Cousins at the zoo!

No Jumpstart class for Caleb on Fridays so it seemed like a good day to hit the Blank Park Zoo. My sister Dianne and her two boys, Samuel and Jonah, joined momma and the boys on their most recent trek.

No need to comment on all of the proceedings, so I'll let most of the photos speak for themselves.

One of these things is not like the other...  I like the fact that Jonah not only marches to his own beat, but he goes so far to employ his own drummer as well!

Robby appears to have some sort of affliction...

The photo of the day, as far as I'm concerned!  Oh sure, Rob probably tried to beat Caleb up within 5 seconds of this shot being snapped, but at least Mom got the pic!

Three of the musketeers "jammin" on stage.

The Toad Valley Invitational

The Schmitz Mobile Chaos Unit got a rare evening to spend all together and a good thing too as we had a groupon that was in it's final week of usefulness. :-p

We live about a mile from where the "Invitational" was being held, Toad Valley, and got there after a sharing a delightful supper at home. Only problem was that there were about 100 other people with a soon-to-be-expiring-groupon as well.

We waited for a bit until deciding to play the back nine first in hopes that the front nine would be much more open at that point.  It worked like a champ and we rarely had to wait for anyone or anything.

Here are the critters while waiting. Caleb's working on his form while it appears as if Rob got caught by the electric eye doing something nefarious to his little brother.

Caleb showing that practicing his form has paid off!

A-ha!! That's how he was getting the good scores!  Caught in the act of unscrupulous behavior himself, Caleb denies all allegations and states, "I do not recall where the ball was originally placed", all the while acting cute.

After several reckless "stabs" at the ball, Momma steps in to help the boy...

Dad attempts to help the boy as we neared the end as patience among the golfers was starting to stretch and wear thin. Plus, there was ice cream to be had back at home.

And so it was.  Caleb's first mini-golf excursion.

Doctors, doctors and more doctors...

Today, Monday, July 16th, Caleb had another follow-up appointment in Iowa City.  It was six weeks after his last appointment, which was his one month follow-up.  Time flies!

He did pretty good.  I say, "pretty good" because one of the docs came in to look at his ears and mouth and said that there was some wax buildup that needed to be removed from his ears to be able to see the ear drums properly.

So off to another room we went, with the anxiety building, and as soon as that chair was reclined back, we lost him. NO! He did NOT perish but you would not have known that from the screaming. Screaming bloody murder...  ear drum splitting screaming...  physical pain inducing screaming...  you get the idea!

Regardless, his ears are fine.  His palate is looking good too even though there is a small fistula (that's likely spelled wrong, it means "opening") towards the back where the newly constructed uvula is. It's small and the doc said that he would like to wait until the speech develops more to determine if it's worth fixing or not.

We also did some 3D imaging of the boy that was really cool and very CSI'ish!  They took his photo with 8 cameras at one time to get his entire head and then you can rotate it with a joystick to see under the jaw, the top part of the head and either side as well as the front.  As I said, very cool.  And since I was sitting behind him holding him on my lap, my face was partially recreated and I looked very ominous and a bit mysterious!

Caleb also had an appointment with his pediatrician a week or so ago.  That was interesting because she graphed his measurements (height, weight and something else) from our initial visit in January of 2012 as well as his last measurements in China.

Where he falls on the scale for height, percentage wise and based on American kids' averages, was the interesting part for me.  His China measurements had him in the 17th percentile, his January measurements (we had him for about a month) had him in the 19th percentile and last week he was in the 51st percentile!  Holy sprouts, Batman!!

I guess that's what a heapin' helpin' of protein can do for a little fella!!

More tomorrow (hopefully!).

Take care, Caleb and I are off to band practice!

July 4th @ Adventureland

On July 4th, we went to Adventureland with the Griffith clan, and Aunts Doris and Molly. 

It was hot, but really not all that bad. The pools were obviously cool and you get a good breeze on any of the rides. The only time it seemed really stinkin' hot was some of the lines waiting for rides. 

Robby has been there a handful of times in the past but it was going to be Caleb's maiden voyage.  Not sure how he was going to receive any of this but there's no better time than the present to find out. 

This was his first ride. The boys shared a dragon with Robby at the controls. This was one of the first rotations so they were still low. Robby had their dragon as high as it would go within 3 full turns and Caleb seemed to like it.

This was his second ride.  Aunt Dianne took Robby, Caleb and her son, Jonah on it.  This shot was on their way up the hill...

This shot is when they're nearly at the top...

