Christmas, buddies, & Green Eggs n' Ham

The Saturday of January 7th was a busy, chaotic day.

First up for me was my Bible study at 6am, which lasts for roughly 2 hours.

At 11am, Mama went up to the Pleasant Hill library to register Robby for this Springs soccer.

When she returned from that, we piled into the van and made our way to my sisters house for the Schmitz family Christmas.  It's a pile of humanity when we all get together and it's great to get to see everyone again too. It was great seeing Caleb's reactions to so many people.  He got to meet my brothers and their families finally so for the most part, he's met everyone in his immediate circle.

We had a blast. Tons of food, lots of loud kids, good conversation, and exchange gifts for the young'ins.

We got home from the Christmas event about 4:30 and needed to be ready to go to the Drake/UNI mens basketball game by about 6:15.  We went with my sister Doris, her hubby Frank, and cousin Leah.  A good time was had by all however I think the popcorn was a bigger hit than the actual game for Robby and Caleb.

We got home from that around 9:30, just in time to watch the Detroit Lions fall apart, officially speaking, to the New Orleans Saints.

The first photo is proud daddy with his boys and cousin Zoe.  She's not trying to be that cute, it just comes naturally to her!

This is Caleb and his cousin Jonah "eating" their dinner.  

Ahhhh... the chaos known as gift exchange.

Cousins Matti and Zoe.

Cousin Mike taking the boys to the back yard for some rough n' tumble fun. They had a blast out there chasing, wrestling, pummeling and whatever else that boys do.

Cousin Mike hoisting Marvin McNutt while Rob attempts to stay awake.

The aforementioned wrestling/pummeling.  Caleb walked in while I was posting this picture and rattled off something in Mandarin that only he and the Good Lord know.

The brothers in a sweet moment after the pummelings...

This is Rob n' Caleb sharing a Chinese snack called Yanyans, after doing some art projects. It's basically cracker sticks that you dip in chocolate. I'm a little surprised that Caleb likes them, but he does.  Most sweets are met with a pained look.

Here are the boys snuggling together in their camos that Grandma got them for Christmas the day prior.

Yesterday after Church, I asked Robby what he wanted for lunch. He immediately replied, "Green eggs and ham!".  Well, we just so happened to have a piece of leftover ham from Saturday's Christmas dinner as well as eggs and green food coloring, so I made it so.

It looks pretty nasty to me but he got a big kick out of it.

The Faces of Caleb, Part II

Here it is, late Sunday evening. I had intended on putting up part 4 of the time line earlier today, but Church, Sunday school, a football game or two, dishes and some guitar playing later, I have not done it and it's nowhere near ready.


So when all else fails, notice how I redirected the blame there, the fall back is pictures. 

Off we go...

Caleb as Batman, obviously.

Ahhhh, the first hair cut. Note that he's not even in our bathroom yet, much less got the clippers near his head. Oh no. He was watching Robby get his hair cut and was having fun and wanting his cut too. No problem... at least until Robby got into the shower and Caleb realized that showers/baths follow hair cuts. 

Also, that is not a fang on his bottom row of teeth.  It's a piece of gum that he wasn't ready to forfeit yet.

This is just a typical Caleb look when he's happy and having a snack.

Here he is over at cousins Sam, Jonah and Zoe's house.  Smiles for everybody!!

He was trying to look cool here.  I'm not sure what he was actually trying to tell me, but I could have sworn he said something about "cool".  Okay, then.

All of these shots with the gorgeous blue sky behind him were taken by Lesley when she stopped by to see my mom on Thursday, Jan. 5th when it was well over 60 degrees outside. He was obviously in a good mood and as usual, ready to ham it up for the camera.

Nope, not pickin' his nose.  It's just a well placed finger at the time the photo snapped.

Adoption power!  Feel it!!

Pure joy...  and, more chewing gum.


That's all for now. I hope to get a proper post up soon and the next time line.

Timeline, Part 3 - Home study #1... and supper.

Part 3

Oct. 13^th, had our first home study with Angela.

So the night of Wednesday Oct. 13^th,  rolls around… okay, let’s be honest,  it came rushing up on us like a freight train to couple of unsuspecting teens smoochin’ on the railroad tracks. We have no idea what to expect with a home study. We’ve heard stories about social workers going through your cabinets, drawers, and whatever else you could find. We’re trying to clean things in the house that hadn’t been cleaned since we built it along with other panicked induced activities.

After work, I find myself making a recipe Lesley found in the Sunday paper; polenta-sausage lasagna. If you’ve never “worked” with polenta, it’s kind of odd. It comes in a tube that immediately reminded me of braunschweiger. 

Now don’t play stupid!  You all know (and probably LOVE) that delicious German liver-based treat of a processed meat. The tube looked like that of a braunschweiger tube, but whereas braunschweiger looks like a spread-able hot dog, polenta looks more like a grainy cheese and is a little less, uh… spread-able. However, having said that, I suspect that a person driven on spreading it could make it work without too laborious of an effort.

