And out of the blue...

...just received first list of adoption candidates from DHS. Suddenly finding it difficult to breathe.

This is the worst

Today's parenting class topic: child abuse and neglect. AKA "all the different ways that someone could have ****ed up your adoptive child." It's like a parade of demons.

Quote of the Day

"The victory condition, the highest goal you can achieve, is to make your children exactly as f***ed up as you are."
-- Jerry Holkins, Penny Arcade

Oh yeah...

"Almost" 18 years of marriage has turned into "actual" 18 years of marriage. Guess I'd better update the sidebar.

Into the breach

This past week we completed about 90% of the verbal colonoscopy that is the home study process. The contractor, a pleasant middle-aged man named Dennis, came over and interrogated interviewed us for about 8 hours, 5 on one visit and 3 on a follow-up. It was exhausting, to say the least, but nowhere near as much as the class we attended on Saturday.

We have 9 sessions to attend, 2 per Saturday for the next 5 weeks, with a break on Labor Day weekend. We've now completed the first two, which are largely introductory and relatively benign. Most of the conversation seemed to be about navigating the bureaucracy, managing expectations, and keeping DHS looking like a wonderful shiny happy organization. After all, it's for the children.

That last part comes off a little cynical, perhaps because it is. There's a lot of whitewashing going on, even when the folks sitting at my table and directly across from me brought up their direct, recent experiences with the bureaucratic heavy-handedness of that same organization. Like 80% of the class, they're involved in a kinship adoption, but for some reason one of the children involved has been institutionalized and they're getting stonewalled by DHS regarding her care. They're being told quite bluntly that not only is she "none of their concern", but if they don't drop it DHS can and will take the other kids away from them too. It's downright surreal, coming from an organization which throughout the class had been portrayed as having nothing but every child's happiness and well-being in mind.

Granted, much of this may be perception and perspective, but government bureaucracies are notoriously intractable, so I'm inclined to believe the gist if remaining skeptical on the particulars.

That said, the class itself isn't particularly difficult, since like all government programs it is made to accommodate the lowest common denominator. For example, I distinctly remember reading one section which painstakingly described a concept in several sentences that could have been summarized in a single word had the writer assumed the intended audience to have a high-school graduate's vocabulary. Most of what is said is basic common sense -- perhaps not to some, but to anyone with a little brains and a modicum of compassion. There are a few legal factoids that were new to me, but they could have been summarized on a 3x5 index card. I didn't really need 6 hours of lecture to pick them up, and they mostly pertained to foster families, which doesn't really apply to us.

The greatest danger of the class is boredom and fatigue. My brain checked out with about 30 minutes left in the second session. Luckily all they were doing at that point was reviewing -- again -- those half-dozen items which had been explained in grueling detail for the previous 2.5 hours. Not even the mighty power of 5-Hour Energy could keep me focused at that point.

Lest it sound like I'm being snarky (which I totally am), I should give props to the ladies doing the teaching of the class. They have a required syllabus handed down from on high, and they're not really allowed to deviate from it much. But they are doing their level best to keep it as interesting as possible, even though the curriculum has all the flavor and consistency of oatmeal and they're basically allotted 5 metaphorical raisins to drop in it.

Only 7 more sessions to go.

Things are starting to happen...

Color me shocked, but the home study contractor is actually calling my references. This is perhaps the first time in 20+ years of job interviews and various other forms. I'd come to think that the "references" section of any form was just a test to see if you had 3 imaginary friends.

Imagine my horror when folks who actually know me started saying that they got a call from "the guy" asking all sorts of impertinent questions. One such question was, of course, "would you recommend him as a parent?" My boss told me privately that he had no idea, really... all he knows with confidence is my worth as an employee and some random bits about my interests. But he's heard I have dogs, and they're still alive, so he figured that counts.

Let's hope my other references at least thought of that much.

I can't wait...

...to do stuff like this.

Home study in one week! Classes in two!

It moved! A little.

At the beginning of May, we filed the paperwork to get the home study going and our classes set up.

About a month later, we got a call from Tonya, who scheduled our classes for August-September, which is the first round of Saturday classes available (we didn't fancy the idea of going after work for weeks on end).

Yesterday, we finally got a notice from the home study contractor that they've taken our case out of their inbox. So it only took 2 months to be notified that our paperwork had made it that far through the bureaucracy. Moving at the speed of government, this must be a new record!

Preach it Sister!!!

I want to marry this post and have like ten thousand of its babies:

Momastery: On Profanity

Favorite bit:

Or maybe He’s talking about language intended to exclude people. Religious talk does that sometimes. Religious words can be used to make people feel in and other people feel out and if they’re used that way, to suggest that some people are “God people” and others aren’t, then I think religious words become profane.

I try to keep my language clean, I honestly do. But I refuse to feel as guilty as some think I should when it proves difficult or impossible to maintain the facade. Like many/most(/all?) men, I am a bottler of emotions. There's a microbrewery in my heart that serves up a creamy ale in frosty shatterproof bottles of the finest sublimation. Occasionally the bottles get shaken up and the tops pop off and then there's a giant mess to clean up.

To prevent this, I've been practicing at expressing myself instead, especially when it comes to anger or frustration, and sometimes that just has to include the naughty words because no other words will do. Some have suggested this is evidence of a weak mind or vocabulary, but I think it has more to do with the fact that some emotions are violent and require violent language, otherwise you're not really expressing them.

Watchin' the dog...

...watchin' you.

This article has some great research and commentary on canine behavior. We've got three pooches hanging around the house, and I can attest that they miss no opportunity to associate some cue with some action.

Our TV makes a characteristic musical tone when we shut it off. The dogs have learned that when they hear that tone, it's time to go outside and go potty before bed. I've demonstrated this for the delight of various visitors: watching TV late at night, all three dogs conked out on the floor in various places, completely dead to the world. We'll be talking in normal tones, the dogs never waking or stirring, and I'll say "watch this".

Remote: *click*

TV: "bee-dee-boop"

All three dogs will go from complete unconsciousness to on their feet in about the space of a second, then scamper to the kitchen door to be let out.

What's even more interesting is treat time... they know their individual tricks:

Zeus: speak, roll over, down, up, etc.
Zoe: speak, high-five, down, sit, etc.
Zack: "I can sit."

"Zack, speak!"

"I can sit."

"Zack, roll over!"

"I can sit."

Yeah, he's not the sharpest knife in the drawer, though I'd still bet on him in a contest against Simple Dog.

Where was I? Oh yeah... my point was, when it's treat time, if you hold up a treat but don't give them a cue, they will actually start running through their repertoire of tricks (or in Zack's case, he can look more and more pathetic as he sits and drools) in order to get the treat.

All of this is leads me to my observations of my cousins and brother, with their kids, which say to me that it's pretty much the same with kids -- with the added wrinkle that kids can actually communicate in English. I've seen my cousin's husband simply give his kids a look, and they quiet down, change direction, shut up, or whatever. I've seen my brother giving nonverbal cues that prompt my little nephew to immediately anticipate that something's going to happen, even if he's not exactly sure what it is. And I'm sure that the added language element factors in, in ways far too complex to map with my limited interactions.

Of course, from the Tricia debacle and my own experience with dogs, I know all too well how easy it is to "teach" bad behaviors by not being cognizant of the constant observation. I know what's required to have perfectly behaved dogs, and frankly it's more than I'm willing to invest, so I settle for dogs that mind when it's important for them to mind and who understand how to peacefully coexist in my house (e.g. stay off the furniture, don't poop on the rug, food that's on the floor is fair game but anywhere else is cause to get your snout slapped, etc.).

