27.4.11

Like Father. . .Like Son?

The little man and I were in the greatest grocery store on the planet the other day and this lady commented on the general adorableness of my son. I really wanted to just say "I know", but was able to attempt a modicum of humility and say thank you instead. After a brief pause she continued by saying that when I had my curly hair, she was sure that my son was just the spitting image of me. At this point, humility went out the window and I answered that he sure was. I then had to go home and tell Lisa who burst my brief bubble by confirming that no, Bobo and I look absolutely nothing alike. At all. Not that there was really any doubt.

22.4.11

Discovery

The little fat was taking a bath last night and stumbled upon a startlingly new and exciting discovery. He's a boy, with boy parts. As he made the discovery, he looked up at Lisa with this amazed look on his face as if to say, "Holy Cow . . . did you know that this was down here! This is amazing!!! I have a new toy!!! Has this thing always been there?! Do I get to keep it?!"

Lisa's response was slightly less than enthusiastic. "Great, what a boy."

20.4.11

Chocolate, kind of

Who knew, Forrest was right. It is like a box of chocolates.

Every once in a while I get the urge to follow random blogs and read the doings of other people's lives. While it is interesting to see what is going on in the lives of friends and complete strangers as well as seeing how these individuals present themselves to the world, I tend to come away feeling that either a) my life just doesn't quite measure up in a number of areas, from the happiness quotient to cool things that I have managed to accumulate to how unique everything is in my life, or b) a lot of these people are full of male cow excrement(that has to be a record for long sentences). I in no way want to rain on anyone's parade, and will be the first to admit that life is great, but it is most definitely not all happiness and sunshine and rainbows. No, life is not a Care Bear's movie, where you are able to counteract anything that is not virtuous, or is ugly, or of ill report, or not praiseworthy with happiness incarnated shot from their chests (yes I am able to admit having watched on more than one occasion a Care Bear's movie, although I can't remember any specific titles and I think that the above mentioned phenomenon is called the "Care Bear Stare!" but I could be mistaken). I'm not necessarily trying to make any point with this. I realize that if I honestly look at my own blog posts, I will probably see myself trying to put maybe not my best, but at least a better foot forward for the world to see. Alright, I lied. There is a point. The artificiality that social media, whether it is a personal or family blog or Facebook or even Twitter, affords us is not real life. Real life is great, but it is also terribly hard at times. No one's life is perfect. Sorry if I have burst your bubble and you thought that your life was definitely different from everyone else's life. I'm not trying to say that you shouldn't celebrate life's great moments nor even share those moments with everyone on your friends list. Nor am I saying that you need to be a Debbie downer (not really sure who Debbie is) and complain publicly about how life has thrown you nothing but curve balls and you have never developed the necessary hand-eye coordination to hit said curve balls. OK, so maybe there really isn't a point after all, just an observation on my part. Life is just life.

That being said, it has been an "interesting" (I'll say interesting instead of the more honest, boy am I ever glad that's over) last few days. Lisa had surgery last Friday for fertility reasons, and while everything went well, it was definitely more complicated than the doctor expected. That in and of itself wasn't such a big deal, we were able to utilize daycare and friends to watch the fatman while we spent time in the hospital. Even afterward, Lisa has been much tougher than I and is doing just fine in recovery. I'm going to lay the blame squarely on the guilty culprit. Little fat. He decided that Saturday would be a good time to manifest a stomach bug and try and get rid of it through explosive bowel movements (with emphasis on the explosive part). This happened off and on all day Saturday and throughout the night, but most frequently when he was supposed to be sleeping. So he didn't sleep. Instead he was busy perfecting his new found powers to launch his personal waste to such far away places as the top of his head or the floor next to his swing (I'm not sure how he managed either feat, and if not for the grossness factor assaulting multiple senses, I would have taken a picture for proof as well as future blackmail purposes). Talk about impressive. In a weird and more than somewhat sick kind of way. I now know that the shower was in all likelihood invented because there are certain instances in a child's life when even the cumulative cleaning power of all wipes combined would not be enough to vanquish the evil that will henceforth be known as an explosive diarrhea bomb. Ugh.

Long story short. Our little cheerful guy was slightly less than cheerful throughout the weekend. He didn't sleep well. That meant I didn't sleep well. I think that Lisa slept well, but that was helped along by our good friend Senor Percocet. I realize that both Lisa and I have been unduly spoiled by Bobo while he has been with us. We hear that it is normal for babies and even young toddlers to not sleep well. Usually that is the stuff of myth for us. Fatticus generally takes a bath and goes to bed around 8pm. In the morning, he tends to rouse himself sometime between the eighth and ninth hour. That is how life is supposed to be. But when it is not so, such as this last weekend, and having to do things mostly on my own, it throws off the balance of our life. No fun. We are close to being back to normal, except for the tick that I have developed in my left eye (in case you see me, no I am not winking at you). Bobo has returned (mostly) to his normal routine and is feeling better, meaning that all is once again right in the universe. Lisa is doing great and will soon be back to normal which is fabulous because I'm just not tough enough to be a mom.