I’m drifting… 

I read the instructions as I usually do, which is to say that I skimmed part of them and then proceed to cook. You see, I don’t care much for following recipes.  Rather, I read them quickly and use them as a bit of a roadmap, making alterations as I see fit.  So I get it all made up, incorrectly, stick it in the oven and THEN after about 8 – 10 minutes of cooking, I decide to look and see how long it’s supposed to cook.  Turns out that you’re supposed to cover it first, and cook it for 20 minutes, then 10 additional minutes uncovered. 

Whoops. 

So we’re in for a little more cooking time that I counted on when I put it in the oven at 5:25.  Problem is, the home study is at 6:30 and we know for a fact that we’re going to have a wrestling match with Robby in an effort to get him to eat this “stuff” called polenta. 

At about 6:05, we sit down for dinner and start eating what was an acceptable dish. Think about it though, it has sausage, mmmm...  sausage...   and cheese on it too, so how bad could it really be?  Seriously, you could put a piece of old carpet down in a greased pan and add tomato sauce, sausage and cheese to it and you’re going to have yourself, at minimum, a decent supper.

So after the inevitable wrestling match, we get the kitchen cleaned up and are ready for Angela.  Good thing too because it was 6:27 and she was pulling off of the street and into our driveway.

I don’t know what I was expecting in a social worker, perhaps Tyne Daly’s Maxine character on Judging Amy (look it up!), but Angela wasn’t it… in a good way!  She was very pleasant, easy to talk to, and never seemed to be fishing for answers.  I never once felt uncomfortable around her and in fact, she’s someone who I would gladly invite into our home outside of the adoption proceedings.

We sat around the table while she asked us various questions. “Us” is Molly, Robby, Mom & Dad.  Molly was excused early as she will be moving out of our house in November. Robby got to do him some talkin’ and handled it like a champ!  He was cute with the exception of when he told Angela that he had a question.  She said, “Go ahead and ask.”.  He did.  His question was, and I quote, “When are you gonna be leaving?”. He wanted to play football with dad and by golly, she was cuttin’ into his time before bed!

We answered a variety of questions; how do we handle conflict, how much time do we plan to take off after we bring little Beautiful back home?  Where will little Beautiful sleep? Is Robby going to China with us? What are the day-care plans after they’re able to attend? Do we have family support near by? Suppers?  Clean underwear? Job situations and so on.

We also got to ask a few questions too, so that was good. It was good to hear answers from somebody with Angela's experience. One more feather in the cap of our learnin'.

Overall, an interesting night and one more step in the right direction. 

Timeline, Part 2 - Beginning the process

May, ??, 2010 – Not sure of the date but it seems like it may have been right around our anniversary on May 16^th.  No matter… we went to a class on adoption that was being hosted by one of Lesley’s co-workers.  It was through AWAA and was held in a church in Norwalk, IA.  Robby stayed with Grandma & Grandpa while we were there and nobody knew at this point that we were considering adoption.  I really don’t recall if we learned all that much but it was good to see parents with their adopted children and to hear stories about their experiences.

Update Feb. 4th, 2012 * * *
I wanted to clarify something that I noticed recently. Depending on how you read and interpret that last sentence, you could end up thinking that remark was made about the folks who held the class. That is NOT what I intended and is certainly NOT true!

The couple who held the class were fantastic and gave some great information. The reason why I said "I really don't recall if we learned all that much..." was based on us having a plethora of thoughts, and some doubts, if we were doing the right thing. Although we were just getting started, it seemed that information was coming at us fast and furious so, overall, it was a lot to process.

Sincerest apologies if that comment offended.
End Update * * *

Somewhere in late May, we decided that we were going to use Holt International as our company of choice for the adoption. There are a host of companies out there that one could select.  Why did we choose Holt? I can't tell you at this point and I didn't document that decision.  I'm not sorry that we did though, because for all of the stuff that happens once you travel, it went about as smoothly as we could have hoped.

June. 3^rd, 2010 - finger printing in W.D.M. police station.  What an experience…  there was roughly 8 – 10 African-Americans in there waiting to be finger printed for a door to door sales business they were attempting to start up. All of them were talking at the same time and I don’t believe any one of them was listening. 

I had to look up the address of the company I work for (I’m a consultant, so I don’t care about the address of the company I work for as long as the checks don’t bounce).  They were then giving me a hard time about just grabbing a name and address out of the phone book for my “personal information”.  All I really wanted was to get my stinkin’ fingerprints done and get the blazes out of there.  Ugh… 

July 21st, 2010 - adoption application received and we sent off our references.

