby!

I put eldest in quotes in the title of the post because Robby uses that to refer to himself since we've adopted Caleb.  He cracks us up on a regular basis and for that, plus about 831,485,220,198 other reasons, we LOVE him.

March 1st, 2005.  From my perspective, one of the more glorious days in the entire history of the world!  I became a daddy for the first time.  There is no similar feeling.  It is a high honor to have bestowed on you; Daddy. 

Enough of me waxing psuedo-poetic, on to the photos...

Here's the birthday boy in all his regal splendor!  Pizza? Check.  Cake? Check. Football jersey?  Check. Over stimulated for several hours straight? Check.

Here's the master bowler watching a ball travel down the lanes at approximately 4.1 MPH.

Here's cousin Samuel bowling under the expert guidance of his Mom.

The lovely and talented Mrs. Schmitz with the lovely and surely talented Zoe.

Grandma Elaine keeping a keen eye on the proceedings.

Birthday boy trying to pick up a technique or two from G'pa Jim.

Note the follow through after release of the ball.  Perhaps this is some of the technique learned from G'pa in the above photo?  Hard to tell...

Both boys wait approximately 2.13 minutes for their balls to reach the pins.

Cousin Jonah steps up to launch what will no doubt be a strike.

Another master at work!  Caleb RongBo Schmitz, after carefully aiming the launch apparatus, pushes the ball with a technique that can only be described as "the right-leg-twist-barrel-chest-surrender".  It's a Chinese thing...

Getting sung to and preparing to blow out his candles. Much thanks to G'ma Marlene for making the cake.

Aunt Kristie (and cousin Michael plotting something nefarious in the background) with the inimitable cousin Zoe.

Uncle Vince with the baby of the moment!  Ya gotta wonder what a baby thinks when they're getting passed around.  She was delightful with it all so it obviously didn't bother her too much.

I figured one wide view shot of the overall atmosphere couldn't hurt anything.

Birthday boy opening some presents.

Alright, I confess.  I put this one in for purely selfish reasons.  We managed to get Caleb a spare while using the launching mechanism, and he jumped into my arms with joy.  I believe it was Aunt Molly who somehow captured the moment on the camera with the worst delay in the world.  And speaking of Aunt Molly, she's crafty, that one.  She "volunteered" to go around snapping photos for us so that she was behind the camera, greatly reducing the chance that she end up in front of one.

Aunt Doris with what appears to be a little doll.

This is a bowling pin, with Happy Birthday on it, that the Premiere Bowling peeps give out to the Birthday kiddo so all who are attending the party can sign their names on it.  Cool idea, I thought, and he's quite proud of it.

Birthday boy playing one of his buddies in air hockey. 

China - Part 11 - Boy Day / Mama does paperwork & shopping

This will be another relatively short post since it was a relaxation day for the most part so the families could spend the bulk of the day with their new kiddos.

Momma was going to go do the paperwork for the day as only one parent was required to attend those sessions. The three women in our group went to do paperwork and Echo also took them shopping to a local market as the wares are cheaper there.

The boys wrestled (Caleb didn't like this much then and certainly doesn't now), played video games, watched Veggie Tales, took a walk up and down the hallways, looked out the window and other low-key stuff around the room.

That night, we didn't even go out for supper. It was room service night although we did go on a family walk to find out more about the pesky swimming hats. 

So, lets get on with the pics and let them tell the story.

One of the great past times of being in the hotels in China, looking out the windows.  Daddy did it as much or more than the boys. I'm not sure what the boys were looking at but I would always watch the traffic.

I'm guessing that the boys were looking for the video games at this point and only stopped long enough to be polite and pose for a picture for dear ol' Dad.

Here's Caleb actually playing with the toy truck and cars that we bought him at the Changchun Wally Mart.  He didn't roll the cars around much but he did sit there and figure out how to take the wheels off as well as peel all of the stickers off of them.

Caleb would take the first picture and then ask you to take a second while he gave the 'Victory' sign. Nowadays when he wants you to take his picture, he holds his hand up by his face like he would be if he were actually holding a real camera and makes a clicking sound.  . 

Ahhhh... back with the video games at long last.

Caleb and another favorite past time of his; eating!  That boy would scarf down a banana by himself. In fact, he'd get upset if you tried to share it with him.  After the 'nana, he'd want a sweet bread, and then he'd wash that down with a little container of this nasty smelling sweet milk.  That would be an hour before lunch, which of course, he would eat like a champ too.

This is the boys dancing to a video on youtube of his daddies band, Jericho Down playing the Lincoln Brewster song, Everybody Praise The Lord (yes, that is a shameless plug!) at a gig we did at Haines Park in Altoona, IA.  We were watching videos of Chinese nursery rhymes when I got the idea to show Caleb that video to see if he'd recognize his new daddy. He did.  I smiled. We danced.