The interesting thing will be trying to do this with kids. A friend recently told me that as you are with your dogs, you will be with your kids. So I don't expect to be trying to wring perfect behavior out of them; I just want them to coexist peacefully, mind when it's important to do so, and learn a few things (tricks?) along the way, like not pooping on the rug.

Fitness

One of my goals as a potential father is to instill a desire for physical fitness in the kids. It was never really discussed around our house; my brother and I participated in a few sports in Jr. High, but neither of us were very good at it. The term "athlete" was not in the top 10 words one would think of to describe us. But we were teenage boys, fairly active anyway, and not getting fat on our own, so the subject of fitness was sort of taken for granted.

That's why it came as a surprise to me at the time (but shouldn't have) when I woke up one day at 25 years of age and 50+ pounds overweight. I didn't really do anything about it for another 10 years, and now I deeply regret all that time I wasted as a fat guy, especially during my 20's. So among other things, I'd like to give our kids some pro-fitness ideals; not in the idea that they're going to be participating in varsity-level sports (though it's fine if they do), but with the idea that physical fitness is a thing worth pursuing for its own sake.

I work out regularly (5-6 times a week) doing the P90X and similar workouts, but I've never been much of a runner. I do like getting on the bicycle though, something for which I haven't had any time since moving into our current house 2 years ago. So this past weekend, with the wife-unit off shopping, I decided to dig out the ol' WalMart special and put 10 or 20 miles on it (wound up being 20 -- /flex).

After pumping up the tires and packing all my essentials into a little handlebar bag, I took off in a random direction with no real plan except "go that way until I get tired of it, then turn". It was 95 degrees out, but I'm used to that kind of weather, so that wasn't a big deal. All my time in the gym ensured that the effort didn't really bother me either.

What did bother me though, was my rear end. I didn't realize it was possible to get saddle sores from a bicycle. By the end of the ride I felt like I'd been whacked in the crotch with a 4x4, repeatedly, for the last 2 hours.

Does not make a good seat

I always kind of smirked at my dad's insistence on a big cushy bicycle seat, figuring I was tough enough to handle the bar of hard plastic that comes with the average WalMart special, but I'll be darned if I didn't wave the white flag right then and there. I ran off to the local sporting goods store and found a nice cushy seat and mounted it on the bike straightaway. Apparently my butt has aged less gracefully than the rest of me (in just the last 2 years!), because that new seat is the bee's knees. And after the wife-unit tried it out, she bought one for herself.

As a result of my little adventure though, she's gotten a renewed interest in going for bike rides as a way to spend time together, and I think it will carry forward into the kid-future. I'm still working on just how much I want to play "father as gym coach" and force the little rugrats (well, at least the teens) to get off the couch and do some P90X with the old man. That aside, I can definitely see bicycling -- especially with the distances and difficulty we have in our local area -- as being a good start to communicating the fitness ideal.

Holy crap, it's been a month already?

Where does the time go...

I took a vacation, we're waiting (again) on DHS to give us some information, and nothing much is happening.

While on vacation, I did get the chance to observe some parenting "in the wild" as it were, take some mental notes, and discuss my ideas with various folks who have done the deed. I'm fascinated by the process of parenting, and honestly can't wait to take our required classes to see how they mesh with what I'm thinking.

Back to the phones and voicemail tag...

Hmm...

Somehow I don't think DHS would endorse this particular method of child-rearing...



...even though it looks like the kid is having a ball.

Somethin' for Dinner

One day back when I was about 10 or 11 years old, my Uncle Jack was babysitting, and he pulled out the blender to make himself a protein shake. We asked what he was making, but he didn't have a name for it (and he always liked messing with our heads), so he said "Somethin'".

After whipping himself up a batch of Somethin', he made some for us. To help the taste, he put Hershey's Chocolate Syrup in it, and called it Chocolate Somethin'. To this day, every time I make a dish with no real goal or list of ingredients, I call it Somethin', and remember Uncle Jack's protein shake. I hear his voice in my head every time I do it.

The wife-unit and I have been rather unmotivated lately in the grocery shopping department, so we've been getting really light on the vittles in stock. Last night, after looking in the fridge, the freezer, and the pantry for about the fourth time, I just started pulling stuff out at random.

I figured I might as well get used to doing some improvisational cooking, because apparently kids expect to be fed on a daily basis. Who knew?

One serving's worth of Hot & Sour Soup mix... check

A cup or so of whole wheat noodles... check

Pound of hamburger... check

Unopened jar of Ragu spaghetti sauce... check

I had the pans out and on the stove when the wife-unit piped up: "What are you making?"

"Somethin'"

I imagined a group of kids working on their homework at the dining room table, or arguing, or talking on the phone, and saying "dad, what's for dinner?"

And in my head, Uncle Jack said, "Somethin'"

Then there was my brother's version... "A great big plate of Eat What Yo Papa Fix!"

The noodles and soup mix went into one pan, the burger into another, and 15 minutes later it was all drained and tossed together. I don't know if it was a good dish, but it didn't taste horrible, and with a little salt was fine by me.

Which of course means my wife won't touch it and our kids might need some chocolate syrup to help it go down. But for me and the dogs, it's better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick.

Except the dogs aren't getting any.

Prints

We went for the fingerprinting today. They used the electronic version this time... last time I was fingerprinted it was with old-fashioned ink and got screwed up along the way so it had to be redone. This time the computer complained if it wasn't clear enough, prompting the officer to clear the print and start over.

$40 and 20 minutes later, we're ready to be booked into prison or become adoptive parents. Take your pick.

Just Arrived

4 fingerprint cards (2 for each of us). Please to fill out and return.

In the pipe, five by five

The pre-homestudy walkthrough went fine. We gave her a quick tour of the house, went through yet another questionnaire that repeated a lot of questions from the initial application we sent in a month or so ago, and had a short discussion about the process going forward.

We covered one question I was dreading…

"Are there any weapons in the house?"

"Why, what do you need?"

OK, I didn't say that, but I wanted to. She sounded reasonably certain that our various precautions were sufficient in that regard.

Shopping list:

Fire extinguishers
Smoke detectors
Child-resistant cabinet door latches
About a billion (give or take) of those little plastic dealies that you put in electrical outlets

The last one gave me pause. We're probably looking at first grade and up as far as age goes, and I kept trying to remember how old my brother was when he stuck mom's keys into the electrical outlet in our bedroom. Whatever, we'll buy the stupid things and just not use them if the kids we get are old enough.

Oh yeah, and the dogs are all going for booster shots. That'll be fun.

At this point we've got about a week or two while the latest questionnaire goes through channels, after which we'll be contacted by a contractor to do the actual home study, and we'll be given contact info about how to set up our parenting classes.

The whole thing still makes me grit my teeth, but I'm maintaining my calm.

Today's the Day

Our pre-homestudy walkthrough happens today. It'll be our first real contact with our caseworker. We spent a few minutes this morning fussing over the making of the bed, fretting over whether this or that was clean enough, wondering what to do with the dogs, fretting over things out of place or looking cluttered, and so forth.

We're a little wound up.

And of course the laughable nature of the situation came back into conversation with my coworkers this morning. If you've got fully functioning reproductive organs, you can pop out as many kids as you desire, and as long as nothing gains the attention of the authorities, you never have to say or do anything. But if you're going to adopt or foster someone else's kids, you have to invite the government into your home, seek its approval, get background checked and fingerprinted, take classes on parenting, and jump through any number of other hoops I haven't discovered yet, all for the crime of being infertile.