July 23^rd, 2010 - physicals for one and all! Did I mention I just turned 40?!?  You’d think with two older brothers and the fact that I have plenty of friends North of 40 years old, SOMEBODY WOULD HAVE GIVEN ME A HEAD’S UP!!!  Doc didn’t even have the decency to buy me dinner first and you certainly wouldn’t want it afterwards…

Aug. 12^th & 13^th, 2010 - 2 day class (Parents In Progress, sections 1, 2, 3, and 4) in Omaha at the Holt offices there. Stayed with my brother Steve, his wife Kathy & their son Tim in Council Bluffs. Learned some good things during this class and got to hear from a mother who had recently returned from Honduras, I think…  She had some stories that give you goose bumps!  We met some good people during this class.

Sept. 24^th, 2010 - got word from Holt that our background checks came back from Oklahoma.  We lived there for 3 years back in the musically challenged 90’s and apparently the Okies are diligent about background checks. Well, it’s either that or they don’t care about them and push you to the back burner, because it took a while.

Sept. 30th, 2010 - Date assigned to social worker, but of course, we don't know it yet.

Oct. 4^th, 2010 - got a call from Angela Stark about scheduling our first home study. We decided on Oct. 13^th.  Pretty exciting and scary. Exciting because things are actually moving and scary because it's a home study by a social worker.

Better get cleaning...

Timeline, Part 1 - How it all got started

When we first got serious about pursuing adoption, we discussed starting a blog as a way to journal all of the proceedings that culminate with a new kiddo entering our family.  Of course, like most things, I kept putting it off but did demonstrate minimal common sense by writing a few things down in a word doc as time progressed.

Now that we have a blog set up, I want to go back and break up the timeline into several posts because, as you well know by now, I can get wordy and drift a little from the subject at hand.

So, here is the first part.  Enjoy.

Part 1

In a galaxy far, far away...
Back around the time Robby was born, I had a feeling in my heart that we were supposed to adopt. I believed then, as well as I do now, that it was God putting that on my heart. I love kids. I love them so much that I act like one of them most of the time.  I also proclaim to love God, but as a recent sermon asked, are you a disciple of Christ or are you an admirer of Christ.

As is typical with me whenever I feel God is asking me to do something, I try to ignore it and see if it'll go away.  I know that's not right, but it's exactly how I handled this feeling of adoption. I managed to put it off for nearly 5 years. I was clearly an admirer of Christ (I'm working on it!!).

April 20^th, 2010, Momma & I are headed for Mr. Robby’s kindergarten round-up.  We pile into the car for the excruciating 1/6 mile drive to the elementary school. 

So here we are, arriving at the school 29.3 seconds later. We go in and are immediately introduced to the principal who guides us in to the gymnasium/cafeteria full of metal folding chairs. We pick two chairs, in the middle of a row, roughly mid-way back through the rows from the front of the room.  I suspect that probably says something about us but I have no idea what that might be. 

We’re sitting there talking and I’m cracking myself up with jokes and one-liners in an effort to pass the time. You see, I hate waiting. HATE IT! 

Waiting in a restaurant for food?  Hate it.

Waiting in the doctors office? Hate it.

Waiting in line at the grocery store check outs? Hate it.  In fact, I really hate this one because I can never figure out why I pick the most dreadful line to be in. I’ll walk by several lines and select one with very few people in it and those people do not have extravagantly filled grocery carts so it should be hard to lose here.

Right?

Wrong.  Longer lines will have filed all of their people through 2 or 3 times over and I’ll still be there waiting for some lady (I say lady because I haven’t noticed a guy writing a check in a grocery store for a LONG time, although feel free to correct me if I'm wrong) to START WRITING HER CHECK when the cashier gives her the total!  Why do people do that? Then, they always have the nerve to smile at you when you start groaning audibly. Madness. Did you forget what your name and what day it is? Did it magically come back to you when you heard the total amount of your purchase?

And I especially love it when their pen won’t work on top of that!!  That’s pure GOLD!  They try, in a seemingly endless pattern of little curly-q’s with their pen, to get it to write sometimes stating, “This silly thing just worked when I signed for my prescriptions!” while trying again. And again.

The cashier stands there blindly staring into space instead of offering up a different pen. Then it happens… She grabs her compact-car sized purse to look for another pen! 

Sweet Maria, could this be any more ridiculous?

Turns out that yes, it can! 

You finally get your turn and the cashier non-chalantly asks you, “Hi. How’re ya doing?”. 

Seriously?!  I’ve got a finger stuck in the hole in my forehead where the vein popped and I’m nearly a year older!!! 

“Good! You?”, I reply in my most animated voice. 

I hate waiting… more on this in later parts of the timeline.

For real this time, back to the story.

We’re sitting there, Lesley’s listening to me complain about the waiting, and she says, “Be thankful we only have to do this once.”.  In response, I say, "We could adopt.". To my utter surprise and amazement, she responds, “I could be talked into that.”!! 

Hmmmmmmm…

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!