This was one of the wicked wrestling matches that broke out between the boys.  We had a half acre bed to wrestle on so we had to take advantage of such an animal.  Oddly enough, at some point, of which I believe to be in Guangzhou, we found out that wrestling in Chinese hotels is against the law.  Who would've guessed?  I suppose it's probably a more recent law since the unruly rock n' roll bands have started to play there in recent years. Regardless, we had fun and nobody got sent up the river.

This is a pic from Momma's shopping trip down to the local market.  It's one of at least a thousand shots we could have taken of the new apartment buildings going up in either Beijing or Changchun.  They have so many people who are moving to the city now that they have no where to house them. There are tower cranes and similar sized buildings going up in many places in both of those cities. We didn't see quite as much of this when we went South to Guangzhou.

Another shot of the apartments being constructed along with a few in the distance that were recently built.

Here's a shot of how the 'markets' are set up.  It seemed like tight, cramped little shops were everywhere on the ground level of buildings.  Two other things worthy of pointing out in this picture; 1. notice all of the two wheeled dolly's leaning up against the light post.  This was not uncommon and you would see a guy go grab one, use it quickly and take it back. 2. Those two brown things at the bottom/middle of the photo (by the back wheel of the red car) are these huge gloves that people would duct tape onto the handle bars of their bikes.  They would ride to the market, or to work and then hop off of their bike with the gloves staying behind.  The women that I noticed doing this would often be wearing tight fitting gloves underneath these monstrosities.

Another shot of the market.  I did not go so I did not just take a picture of the two Chinese women!

What can you find at the local markets?  You can find shoes like these that Momma bought for Caleb. They're a knock-off combination of Nikes and K-Swiss.  Did you pick up on the double logos?

This is shot on one of the walks we took.  I don't think it's from the same day because both boys have on different clothes than in the other photos that I really am sure about, but it was in this very hallway that the boys would have some of their big bonding moments, so I wanted it documented. Go figure that just simply walking to the elevator would provide enough of a "family feeling" that they would hold hands or, as they're doing above, walking together with Caleb hugging Robby's arm.  That's good stuff.

Here we are down in the Health Club finally purchasing our swim caps.  Robby was about to explode with excitement that we were getting swim caps which of course daddy knew that he would HAVE to go swimming shortly there after.

Another shot of the caps purchase.  Caleb wore his coat down because he refused to take it off once he put it on up in the room.  It was not a battle worth fighting.  You can sort of see the swimming pool in the background of this picture behind the big glass wall.

I think this was on the blog before but just seeing Caleb picking at the hat and not being sure of what was going to happen to him next is worthy of putting it on here again.

We had room service that night for supper as I mentioned above.  Here was the dessert. It was cheesecake with a blueberry sauce obviously containing some real berries.  Take a look at those white berries.  They tasted like extra sweet blueberries.  It was delightful!

That is all for now.


I believe that the Puppet Palace is up next.


Until then, thanks again for reading/viewing. I'm having a lot of fun going back through the photos and stirring up memories.


Take care.

China - Part 10 - Got'cha! day, back at the hotel

A shorter post for once.

This is Got'cha! day back at the hotel...

I couldn't even begin to tell you when we got back to the hotel that day. It was a whirlwind of time and emotions. I thought I would be clever and go check the properties of the original photos, but they are on "American" time, not China time, so they show December 4th and a time that is not accurate either. Oh I'm sure that if I thought about it really hard, I could figure it out but it's late, 8:20 cornfield time, I'm tired and have two boys yelling at me for various reasons from across the house.

Loosely translated, it ain't gonna happen.

Regardless of what time it was, let's have a look, should we?

This was the boys playing with their cousins' Nintendo DS.  There were two DS's but of course they both wanted the same one.  Caleb is still in the clothing that we picked him up in, the under-clothes, the wool pants, snow pants and heavy sweater, even though the room was plenty warm, he was NOT going to allow us to take them off.  We did get him down to the under-clothes for pj's that night which were essentially long underwear and a long sleeve under shirt.

Here he is in sole possession of one of the DS's.  He couldn't play the games but he really liked the music that came out of them.  He would get control of one of them and then try to hide it somewhere in the room so that his big brother wouldn't get it back.  It was kinda cute and sad at the same time.

I'm thinking that he's immitating me in this photo.  After we were back at the hotel for a while, I got out my notebook and began scribbling my memories of the earlier part of the day.  He watched me for a bit and then indicated without words that he would like some paper.  We set him up with a notebook and pencil of his own.  He wrote in the notebook for about 45 minutes.  He wrote out little scribbles on each line just like I was doing.  He still likes to do that now!