I can already hear the protests: "but it's for the children!" If that were so, all of this would be required before you could have kids naturally. Line forms to the left.

Grandma's Revenge

The story of kid karma is pretty well-known. You drive your parents nuts being X kind of child, and you get X kind of child when you become a parent. As one comedian put it, the goal of parenthood is to live long enough to see your grandchildren get revenge on your kids.

My brother's firstborn is stubborn as a mule, much like his dad. Our dad loves to tell the anecdote of how my brother, at around 6 or 7 years old, refused to eat his dinner and sat at the table and made himself sick rather than eat a couple of bites of something he'd probably eaten before and has probably eaten since. This is the kid who later declared he wanted to slurp a raw egg, and mom went along with it just to see if he'd actually do it, so it's not about food grossing him out. He just wasn't going to eat his dinner, and nobody was darn well going to tell him otherwise.

The nephew is now exacting Grandma's Revenge on him, and thus all is well with the universe as I understand it.

I recently started thinking of what I was like as a kid. Of course, I only have my perspective to go on, but I remember being pretty closed off, content to lose myself in a book rather than engage with anyone (including or perhaps especially family). I also preferred to learn things "the hard way". I remember distinctly being told about this or that, and why you do something this way and not the other way. I also remember thinking in each of those circumstances, "maybe someone just hasn't really given the other way a fair shot". And then I'd go off and do it "the hard way", just to find out if what I'd been told was correct.

Most of the time, it was. But I was rewarded in my endeavors often enough that I kept up the pattern of behavior well into adulthood.

I don't know if my parents ever realized that I was doing things this way consciously and deliberately, but that's the way I learn. I have a visceral need to experience the failure of "the wrong way" first-hand. For me, learning is an iterative process, and that's probably why I love what I do for a living. Granted, my wife's patience doesn't allow for as much iteration as I'd prefer, especially when it comes to doing stuff around the house.

("Why can't we just leave it like that for a while? I'll eventually get tired of looking at the crooked board and figure out how to fix it.")

But I still learn best when I have time to discover and contemplate my mistakes rather than having someone point them out to me, or worse, try to anticipate my mistakes beforehand.

We're adopting, so maybe none of this applies at all, but I can't help thinking that more than likely I'll wind up with a kid who needs to learn experientially, who doesn't process criticism (even the constructive kind) gracefully, and who would rather be left alone with a book or computer than dragged to a family function, even something as entertaining as the Christmas get-together. I could also end up with a kid who's a little too smart and a little too anti-social for his own good. I think I'm up to the challenge, but only time will tell.

I know my parents are waiting to be entertained.

Yeah, that

Blogs like this one are the reason I want to be a parent. It's entertaining to read the blogs about stress and the funny stuff kids do, but my absolute favorites are the ones where parents just talk about the kind of people their kids are.

I've always wanted to hear what people (not just my parents) say about me rather than to me. Even when someone's giving you a compliment, there's a bit of skew in the message because they're talking to you rather than to someone else. So when other parents talk about their kids in ways that their kids aren't really reading, I just find it fascinating.

Phone Call!

Got a call from Tonya today. We've got an appointment for a pre-homestudy walkthrough. I think, based on past conversations, that this means our background check didn't turn up any problems (not that I figured it would).

Worries and Wonderings

One of my favorite people in the whole world is a Methodist minister named Richard. He's an expert in "family systems", which I take to mean the relational dynamics that occur within a family and also how it affects the individuals' relationships outside the family. He has a great ability to empathize and see things from another's point of view, and he is always a calming influence on me when I am troubled or agitated about something.

Richard once had a conversation with me about children. It was in the context of dealing with troubled children, but he phrased his main thought in such a way as to include all children. He said, "I almost believe that if each child has someone in their lives who values them just for being, whose relationship with the child communicates clearly 'you are valuable just because you are here', without putting expectations or judgments into the mix... that would almost be enough."

I don't know if it's appropriate for one attempting to parent to be that person or not. It seems that parenting necessarily involves some expectations and judgments, so it may be that only a grandparent or aunt or uncle can really be that person. But to the extent that I am able, this is what I want to communicate to our kids. "You are valuable just because you are here." It seems especially important to me when I consider the message that may have been communicated to them through the foster care system: "you are a burden and a lot of trouble to have around... so much so that we actually have to pay people to care for you."

I worry constantly about being able to forge a connection with our kids. My nephew knows instinctively who his parents are. He's never had to think about it, and he feels an attachment to them at a profound level. I have almost no hope of being able to reach that level with our kids, and I despair at being able to even approach it. I'm an introvert to begin with, and sometimes interaction with my wife is about all I can handle. How do I convince two or more strangers, who have likely been hurt by other adults, that I do actually care for them and want to have that same connection that my brother and his son obviously share?

Wow, suddenly my mind just shot over to the standard Christian narrative about God trying to convince us all that He loves us. I'm going to have to ruminate on that a bit.

Back to the Wait

The 'rents are headed back to Ohio, bearing the news for the rest of the extended family (at least, the ones who aren't on Facebook). They really enjoyed the video that DHS sent us, and said it changed their attitude toward adopting teenagers, as it did my own.

The teenager question is a weird one. I go from thinking it'd probably be OK to thinking it'd be a disaster. Suddenly having a 16- or 17-year-old hanging around is an extremely intimidating image. At that point it feels like the best you can offer is a sort of "finishing school" to prepare them for The Real World (by which I mean, not the show on MTV). It would necessarily be a cooperative effort, and if they don't feel like cooperating I don't know how much could be done about it.

I spent the waffling weekending weekend waffling between complete confidence and near panic about the whole thing. There's so much to talk about that I felt like I couldn't figure out where to begin, so I just kept blurting out random thoughts like a Tourette's patient. We had some good conversations, and I'm sure there'll be more in the months ahead.

Oh yeah, I left another message with Tonya, and attempted to call Gisele...

*drums fingers on table*

*twiddles thumbs*

*whistles tunelessly*

...guess that's about it.

The Cat's Out of the Bag

My parents are visiting, and have been told our plans. Naturally, they think we've gone and lost our minds. Wait, that's my friends. My parents are thrilled.

So now everybody's in on the secret... and feeling the pain of waiting. Dad-unit has already complained that he has to wait another 6 months (or whatever), and half-seriously suggested we might have just waited until we had a permanent placement. Of course, that wouldn't do because I'm chafing under the wait too, and everybody knows that the best way to endure misery is to spread it around.

At least, that's the theory one of my friends has been operating on for the past decade or more.

It's been a month since we've had any contact at all with the DHS folks. I probably ought to put in a call in the vain hope that it might be returned. The waiting would be a lot easier if there were only a little bit of communication.

The James Lipton Interview

I don't watch Inside the Actors Studio much, and I'm not really a fan, but on the occasions I have caught it, I've always been intrigued by his version of the Proust interview. I wish I was famous enough to have him run me through it, but I'm not, so I'll just inflict it on everyone here.

What is your favorite word?

There are a bunch of them, and I'm a fan of the more esoteric ones. I like words that are used in novels but rarely seem to appear in conversation. Words like "rout", "laud", and "spoor". But every time I hear this question I remember Mr. Marquis, a teacher I had in high school, who said his favorite word was "squeegee". I think about it so often that I'd have to say it's my favorite word too.