And this is after they made it safely down the twistly yellow water slide with much spinning.  Dianne is trying to convince Jonah that he is still alive while Robby's indifferent and Caleb is looking back at what he just survived.  Dianne said poor Jonah's heart was thumping pretty good by the time they got to the bottom!  :-)

Our lil' critters with their life vests on and the wave pool directly behind them.  We spent a LOT of time in the wave pool as Robby could hardly get enough of it.  By three o'clock in the afternoon, this pool was a mass of humanity slamming into each other when the waves hit.

That's the main hill on the log ride.  All four of us went together in one "log" so there was no one to take our photo as we plunged but Caleb had a pretty good adrenalin rush when we got off the ride. Robby and Mom were soaked!

This is us on the ferris wheel.  Caleb was pretty enamored with looking out over the horizon from up here and you can see the water tower that's about 2 miles from our house easily from the top.

This is looking NW from our Cabana (thanks Griffiths!!).

Looking NE from the same vantage point as above.  There's a circus that performs 3 times a day and you can see at least two of the roller coasters from here as well as a pile of water slides.

This is the kiddie pool.  The little pirate ship thing has a couple of different sized slides on it as well as some other things for the kids to play with.  It took some doin', but ol' Dad finally convinced Caleb to try the small slide on the ship. He did it.  Then did it some more... and some more.  Finally, I got him to do the bigger slide as well!  That was some MAJOR progress for the little dude!

Rob bored as he waits for some refreshments.

Additional water park features.  The pool in foreground has a swim up bar in it. Directly behind this pool (and where we were standing when I took this photo) is a lazy river.  That mound of slides in the middle of the photo is basically a giant erector set for kids (adults too, for that matter) with various slides, things squirting water at you and that giant bucket on top occasionally dumping about 1000 gallons of water on the people below.

The boys on the Chuck Wagon, a kids sized ferris wheel-like thingy-ma-bob.  Caleb appears to be a taddy bit more excited than Robby to be on said ride.

I took a photo of this ride only because it's immediately beside the Chuck Wagon. At 42 years old, I cannot imagine a scenario in life in which it would seem a good idea to place ones body on such an apparatus.  It swings each direction, slightly higher than what is pictured, while spinning around constantly.  I get ill standing beside it and merely watching...

That's Caleb in the six-wheeled yellow vehicle. He appears to think that he's driving it, which is awesome.

That's both boys in the little airplanes.  This is exactly the same ride as the dragons that you saw earlier, only that they're airplanes, of course.  Robby wanted to be directly behind Caleb because he was going to "shoot the Red Baron down".

I have no idea who this dude is and he's obviously not all that impressed with me for taking his photo, but I didn't care. His "sense" of fashion, or lack there-of, needed to be documented, so I did.  What you can't really tell by the photo is that his shorts and shirt are soaking/dripping wet, yet his socks and cowboy boots are not!  Golden.  Truth be told, I salute any fella that has the guts to walk around like this. It can't be easy!

Even Superheros need their sleep...

The boys were both grumpy today. Superhero Rob /Spiderman hit rock bottom before supper when he was told that he could not watch tv in his current grumpy state.  He stormed off to his room...  :-)

Knee High by the 4th of July

Greetings and a belated salutations! 

It's been quite a while since I've found a moment or two to post something new, as evidenced by Wanda's Post. 

This past week, we've celebrated the 4th of July in the great ol' U.S.of A!  It's a fine holiday in the U.S.A. and we celebrate it as our independence from Great Britain in 1776.

As Iowans, we've had a saying that the corn in Iowa should be "knee high by the 4th of July".  Of course, that depends on if you're in Northern/Southern Iowa.  Or, if the weather is a warm year like it has been this year or a cool year like it was last year.  On top of that, it depends on where you have your photo taken (if that's what your family does!).  

This year, the month of March in particular, Iowa was supposedly the warmest place on Earth (speaking in  anomalies, although sadly, the link that I was going to use is no longer active) and we've had the recent blocking high pressure that had all of the sissy office workers around here crying like babies!  :-)

Regardless, the crops do not seem to be too crazy ahead of schedule other than that I've noticed the corn is nearly fully tasseled in some spots already, which would seem a couple of weeks early.

As far as tradition goes, we've had our photo taken by a local (defined as somewhere around the Des Moines area) corn field on the 4th of July ever since little Robert was born.

Here are a few of those:

2012: the morning before we headed to Adventureland! Snapped by our lovely neighbors, Mike & Diane.

2011: I don't believe we did anything special but if memory serves me correctly, Molly snapped this photo about a mile North of our place on the S-curves before you get to University Ave.

2010: I believe that this was also snapped by our neighbors, M & D.

2009:  Taken by Bondurant, Iowa by the inimitable Dianne Griffith, Robby's (and now Caleb's) aunt. 

As you can see, the corn looks very much the same, year to year... wish I could say the same for my belly!

Wanda's post!

Wanda,

It's no longer June 25th!