Here's Robby doing what Robby does best... play football.  He's got his Iowa State autographed shirt on and was running back and forth at the foot of the bed and down the hallway towards the door, stopping only long enough for the occasional photo op.

Along with writing, this was Caleb's other favorite activity; looking out the window. At this point in the day, we didn't know what this meant, but at dusk, we're pretty sure we found out.  We think he was waiting for his foster mama to pick him up.  He got really quiet and withdrawn at sundown and when Momma and Robby left the room for a walk in the hallways, he collapsed against the wall, began sobbing until sobs would not cut it anymore.  At that point, it turned to a wail with a mostly helpless daddy trying to comfort him.  He was mad at me at first, for good reason as we'd ripped him from whatever life he had known, but he eventually accepted my consoling and nestled in.

This crib was in our room as part of the preparation from Holt thru our travel arrangements.  We tried to get it out of there on day one but Echo wanted us to keep it for the first night, just to be safe.  We didn't want to ruffle any feathers so we just kept the silly thing.  He played with the plush soccer ball we got him while in there, but he slept in the 2.5 acre bed with the rest of his family.  We got rid of it the second day...

Here's a shot showing a little bit of his mischeivious side that showed up a few times on the first day. It showed up more on the second day, even more on the third day and so on as his personality slowly came out.  The coolest thing of all is that every day, as of when I'm writing this on Feb. 21st, 2.5 months later, we're still seeing very big developments in his personality.  Luckily, most of it's been good with only a little bit of sassy-ness coming out.  I'm sure that's coming though!

That sums that one up! We went out for dinner that night to a little dumpling shop that was a couple of blocks from our hotel. Echo led us there and it was good food. To our surprise, Caleb ate like a champ and was smiling at us and generally very well behaved. Although, there were some concerns for the upcoming increase to the grocery bill.

Those concerns weren't without merit! ;-)

China - Part 10 - Got'cha! day

Got'cha! day. The day this whole thing was about. The tourism in Beijing was fun and very interesting but after a few days of being that far away from home and STILL waiting for your little person to enter your life gets a little trying. By Saturday afternoon, we were ready to get to Changchun and meet our boy.

On Monday, December 5th, we finally got our wish.

On Monday morning when we woke up as a family of three for the last time (and hopefully for a VERY long time), I felt really bad. Headache on top of being light headed and sick to my stomach. I would be brave enough to say that it wasn't nerves because I really didn't feel nervous at all, excited? Yes, but not nervous.

Regardless we were all up early that morning, shaved, showered, fed and ready to go get our boy!!

In the older post, Gotcha! He's Real... and He's Spectacular!, I made the comment that the Federal building was just in the middle of all of your ordinary shops and buildings in Changchun.  The only thing that set it apart, was the Chinese flag flying in the front.

Here is that building.  The shot of the boys dancing in that old post, and appearing again here later, was in the lobby of this building just behind those gold doors that you can see.  Our little boy was up on the ninth floor of this building and at this point, it was kind of surreal that we finally made it to this point.  And, it was cold...

Here's the hallway that I spoke of too, with the doors that had paint so thick on some of them that they didn't close correctly.  Our guide, Echo, is the person way up front by the elevator lobby and whose pony-tail you can kind of see. We had been down the hallway to the big metal door and turned around and went back because there was confusion about where the three boys were at.

Here we are in the same hallway turned around and going back the other direction after Echo made a quick phone call. The big door down at the end is the heavy metal door that I spoke of that could be closed to seal off the hallway. The boys were in a tiny room just past that big steel door.  First door on the left.

And here we are first meeting our little duder, as well as the other two families all jammed into that little room!  If memory serves me correctly, there were 20 people total in that room.  It was crowded, hot, noisy and very exciting. Calebs careperson, who shall remain nameless for no other reason than the fact that we never knew her name, was showing him the little photo book that we had shipped to him back in the summer time after we were matched with him.  I think he knew what was up and I KNOW that he wasn't happy about it.  He was just quiet and reserved at this point. 

This was momma's first attempt to physically touch him.  He tolerated it, but I'm not sure he enjoyed it.  It was at this picture when I was going through building this post where I started crying all over again (I'm welling up now again at this photo...).  The emotions at this point were so intense that I thought my head might pop off. Heck just seeing seeing his face for the first time when Echo opened the correct door caused the biggest jolt of adrenalin that I've ever experienced.  It was that precise moment when he was "really real", if that makes any sense.