What is your least favorite word?

Baby... I can't explain it. I've always preferred words like "infant" or "toddler" or "child". Baby just rubs me the wrong way for some reason. It seems too cutesy. I've disliked it since I was a kid.

What turns you on?

When people rise above their own expectations

What turns you off?

Thoughtless criticism

What sound or noise do you love?

Laughter, especially a woman's laughter, provided it isn't of the mean-spirited or derisive variety.

What sound or noise do you hate?

Suffering

What is your favorite curse word?

F***. It's a bad habit, and I'm sure I'll pay for it when I get some kidlets hanging around, but sometimes it just seems like no other word will do.

What profession other than your own would you like to attempt?

Personal trainer. I'd love to get paid to work out.

What profession would you not like to do?

Anything mind-numbing or that requires very little thought. I once worked on a small parts assembly line for all of about an hour. It nearly drove me insane.

If Heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the Pearly Gates?

Everybody else is here too.

Calling All Nerdlets

The wife sent me this article:

How "Dungeons & Dragons" changed my life

It outlines a lot of positive things that have come from the pencil-and-paper roleplaying genre of games. It passes up some of the family interaction upsides, which I was not fortunate enough to have as a kid, but I know people who did. One of my best friends gamed with his entire family, with his father usually running the game, and I find fascinating the potential for family bonding, shared creativity, and learning about one another.

I previously wrote that I'm torturing the wife with talk of running a game with the kids, but my interest is not solely fueled by my nerd-dom. I think it could be a wonderful way to allow kids to express themselves and provide launching points for conversation, not to mention being far more interactive and engaging than simply drooling in front of the TV together.

Let the good times (and pornbots) roll

One reader, whose feedback I enjoy, wondered generally on her own blog why some of us lock down our comment section with Captcha and moderation. Frankly for me, it's because my other blog receives a lot of comment spam from pornbots and viagrabots and dontspeakenglishbots. I figured that since Blogger is run by Google, and I don't view Google as a very security-minded company, the spamination would be orders of magnitude worse over here, and I've only got so much time in the day.

But in deference to those with more experience on Blogger, and because like any blogger I love getting feedback, I'll go ahead and ease up on the reins a bit and see where it gets me. Just don't blame me if the comments someday show acts that make you wonder "how is that even possible?!?!" I'll try to stay ahead of them, of course, but this is the internet. It's a petri dish for malcontents and misanthropes.

Things you can't do with (most) kids

One of our favorite vacation/long weekend activities is renting cabins, and this being the wife-unit's birthday, it's how she wanted to spend it. We have a rule that the birthday person gets to be king/queen for the day, so we're down at Beaver's Bend State Park in southeastern Oklahoma.

Since we started getting back in shape a couple of years ago, we've also started truly enjoying hikes and more adventurous activities. We used to "enjoy" "hikes", if by "hike" we meant a largely leisurely stroll through the woods on basically level ground, and by "enjoy" we meant "didn't break a sweat".

Things are much different now. We've been doing P90X and similar workouts for a couple of years, and my new approach to hiking is as follows:

1: go to park office/visitor center
2: find hiking brochure
3: locate longest or most difficult trail, and declare that this is the one we're taking
4: pack some snacks and water and get to it

This is how we wound up on Skyline Trail, which was both the longest AND the most difficult (a two for one deal!). It's an interesting trail because all of the brochures say it's 5 miles long, but the park people said it's actually either 6, 7, or 9 miles long (they couldn't make up their minds). There is cell phone service in the park, so they told us to call if we got into trouble. I wondered why everyone was so anxious to scare us off before we started.

The problem as I see it is this: most places that say "expert trail" or "experienced hikers" generally mean only that the trail is not wheelchair accessible. Or that you might have to climb a grade once or twice. The roughest trail in the Wichita Mountains at the other end of the state fits this description: it's only hard if you go on a 100-degree day and don't bring any water. So when they started waving the voodoo sticks and giving us last rites, I'm all "pfft. Yeah, whatever."

It turns out that Skyline Trail is no joke. There are climbs that would require handholds if they were any steeper, and not just for 20 or 50 feet. Worse for me are the downhills of the same grade -- something about my right knee and ankle has hated a downhill slope since I was in my 20's.

I keep a mental list of my friends and acquaintances who are "outdoorsy", either in actuality or in their own minds. I like to pretend I know when they would drop off the excursion, and the crowd gets smaller and smaller. By the time we reached the 1/3 point marked by crossing a private road, I was down to my boss and his (adult) son. A couple of friends needed to be airlifted out. One fell to the ground and screamed "leave me! Save yourselves!"

The second third of the trip started really testing us. I remember at one point we were climbing a hill, and when we reached the top we found that someone had stacked another, longer, steeper hill on top of it. Just like life.

We were closing in on the 2/3 point when we came across some other hikers headed the opposite direction. We'd been on the trail for 2.5 hours at this point, and they said there was about an hour and a half behind them. By this time we'd gone through enough downhills that my right leg was starting to complain, although it was nothing compared to the imaginary children in my head.

("Daddy, I'm tired. Are we going to be done soon? How much longer is this?")

I've already got it in my head that the kids and I are going camping at some point, and that it's going to be real "roughing it" camping, not this nonsense at a park campsite where the electricity and modern conveniences are 50 yards away. But I had to admit to myself that Skyline Trail probably has a minimum age limit -- probably 16 years old unless the kid shows signs of some serious toughness earlier on.

The final third of the trail was an exercise in pain management. I got to the point where my right knee refused to bend on the downhills, my right ankle was producing this sickening grinding sensation, and I had to crab-step down like a 2-year-old learning to negotiate stairs. I probably would have done much better had I been wearing actual hiking boots instead of sneakers, but I was more enthusiastic than prepared. I remember at one point I said to myself "I can make it down this slope if this is the last one I have to do." Unfortunately I said that with 6 slopes left to go. Once again, kind of like life.

In the end though, through determination and as they say on TV, "a triumph of the human spirit", not to mention the desire to not wind up on the nightly news (or an episode of "I shouldn't be alive"), we finished the trail and limped back to the car. We immediately went for something to eat, then raced back to the cabin to soak our beaten bodies in the hot tub. My knee is still a little sore as I write this, but I'll survive, and we've got a great memory of the day we conquered Skyline Trail.

Today we're off to Texarkana to see what they've got to offer in the way of entertainment that doesn't require grinding bone against bone. It's her birthday, after all. I probably shouldn't death march her on her birthday. It might be seen as rude.

Perspectives

My wife linked me this post, which we both agree was amusing. I particularly enjoyed this bit:

He thinks he's being cute and funny when he says it, hoping to distract me with his charm. THIS IS WHY I NEED A WHISTLE.

This spawned a pretty typical conversation between us:

Tom: My charm has never worked on you.

Lisa: Yes it has, I married you didn't I?

Tom: I figured it was out of pity.

Lisa: Nope. (Aw, she does love me!)

Tom: I'm sure the stairs post makes you think about my laundry. I'm getting it hung up and put away every other week, so that's progress.

Lisa: Yes, but wouldn't it be nicer if it was every week?

Tom: I'm not sure what you're getting at.

Lisa: Isn't it nice to get your clothes out of the closet instead of looking through all your laundry in the basket?

Tom: Seriously, you're not making any sense at all.

Lisa: See how you are? Butthead.

Wow

This post really moved me. It answers a bunch of questions I've had about what to do when adopted teenagers are having trouble adapting.