Good thing this kid is so cute. Plus he calls me dada and gives me hugs. I think we'll keep him around.

10.4.11

Weekend Splendidicity

This last weekend was good. I think that about sums it up.



Leaves were raked. Sticks were picked up. The outside was played in. And it was all done in the glorious sunshine. One little tidbit of info for those of you blessed with more hair on the top of your head than someone say, like me, put on a hat in the sun. Just take my word for it. Be good.

6.4.11

Sweet Pea Designs


My wife is cooler than your wife. Lisa has started down the path to being my full-time sugar mama!! She just recently started an Etsy shop to mostly give outlet to her creativity. It probably comes as no surprise that I am not much of an outlet. Go figure. Anyhow, go and check out her shop here or just click on the title post. As a completely biased individual reporting on what she's done, she's pretty awesome. She is also looking at opening up a booth at a local Co-Op/Antique/Craft store nearby. I'm sure all of you that know me are still asking yourself why this amazingly talented and beautiful woman married me. I wonder that too and just do my best to make sure that she doesn't ask that question. Happy trails all.

5.4.11

hello world

It has been a little while since I have posted anything. I know that my reading public has been anxiously waiting for the latest news in my life. Sorry Kimball. My life seems to still be consumed by the same things. Between foster care, work, and church, there isn't much time for anything else. I think that I tend to say that a lot.

Foster care has been living up to its craziness these last few months. After Christmas, birth mom was doing well in her rehab program and was doing well with her visits (definition of good = bobo doesn't die during the visit) and so court determined that birth mom should get two overnight visits during the month. That lasted for a couple of months, because none of the overnight visits (actually any of the visits) went very well. Bobo would tend to come home and take three days to recover. Because of those struggles, the court decided to stop overnight visits (a full on miracle) and finally recognized that even though birth mom has stayed sober in rehab since last June, she still struggles to do little things, like feed her son and put him to sleep. At the beginning of March, birth mom moved to a new rehab which gave her a little more freedom. After a couple of weeks there, she relapsed the last weekend in March and left rehab. This all came as quite a shock because as far as her sobriety, she had been doing so well for about 9 months. Since she took off from rehab, everything has changed. The visits were scaled back drastically and were moved to the county visitation center. The biggest change though is that we haven't seen birth mom since the fallout of her relapse and leaving rehab. She hasn't come to any of the visits. While this is definitely a positive for us and bobo staying with us, it bodes all sorts of not good for birth mom. It seemed even before this that the county was saying that birth mom was running out of time since bobo has now been with us for going on 14 months and birth mom has not made any improvements in giving the little fatling even the most basic of care. So to sum it up, things are moving well for us, but we are conflicted because we don't want birth mom to be where she is.

Our lives do include more than just living the dream called foster care. We were able to take a much needed break from reality and travel out of the perpetual cold called "Rochester" to the sunny delight of Gilbert, Arizona to see family and relax during the middle of February. I won't try and recreate the magic that happened there. Lisa captures it well here and here. All that I will add is that fun was had and good food was eaten, but I'm fairly certain that if you know me, then the good food part probably doesn't come as too much of a surprise.

February was a rather big month for us. Besides the trip to Arizona-land, we also celebrated our 7th anniversary. This was our 6th anniversary celebrated here in Rochacha. Crazy. I remember meeting couples that have lived here for 25-30 years and they'd talk about how they moved to Rochester for school 30 years ago and ended up staying. Little did I think that we'd still be here at this point in time. Don't get me wrong, we really like Rochester and have made good friends here, we are just far from family. Scottie just needs to hurry it up and figure out how to beam us wherever we want, when we want.

The last big to do in our shortest month has to do with our beloved little fatticus. On the tenth, we danced around like fools (that was mostly just Lisa, I would never do anything like that) and celebrated the fact that ciccia nostra had been with us for a year. Lisa wrote about it here.

Life continues to move forward in spite of all of our efforts. Lisa and I both love the stage that bobo is at right now. He is getting into everything, has started walking (and thus falling and testing the strength of his cranium and other facial features) and has grown quite the head of hair. It is funny and interesting to me how much of a personality bobo has developed. He thinks it is the funniest thing in the world to play peekaboo as well as to have you chase him. He will run/walk/fall/crawl from you, stop and look back to make sure that you see him run/walk/fall/crawling away and that you are planning on chasing after him. He then will take off again, looking back to make sure that you are following. I know this is riveting information for all of you. In other news, the cow jumped over the moon, just read that and wanted to share. My reading material has changed of late as well as my music selection. I tend to sing "Twinkle, Twinkle" or some other hip hop tune for the entertainment value that it gives to Lisa.

Now that I'm caught up, I can hurry up and wait another couple of months before I put fingers to keyboard to record our most precious moments and memories for future posterity, friends, and the occasional random Internet stranger/blog stalker. Happy times.