Calebs holding the booklet with a picture of his and Robby's bedroom showing.  Robby is looking like, "Hmmmm... I wonder if this was as good of an idea as I was thinking it was 3 hours ago at breakfast?".  Just kidding, of course, he was happy and most of the time still is.  As I was typing this caption, Robby just yelled at Caleb, "Caleb! Not funny! Don't make me kick you into the middle of next week!".  Now Caleb is sobbing and Robby's telling him that everything is okay.  And so it goes.

That's my hand with a panda pupper we bought him at the Changchun Wally Mart.  At this point, they were starting to usher us out of the room to go up to the 12th floor to the courtroom where we'll process piles of paperwork and sign our names more times than we can count.  Caleb's just hoping that we all go away...

This is where the sobbing got started and you could really tell how bad he was hurting. The photo is in black and white because it was more than a bit blurry and it looked better this way.  Sadly, it tends to capture the emotions of the moment quite nicely too.

Here's little Caleb, upset and clutching his bag of corn candy. We've tried to play with his trucks, plush soccer ball and the panda puppet that we bought him.  The only thing that kind of worked was the soccer ball and kicking it back and forth with us.

I included this shot just so everybody could see my huge beak!!  That nose gave him a HUGE target for his rather adept right hook that he would connect with several times over the next 10 minutes.  This was one of the happier moments when big brother Robby was being goofy and falling down to entertain Caleb. Caleb would do good during these times but as soon as he realized that he wasn't upset, he'd get upset again.  Note that his caregiver is still there (the boots to Calebs right are here) and so his real fireworks have not started yet. It's probably for the best, but the fireworks were not captured on film because as the caregiver left, momma had to go over and start paper work so there was no one to take pictures while I tried to console a the little bugger.

This is after momma had her paperwork done and I had to take Caleb over to do his fingerprints which is how they have the little kids "sign" their names.  He's warmed up to me at this point and actually let me carry him, but not before punching me for my efforts.

Here we are doing the paperwork at the desk with the Federal workers.

This is the process of paperwork. There are two Federal workers behind the desk and then Echo and another helper would help flip through the pages.  One would help Caleb put his finger print down and the other would tell me where to sign and put the papers back in order after I did.  He was upset at first because he had to take his glove off.  You can see his bright striped glove laying right by the pad of red ink.

After paperwork, we went back to our chair to wait for the others to finish up.  Caleb is still sobbing at this point but doing much better.  He lets me hold him, but not too tightly as you can clearly see his hand on mine so it's in the proper position to throw it off should I get to "daddy-like" with him.

We were not ready to leave yet, but Caleb wanted his gloves on. I took another shot to the nose at first when I tried to help get them on because he thought I was taking them. Once he learned that I was simply helping him put them on, he allowed it.

Progress!!!  He's standing between my legs at this point, settling in and even allowed me to hug him!  In this photo and the one after it, notice how wet the front of his coat is from all of his tears!  By this point, we've all done plenty of crying and have easily burned through the supply of tissues we armed ourselves with.

Here's the three boys with the two in the back looking noticeably happier than the one in the front!

He FINALLY crawled into my lap and within about 5 or 6 minutes, was out.  He's still clutching his corn candies that his caregiver gave him before she left and would hold onto them for quite some time.  Poppa is very proud here and a little exhausted from the last how ever many hours have passed.

Here we are back down in the lobby.  We got seperated from our group when I had to take Caleb to the bathroom so we made it down to the lobby before the other families. By the time the rest of the folks got down there, I had been dancing with the boys and they were still dancing.  Echo, right behind Caleb was very happy to see him gettin' down with his big brother so soon after the turmoil upstairs.  I think we all were.

Another dancing shot.  Probably overkill but they make me smile and it was all part of a flood of emotions that was this morning.

Here's the critters dancing that was in the original blog post.  I included the full shot again because you can see the guards desk (behind Robby) and elevators of where we ascended and descended. The gold doors you can see in the first picture of this post are immediately behind Robby.  The people in the background were another family with us and I put butterflies over their faces as it weirds me out to put peoples pictures on the fancy hi-tech world wide interweb without their permission.

Here are the boys on the bus ride to the photo shoot where they take the adoptee's photo with their newly adopting parents.  Robby and the other boy with his family had to stay in the bus with the other lads grandma and grandpa.

Another shot of just the critters.  After we got the photo taken, we went to a notary's office to do another blast of paperwork. It was at that office where the orphanage director told us that Calebs foster mom had called him, bawling, asking how Caleb was doing.  The director was very happy to see Caleb sitting on my lap and playing with me by this point.  I didn't take any photos of that room and I wish I would have for memories sake...

So that's all for this post.  In the next one, I'll post some photos of that first day/night back in our hotel room.