Kid Shoppin'

We like to look through AdoptUSKids.org at different sibling group profiles to see who draws our interest. There are some that we get a little attached to (the idea of), but then disappear. We know that the process will take several more months, and who knows who will be available at that time, but I think it's important to look and practice a sort of "empathy for strangers"... I need to know that I can feel attachment for kids that originated in another family, mostly because I'm usually not very good at the whole empathy thing. My brother once told me he thought I had borderline Asperger's because I'm so inwardly focused most of the time.

Anyway, there's a new crop of kids up, and we're flipping through them. Some are interesting for various reasons:

Nicholas, Jacob, and Kayla would be kind of funny because my cousin's kids are Kayla, Dustin, and Nicholas.

Ashley, Billy, and Aaron all state a preference for a family in the country, as well as horses. We live next to a horse farm.

Ethan and Athena have interesting variations of one another's names. I've always been interested in unusual names, and Athena certainly fits that description. Athena is also strikingly beautiful, even at 11, which already gives me nightmares about when she reaches dating age.

("Come with me, son... let me show you my gun collection. Have I mentioned how precious my daughter is to me?")

I'm also interested because for some reason I find boys who want to be Marines or other soldiers intriguing. I'm not really excited about the prospect of sending a kid off to the military, but if that's what they really want to do I certainly would support them. And my dad and uncle were both servicemen (Marines and Air Force, respectively), so it feels like there's some synergy there.

Brittany and Mark are intriguing because, well, just look at them. These two know how to have fun.

Harley, Sierra, and Phillip are apparently being placed seperately for some reason. My first instinct is to want to ask if there's some problem with taking all three. Also, a girl named Harley and another named Sierra? That just tickles my brain in the place that likes unusual names.

Argh... now I need to go do something else for awhile. Getting all misty-eyed over kids is never good for my state of mind in front of the compiler.

Lion King - Circle of Life

It's amazing to me how much more moving this scene is in my present circumstances than it was when I first saw it in the theater.

The standard questions

As soon as we determined we were actually going through with this, we started discussing it with our accomplices, co-conspirators, and known associates.  Inevitably upon hearing the news, folks ask variations of one of two questions:

1: "Oh, are you adopting a boy or a girl?"

At this point we have to explain that we're wanting to adopt a sibling group, which usually results in travels down the various rabbit holes of infants vs older kids, teenagers, holy cow you want a houseful? and so forth.

One friend was told from the outset that we were planning to adopt a sibling group.  I recently started showing him profiles we'd found on AdoptUsKids.org, and he responded with "wow, that's a lot of kids.  Aren't going to start with one?"

Apparently he didn't know what was meant by "sibling group".

I suppose this only serves to underscore how much more "real" this whole thing is to us than to others.  A lot of my friends respond as though I'm talking about a video game or the latest episode of Castle.  It's just not something they can wrap their minds around yet.

2: "What country are you adopting from?  China?  Guatemala?  Haiti?"

This one is both bizarre and painful for me to hear.  It's bizarre because I seem to know a whole bunch of people who carry around the assumption that adoptable kids only exist in other countries.  I've never understood that, just like I've never understood the idea that the only mission fields are in other countries.

A friend of mine who is a pastor once expressed bewilderment at a parishioner who came to him wanting to be sent to work tsunami relief back in 2004.  He asked her what she knew about disaster relief, and she said nothing.  He asked her if she knew any of the languages of the affected areas, and she said no.  He pointed out to her that she could walk outside and within one mile of the church's door she could find enough people who needed help and who spoke a language she understood that she would never be without work to do.  As far as he knew, that was the end of the subject for her -- if she wasn't going to Malaysia or wherever, there just wasn't any service she could perform.

We've got hurting people and parentless kids right here in the USA.  I don't begrudge anyone with a calling to go to other places, perform missionary work, or adopt children.  In all honesty I used to have an attitude about it, but I've grown up since then.  I see this country as my mission field, and its children as my pool of possible adoptees.  I just don't understand why the overwhelming majority of folks that I know in churches and other circles seem to assume that America has no need for this kind of service.

One of the moms in my blog list is currently working on adopting a kid from China.  That's great!  It's awesome, in fact, and I applaud her for it.  I think folks should go where they're called, and there certainly is enough work (and children) to go around.  I just don't think it should be novel or weird or that I should even have to explain that I'm planning to adopt right here in America.  I think it's weird that folks don't seem to know we have kids in need here.

I've heard that some other countries are already sending missionaries to America, and it makes me wonder if we'll ever reach a point when foreign parents are regularly adopting American children.

Differently gruntled

Is that how you say it nowadays?  I can't keep up.

Going on two weeks now, no word from Tonya.  I can only assume they've received the application and are merrily shepherding it through the bureaucracy.

Or it's lining the bottom of someone's bird cage.

Those are the choices.  Nothing in between.

November 23, 2004

I was up late, reading a random mom blog (see list, bottom right), when it struck me:  My World of WarCraft account is older than your kids.  For some reason that amuses me.

I took the day off work when it launched (see date above) to buy it and start playing.  I got in about an hour or so of play time before the servers crashed and stayed down for pretty much the rest of the day.  It was worth every glorious minute.

Yes, I am a huge nerd (see photo).  I am already torturing my wife with talk of getting the kids to play Dungeons & Dragons with me.  I think she's planning to soundproof the living room so she doesn't have to listen to it.

I realize that there's a pretty solid probability that the kids won't dig D&D.  To my horror, they might actually be one of those other types... the kind of folks that I try to avoid.

You know...

Sports fans.

I'll hang myself from that bridge when I come to it.  But in the meantime, I'll sit and daydream about little Steve or John or Billy or Katie or Jen or Alicia or whatever their names are...

...sitting around a table laden with miniatures and maps and polyhedral dice...

("Dad!  Tell him to leave my dice alone!  He's gonna suck the luck right out of them.")

("Stop touching your sister's dice.  And would it kill you to print out a new character sheet from time to time?")

...being huge nerds with their dad.  Co-nerds.  Slaying dragons and fighting wizards and torturing mom with talk of experience points and trips to the game store.

Or if they're not into role-playing games, maybe I'll be able to build a rapport over comic books.  As long as they follow the house rules and only read Marvel, of course.  DC Comics will be cause for time-out.

("What is this?  Green Lantern?  Go to your room!")

("Aw, man!  Tired of reading about mutants...")

At the very least I should be able to rope them into Words with Friends.

Bill Cosby---Grandparents

Anybody else having this sort of revelation?

Bibliophile

Almost everything I know how to do, which is worth knowing how to do, started with or involved a book at some point.  I dropped out of the computer science program at Bowling Green State University in part because I concluded they were in no hurry to teach me anything, and instead learned to be a programmer courtesy of Waldenbooks, the now-largely defunct chain of shopping mall book stores.  I have read, processed, and even thrown away more books on computer programming than many of my friends have read on any subject.

When I became a homeowner, I turned to books.  I read about shopping for houses, inspecting houses, and (ultimately) maintaining and repairing houses.  I have books on automobile repair, relationships, God and religion, political philosophy, and my not-so-secret hobby, economics.  At the end of the day, when all I want is to relax and enjoy something that's not too strenuous on the ol' noggin, I turn to an equally extensive collection of fictional work.

So it is that as I prepare to become a father, I naturally turn to books on parenting and fatherhood.  At first glance, the field of offerings is so vast as to be thoroughly bewildering.  There are countless highly-regarded works available, and I'm sure some of them contain conflicting advice on child-rearing.  I momentarily despaired at finding a good one to start with, but then realized I'd probably read several different ones anyway.  I picked one that had a title that appealed to me, with reviews generally positive, and dove in for a look around.

My current book is Raising Self-Reliant Children in a Self-Indulgent World, by Jane Nelsen and H. Stephen Glenn.  It appeals to my worldview in that its emphasis is on raising kids to be problem solvers and solution finders rather than simply consumers of other peoples' solutions.   It doesn't deal directly with issues I see myself having as a parent due to past experience, but the ideas it offers are already incompatible with yelling and losing my temper, so it certainly can't hurt.  I am particularly interested in the idea of creating an environment for learning with just enough "danger" in it to provide naturally-occurring negative consequences rather than the sort that come from angry or disappointed parents.

Anyway, I'm about halfway through the book, and after I absorb it (and probably read it a second time), I'll be casting about for the next one.  My usual pattern is 2 - 3 books before I reach a saturation point on theory and have to take some time to either practice what I've learned or just let it settle.  So if you're a parent and have some recommendations for my reading list, feel free to leave them in the comments.  I'm particularly interested in self-reliance and independence for kids, and self-control and patience for parents.  All suggestions are welcome, even if they're as self-deprecating as Parenting for Dummies.

Buddywuggus

This is my oldest dog, Zeus, doing what he does best: snoozing in uncomfortable-looking positions.

Changes Afoot

The Oklahoma legislature is doing some things to unsnarl the mess regarding the adoption process and adoptees' rights. One item they've been working on regards the grey market in adoptive children, which scared my wife and I off of the adoption trail 6 or 7 years ago:

The measure was the result of a state grand jury five years ago that found some adoptive parents had been forced to pay for vehicles, car parts, traffic tickets, television sets and other items that were masked as adoption costs.

The haphazard regulation of adoption expenses created an atmosphere in which some women and their attorneys effectively sold children, the report states.

I never wanted to deal with the State itself, and we were interested in infants at the time, so this was a big issue for us. If it's illegal to sell children, then why does it cost $20,000 to adopt?

Well, it turns out that it doesn't cost that much to go through OK DHS, but DHS, as I've seen so far, is a bit on the slow side when it comes to things like returning phone calls or emails. The State's slow response times and snail-like pace has created a massive opportunity for less-than-savory characters (read: lawyers) to cash in on navigating the process for people desperate to adopt (infants).

While the process is pretty adversarial no matter your stated goals, it appears as though adopting older sibling groups is probably one of the "easiest" ways to go. I just wish the legislators were also looking at the day-to-day operations of DHS and searching for ways to improve their customer service.

Off to the Races

We finally got the application packet finished and dropped in the mail. I've been trying to get Tonya on the phone... again... for something close to a week now. That woman is going to be the death of me. I desperately want to know what the next step is.

I feel like I'm standing at the counter in McDonald's, waiting for someone to take my order, while the only employees in sight engage in a long-winded personal conversation over by the deep fryers.

Conversation in the Office

Me: "OK, maybe six is a tad excessive. But four... four is the sweet spot."

Boss, walking in: "Four? Kids? Are you nuts?"

Me: "No, I'm talking about how many monitors one needs on their computer. For kids, the sweet spot is three."

Boss: "WRONG. Never have more kids than adults. You're outnumbered, like General Custer. The only way that changes is if one of the kids is an adult."

Me: "So what's an adult, for these purposes?"

Boss: "Eighteen years old."

Me: "Oh, so since your son just started college, you're getting ready to start on another one."

Boss: "No way in hell. My daughter starts driving next week, and after that, I don't have to be responsible for taking anybody anywhere. You think I'm going to screw that up?"

Me: *laughing*

Boss, to coworker I was originally talking to: "Tell him. Most of our lives as Dads is spent driving someone somewhere to do something. Nothing but driving kids here and there and everywhere."

Me: "Sounds awesome."

Boss, drily: "Yeah. Awesome."

Epic Fail

One thing continues to weigh heavily on our minds as we move forward with the process. It concerns our one previous attempt at parenting, which ended in disaster.

We had been married about 3 years, and were about 25 or 26 years old at the time. A younger relative was having problems with her single father, and we decided to try to intervene. We offered to take her in and see if we could better handle things, but in our hubris we made some critical errors in judgment.

The first was that we were 25 or 26 years old and jumping into a parenting relationship with a 13 year old girl. The second was that we were naively unaware of all the ways in which a 13 year old girl from the backwaters of Ohio could get herself into trouble in a suburb of Detroit. More experienced parents might have noticed that she was essentially starved for affection/attention, and known that she would immediately seek such things from friends and boys, or at least known that it was a really good possibility.

What followed was an 8-month stretch of virtually continuous contact with school authorities, police officers, random property owners, and other parents. Perhaps most disconcerting of all was the indifference displayed by that last group. We'd try to engage her friends' parents on what they were doing, and those parents would just give us a "kids will be kids" answer and laugh it off.

At the end of the period, we'd made arrangements to move to another suburb where we could get into a house instead of an apartment. We figured it would be good for her to have a change of scenery, but we were rapidly approaching our wits' end. We took a load of stuff to the new house, about 45 minutes away, and when we returned we found that she and her friends had kicked in the door to the apartment ("I forgot my key") and proceeded to put all sorts of holes in the drywall. My $1000 security deposit was as good as gone, and I realized that if 8 months with us hadn't taught her even the minimum amount of respect for the property of others, nothing we could do was likely to communicate that lesson.

It was a rough decision, and a rough trip back to Ohio, but we wound up handing her off to another relative who thought (also wrongly) that she could do better. Eventually the girl wound up in foster care with a family who apparently specialized in taming wild animals. For the time that she spent there, we mostly heard good reports of how well she was doing, with only the occasional report of more craziness (like jumping out of a 2nd-story window in an attempt to run away). But it seemed like every time she got out among "normal" folks like family members, she immediately felt a need to dial it up to Eleven.

I became convinced for some time after that there was no creature on earth quite as evil and malicious as a 13 year old girl. I still have moments of panic when I consider that we might have the same situation all over again, because there are no guarantees. I get a little impatient when folks give me the "you never know what you're getting when you adopt" speech, as though I'm all starry-eyed about the prospects. Believe me, I know how badly it can go. I desperately hope that it doesn't (again). But I'm doing it anyway.

She's 27 or something like that now. She's got a boy of her own, who appears to be a hyperactive terror. I don't know if it's just in the genes or what. We're still in contact with her (going to visit this summer, in fact), and she has expressed regret that she didn't realize sooner just how much we were all trying to help her, in our own flawed ways. When we told her of the adoption plan, she had the most honest reaction I've ever heard: "didn't you learn your lesson with me?"

I'm a different person than I was 14 years ago. I have far less of a temper. I'm more at peace with myself. I've experienced a re-conversion to Christianity. I'm a fair bit more philosophical and self-controlled in a whole lot of ways.

I consider myself to have failed her in three important respects. The first is that I did not fully understand or appreciate who she was before I offered to take her in. I have a habit of expecting people to be their best, even when they are not. I find that expecting good things from someone improves my interactions with them over expecting bad things. It leaves me open to more injury, but I've never seen value in treating someone as a criminal -- you can live in your past, or you can live in spite of it, and I for one am here to help you do the latter. But it would have been nice if I had taken the time to really understand what I was dealing with so that I didn't expect too much too soon.

The second way that I failed her had to do with my parenting "technique", which largely involved a lot of yelling. I wanted her to be a good kid, and I had good times with her when she was, but when she screwed up, my only "skill" was yelling about it in an attempt to scare it out of her. I realize now that I was an idiot, and I'm actually looking forward to the parenting classes the State requires me to take. I'm depending on them to teach me some actual parenting skills.

The third way that I failed her was in finally giving up on her. This is honestly the only one that I'm ashamed of. The first two can be chalked up to judgment, in the mode of the old saying that good judgment comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgment. I can't help that I didn't have experience then, and it's unrealistic for me to expect my past self to have had some. I've got some now, and I'm better for it.

But I'm still ashamed of the fact that I gave up on her. I'm sure I sent her a message that said she wasn't worth my time, and I can't imagine what that must have done. I also realize that it's entirely possible the foster family was the only place where she had any chance to "succeed", but it doesn't change the fact that I quit before I'd really exhausted every avenue. I've resolved to do no such thing this time around.

Plans out the window

We've been keeping the whole adoption thing a secret from my parents. This is for two reasons: the first is that my mom went completely grandma-crazy over my brother's kids, and I'm not sure I'm ready to deal with that yet. The second is that it's long been a tradition in my family to save good news and such for surprises at special occasions. The bigger the news, the more it needs to be delivered as a surprise. Don't ask me why, because I don't know. It's just the culture of our family to do things that way.

Anyway, their birthdays are both in May, and for the occasion my brother and I have rented a cabin in Tennessee for a week, and we're all going to hang out together for that time. I was planning to deliver the adoption news then, hopefully with a copy of whatever license or paperwork we get from the State that says we're certified to start picking out kids.

My parents were planning to come down and visit us later on this year, probably some time in the fall. I was planning to tell them at the cabin to keep those plans loose so that they could be coordinated with our permanent placement, and then they could come down and meet their new grandkids.

It was all planned out, and now I'm learning that schedules have changed, and they think they can make it down next month for a short visit. The problem is that I know I won't be able to keep the secret from them while in close physical proximity. Heck, I almost spilled the beans on the phone the other day. When all of your thoughts and conversations of late have revolved around a particular subject, it's hard not to blab about it to anyone you talk to.

So I guess they're getting their birthday gift a little earlier than planned. I suppose changing plans is something I'll have to get used to when kids come along anyway, so I need to see this as practice.

Schrodinger's Kids

It's weird to me that we keep talking about "the kids" as though they are already here, when in fact to us they are mere hypotheticals, without a concrete number, names of their own, or even physical descriptions. It's weirder that somewhere out there in America, "our" kids do in fact already exist and possess all of these attributes and more. They're simply waiting for us to choose to be and be chosen as their parents.

It's a sort of quantum existence; they are here yet not here, and neither we nor they know when or how the matter will be resolved. And yet my faith leads me to believe that even now, God is already pulling the threads of our lives together, weaving them ever closer to the point where they will become intertwined.

Marching Orders

I have been informed by the wife-unit that once we have kids, we WILL be going to Disney, no matter how much the idea makes my skin crawl. She even sent me this handy guide to Disney survival:

Disney Tips N Tricks

I knew there would be sacrifices, but this fills me with more dread than my colonoscopy.

Transportamatation

One material concern we face is the possibility that our vehicles may be inadequate to our transportation needs once we've got some kids running around. We have a small hatchback for commuting and a pickup truck with an extended cab. Neither is a problem if we wind up with 2 kids, but 3 will very quickly become problematic.

We don't want to be in the position of saying "no" to a group of kids who would otherwise be a great match for us, solely on the basis of not having the vehicles available to cart them around. Granted, we could always take 2 vehicles everywhere, but with gas prices being what they are, I imagine that will get old very quickly.

I also have an inexplicable fixation on the idea of (at least) 3 kids, and think it's likely that if it gets down to a choice between a group of 2 and a group of more, I'll probably want to go for the larger group. Our extended families live in Ohio, and we generally make that trip by car due to the cost and aggravation of air travel.

All this means we're on the lookout for a larger passenger vehicle. Used car lots are of course the pricier end of that spectrum, but fortunately the wife is a virtuoso of craigslist shopping, and she's already located some decent-looking deals. We're primarily thinking minivans/SUVs with 3 rows of seats, like the Highlander or whatever it was we took to Ohio with my brother one year.

I'm not anxious to run out and spend a few thousand dollars on a vehicle, and it may work out that we won't have to, but I don't want that to be an obstacle. I haven't checked, but I'm fairly certain it won't be a tax write-off like other adoption expenses, a write-off we're really hoping for on things like air travel if we wind up having to fly somewhere to meet some kids.

Anyway, I'm not really going anywhere with this, it just keeps looming in my consciousness like a phone bill that hasn't arrived yet after a month when you know you've been overusing it.

Physi- phys- ph-... checkup

Just got out of my physical with my doctor, to complete that last piece of the application for me. It's funny that I've been seeing this doctor for something like 3 years, and the longest conversation I've ever had with her came about because she was so interested in our plans for adoption.

In fact, the nurse who did all the vitals before the doctor came in also wanted to hear all the details. So I told the story twice... about how we're hoping to find a sibling group, we're looking between ages 4 and 12 primarily, and we're looking to (probably) do it across state lines. I told the nurse that we'd been married almost 18 years, never able to have kids of our own, and since I just turned 40 we figured it was time to act on it or give it up. That's when I got the best compliment of the day:

"You don't look anywhere close to 40."

That made me feel 10 feet tall.

Anyway, I told them about AdoptUSKids.org, and how the wife and I have been "window-shopping" for children for the past few months. I even got into a discussion with the doctor over our previous experiences with children and what ages are most likely to be the most difficult to work with. We both agreed that 13-15 can be a real challenge.

At the end, she handed over the form, completely filled out, even though I never saw her write anything on it. She must have filled it out from my chart or something, then done the exam just to confirm what she already knew. Either way, we're off to the races. Wife gets her physical done Thursday.

Playing House

As we live out the preparation and anticipation of becoming parents, my wife and I find ourselves engaging in hypothetical daydreaming about our various activities, and how they would be changed with the addition of kids. I call this "playing house"... after the game almost everyone played as a kid.

We always sort of assume that we're talking about children between the ages of 4 and 12 or so. I think that might be because that's what we desire, but sometimes I find myself considering what would change with a teenager. Kids under the age of 3 or 4 would change everything so radically that I don't really have a way to easily grasp it, so I try not to think about it.

Yesterday brought a sobering example of the exercise. It was about 2 or 3 in the afternoon, and neither of us had slept well the night before, so we were both hitting a real low point in our energy levels. We were out running errands, but we agreed to skip a few and head home to take a nap instead.

That's when it hit us: how would the scenario play out with kids? Is it even possible to get a nap in on a Sunday afternoon with kids between the ages of 4 and 12? Sure, with a teenager handy you could always have them keep an eye on the younger ones, but what if we didn't have a teenager handy? I saw myself chugging 5-Hour Energy and Dr. Pepper in a desperate bid to stay awake long enough to buy my wife a nap, since if she doesn't nap when she's that tired, it's Migraine City.

My biggest worry though is how I'll react to kids when I'm dragging my rear end around. I'm capable of a fair amount of calm and serenity when I've had sleep and feel centered. I'm also capable of being a raging grizzly bear when I haven't. In some ways, it's good for kids to have a little fear of Dad, but I don't want that to be the normal state of affairs. Angry doesn't usually communicate love very well, and I'm already concerned about my ability to form and express that parental bond with my kids, especially if they come from a background that makes them mistrustful of such bonds. I'm also an introvert, which is already a hindrance to forming even new casual relationships, to say nothing of deeper ones.

I spent some time pondering all this as we drove home, and even though I got my nap, I think by the time we pulled into the garage, I had found some reserve of energy that said I could have made it through the next several hours if I'd needed to. That gives me a fair amount of hope and optimism for the future.

Parenting 101...

... as told by the writers of Cracked.com.

5 Ways to Avoid Your Terrible Parents' Mistakes

Seriously bad language. You've been warned.

It does, in its rather crude way, highlight a lot of what keeps me awake at night. It's not that my parents were terrible parents, it's that I fear making huge mistakes like terrible parents do. I'm probably not unique in this regard, but I've got a lot of time to think about it since I'm not simultaneously in the midst of trying to be a parent while worrying about the quality of parent that I am. It leaves a lot of cycles free for wondering just how badly I'm going to screw it up.

It keeps running through my mind

"Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world."
-- James 1:27

Finishing the Paperwork

We've both got appointments for physicals next week. We've also got our personal references lined up and ready to go. Assuming all goes according to plan, we'll be sending the whole packet in next Friday.

So, how about that weather?

Haven't said much this last week because I've been pretty busy with the weather-related stuff as well as work.  I was reminded of how much I hated shoveling snow as a kid, when my dad would say we'd better have the driveway clear by the time he got home from work.  Of course, Oklahoma's winters are far better in this regard than Ohio's, so I think my kids will be safe.

And this of course makes me want to think of other ways to toughen them up. I ran across the following video in my internet travels, and I thought it was very well done.



The author makes a compelling, if somewhat crude, point: kids need to be shown their inner toughness.  I know of some people with kids in their 20's and 30's (and older) who still do everything for them, as though the children are still 9 or 10.

This brings me to an interesting dilemma... on the one hand, I'm going to be adopting kids, most likely out of a foster home, and most likely ones who have seen some tragedy in their short lives, whether from abuse or loss or whatever.  On the other hand, I believe that parents have a responsibility to prepare their kids for adulthood: to prepare them to take complete responsibility for themselves and their own well-being.  I think there's going to be a difficult challenge ahead of me, attempting to balance the nurturing that the kids will require with the hard lessons that must come in order to prepare kids for adulthood.

I have friends whose children are well into their teenage years, and these kids can't even begin to imagine cooking a meal for themselves or washing their own clothes.  I share some of that... my parents never wanted me in the kitchen except to wash the dishes.  My cooking skills were nonexistent when I left home, and if it weren't for my jobs at fast food restaurants I probably would have starved to death.

On the other hand, I started washing my own clothes as soon as I was old enough to drive.  My parents didn't want me wrecking their washer & dryer, so they sent me to the laundromat.  It boggles my mind that there are kids who don't know how to perform this simple task -- I still wash my own clothes today, and I've been married almost 18 years.

There are other things... what good is a teenager who can't mow the lawn?  One guy told me he didn't have his kid do it because his kid didn't do it right, so he just does it himself.  I can't understand the mentality that says it's somehow better to skip a teachable moment in the interests of just getting the thing done -- we're not talking about just a particular Saturday, we're talking about All Summer Long.  In my mind, this is child abuse.

Kids need to be prepared for adulthood.  There also needs to be room for them to be kids.  I see it as a spectrum, from 0% responsibility at infancy to 100% responsibility at the time they leave home (ideally at or around 18 years of age).  So when I encounter a 14-year-old who's only about 20% responsible for himself, it depresses me just as much as when I meet a similar 14-year-old who's had to become the parent of their younger siblings.

I don't begrudge kids their "useless plastic toys" or "stupid video games", as some folks do.  I remember thinking that my Star Wars action figures were the most important things in the world, and I think it's better to let a kid grow out of that and develop other interests than to constantly berate them for not having more adult values.  I think that will come naturally, perhaps at different speeds for different kids, as they become more and more responsible for themselves, and that's why parents need to work at getting the kids to be more and more responsible as they grow older.

Anyway, these are the sorts of things I think about when I think about what it means to be a dad.

A moment's pause...

As it says over yonder, I'm a software engineer. That means I'm a technology guy. I've got computers out the yin-yang, and the whole house is wired for digital, baby. I have visions of raising a passel of tech-savvy kids who run circles around teachers who even dare try to teach them "programming".

But when I slow down to admit it to myself, there's an equal chance I might wind up with kids like this one.

We’d just returned from the pool and I expected to see Dylan futzing around with one of his plastic horses, content with the knowledge that his parents had provided him with a quality amount of entertainment this afternoon. Instead, I observed him standing on tiptoe in the office, carefully balancing my laptop on its side before allowing it to crash back down onto the desk.
Thunk.

Note to self: buy lock for office door.

I wonder if Calvinists are allowed to listen to this...

Wow

Received the formal application packet today from Tonya.  There is much craziness to be had here.  

House description: number of rooms, square footage, number of bedrooms.

Medical history... kinda awkward, but OK.  I guess they want to make sure I haven't had the Bubonic Plague or something.  Note to self: schedule a physical with the doctor, remember to take the appropriate forms.

Criminal background check... to be expected.  I don't expect any problems here, since I've already had a check done by the same agency that will perform this one, and I don't recall robbing any convenience stores in the interim.

The part that really gets to me is the "shopping list".

"Will you accept a child who..."

followed by a 2 page list of physical, emotional, and psychological problems.  Everything from diabetes to fire-starting to the horrific combo of "sexually abused" and "sexually abuses others".

Please check "yes", "no", or "negotiable".

This was a real "gut-check" moment.  We had to evaluate and discuss what we thought we could handle and what we thought we couldn't.  Much as I have visions of being one of those saintly people who just say "yes" to anything that comes along, I had to get real here.  It was both humbling and humiliating in the extreme.  

Finally!

Finally got a call back from Tonya. Apparently she's been off for a while taking care of a sick child. That's understandable, but it seems like we could have at least gotten a call, but whatever. Anyway, the application packet is on the way, so things are finally moving forward.

Spoke with Gisele and relayed the frustration, but largely agreed that it was an understandable delay. We are committed to keeping our attention on moving forward, not dwelling on the obstacles once we're past them.

Argh...

Received a voicemail from Gisele asking how it's going. Planning to call her back tomorrow and gripe just a little about how I've been leaving message after message for Tanya, and not getting any calls returned… been going on for a week now. This is kind of ridiculous.

Contact!

Received a call from a woman named Tonya, who may be our caseworker or caseworker's supervisor. Returned call, but playing phone tag at the moment. At least someone's finally called back… I was starting to get antsy.

Phone Tag

Tried some follow-up calls to DHS before lunch.  Voicemail.  Voicemail.  Voicemail.  In the afternoon, got a call back and had a nice little chat with a lady named Gisele who's going to try and get me to the right people so we can get a caseworker assigned and get the ball rolling.

Stuff to read

Packet arrived, watched DVD. Packet contains conflicting information about whether we're supposed to call them or they're going to call us. Have been browsing AdoptUsKids.org for days. Sometimes it's heartbreaking.

The DVD is a whirlwind of emotion... some of these stories make me wonder if I have what it takes to do this, but at the same time I wonder how I could not.

Starting up...

Made some calls to local DHS office.  Went to website and requested an info packet.