Our Road to Building a Family - Portrait Innovations? More like Portrait Hostage Negotiations!

It goes without saying that as new parents my wife and I are constantly taking pictures and video of our son, The Duke. We make great use of the fact that our cell phones are equipped with way better than average cameras - I couldn't tell you how many of him I have on my personal device but I would say it's in the area of 100 to 150 shots at this point in time. (My wife likely has 2 or 3 times as many, and I am rather scared to consider how many my mother in-law has.) That's one of the lovely aspects of digital photography as opposed to traditional film. You can take hundreds if not thousands of photos, more or less to your hearts content, because the only concern you have is whether or not your memory card is getting full. I recall when I was a kid feeling lucky if I got 24 quality exposures out of a roll of film. (Do people even remember what a roll of film looked like?)

Those pictures are all well and good but they're not the professional, keepsake kind of photos that every family has hanging around their home. This being the case, my wife decided a few weeks back that it was high time we had some pictures taken.

If it sounds like I wasn't exactly overwhelmed with joy over the idea, you wouldn't be too far off base. It's not that I didn't agree that we ought to do what we can to document Duke's life in as grand a method as possible, rather it was the frugal side of my personality taking over. (Call me cheap if you want to, I like to think of myself as being fairly skilled at stretching a dollar and that's not a bad thing.) Actually, my frugal side didn't so much take over as it did go into a screaming, riotous conniption fit seeing as how I suspected this was going to be a pricey endeavor, and that was with me having absolutely zero knowledge of what a photo shoot with a commercial vendor goes for these days.

After we'd decided to look into having pictures taken my wife booked an appointment for us with the Picture People studio at the Buy Buy Baby location in Columbia, South Carolina. I don't think either one of us took the time to investigate what the cost of their services might be at the point in time the appointment was made. Was that a mistake? Maybe, maybe not. In hindsight it likely wouldn't have mattered as they don't seem to publish their pricing online, but that fact should have been enough of a red flag for my frugal sense to start going berserk.

We wound up visiting that Buy Buy Baby before our appointment as we were in the area and needed a few supplies. Jill got some documentation from them that included a menu of sorts with packages they were currently offering. One of the lower packages was in the area of $300.

Suffice to say that frugal me had a mild stroke at the sight of that...

We canceled the appointment with the Picture People the same day in favor of looking around at other options. Low and behold, within a few days time, my wife had located a coupon for use at a competing photography studio, that being Portrait Innovations. The coupon offered a shoot with prints for around $40 - that sounded like a great deal to me when compared to the fact that the Picture People wanted the equivalent of a car payment for their services, so we set up an appointment with them.

I forget who it was that said this to us but when we told someone about the shoot and the coupon their comment was "Oh, but you know you're going to want to buy more pictures than that!" I already had it in mind that there was a possibility we might want to add a few prints but I didn't see us spending more than $60, tops, and I gave that number to my wife as a ceiling for what I saw as being a reasonable expenditure.

Those would fall into the category of famous last words.

Our photo shoot was scheduled for 11 AM on the morning of January 17. Jill's Mom was staying with us that weekend as the three of us all had the following Monday off in observance of the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday. We got dressed, prepped Duke, and loaded ourselves into the car so that we could be there with time to spare.

It was around 10:35 AM when we arrived and the parking lot was rather full already by that time of day. I point that out more for the sake of describing the scene than anything else seeing as how this particular Portrait Innovations is attached to several other shops in a strip mall, so it only made sense that parking would be limited. Regardless, as we got out of the car I began to get the same feeling as I do when I have an appointment with a doctor; your appointment may be for 11 AM but what they mean is you'll be seen somewhere between 11 AM and the rapture.

When we entered the studio there appeared to be one family in the process of having photos taken and two others that were waiting to get started. The customers who were there had spread out in such a way that all the seating was taken except for one chair, which we quickly assumed possession of so as to give Duke somewhere to perch until it was our turn. I don't blame those other families for the lack of seating, I blame the business. The waiting area was big enough to have accommodated significantly more seating than what was installed. As it was, we made like a couple of horses and stood around.

By the time 11:30 rolled around the family that was already on set when we arrived had wrapped up their shoot and one of the families in front of us were roughly half way through their turn. The other family ahead of us that was still waiting to begin apparently lost their will to hang around any longer and left without saying anything to the staff. Low and behold, not five minutes passed from the point that they left to when one of the attendants came to fetch them and begin their shoot. Their loss was our gain.

We began our shoot around noon, nearly a full hour later than our appointment. Jill had told me that the plan going into this was to not only get photos of the Duke but to also have a few family portraits made, and that sounded like a fantastic idea to me. What did not sound like a fantastic idea was the photographers first pose for us as a family which would require the three of us to get on the ground.

I am 34 years old as of this writing however I will tell you that I am probably less than 10 years away from having to have some sort of procedure done to one or possibly both of my knees. I'm not immobile by any stretch of the imagination, but when you combine my joints being what they are with the fact that I'm not the most graceful of individuals anyway, you can hopefully understand why getting on the ground isn't something I often choose to do. I did it anyway because that's what was asked of me and I wanted to try my best to make the most of the situation.

The pose we wound up in had me on the ground on my left side with my right knee raised and my left arm/leg left to prop myself up. It wasn't an uncomfortable position, to be quite honest, but it became uncomfortable after my wife and Duke were added to the mix (I'm not blaming them, I'm blaming the pose!) as I wound up more or less having to support their weight with my hips and lower back. It just wasn't a good situation for my pelvis and spine, is what I'm getting at. Making matters worse were the commands of the photographer to lean in, get closer, turn your head, and keep smiling all the while even though your left femur feels like it's about to pop out of its socket. I don't know why it is photographers have to put their subjects in these odd poses - they are wholly unnatural and you can tell this in the resulting images.

We did one additional pose as a family and it was in a more traditional arrangement where my wife & I were seated on stools, holding Duke in between us. The shots we got from that pose were the best ones of the day and I would've been perfectly fine if the thing had ended there. It went on for a while longer, though, and Jill's Mom even got brought into the mix. The idea, of course, is to take as many poses as possible because then they can try to sell them to you, which brings me to the next phase of this event.

Once we were done taking photos, we sat down in front of a monitor with our photographer - a young black woman who looked to be in her early to mid 20s - to go over what we had to work with. It was then that my wife mentioned to the photog that we had a coupon; the photog more or less hushed my wife, telling her that it was only good for one pose and that we'd get a much better deal by going with one of the packages currently being offered. How much those packages were going to cost wasn't discussed at that point, though, as we first had to go through and select our favorite shots.

Remember how I mentioned earlier the fact that pricing information for packages offered by these studios isn't readily available online? Nowhere in the shop itself was there a display, menu, or any kind of signage that would clue customers in to what they'd be forking over for pictures made therein.

The pictures did look quite good for the most part, although there were a few poses (such as the one of us on the floor) that just looked weird. Once we had it narrowed down to somewhere in the area of 16 poses the photog navigated through her software to the sales module and we finally got an idea of what we were looking at in terms of cost.

The first package she showed us was $554.

FIVE HUNDRED AND FIFTY-FOUR DOLLARS.

To put that into perspective, when I was still making payments on my truck they were $250 a month, and when we were renting a house after we got married the rent payment was $525 a month.

I think she was joking but the photog turned to me after the total charge for that package was displayed on the screen and said, "So, Dad, do you want to write a check for that today?" Joking or not, the disgust on my face and in my tone of voice was very real.

I should mention that the packages I speak of are set up in such a way that you have to buy a certain number of photos featuring a specific set of poses in order to get freebies. For example, you might select 12 poses which would qualify you for a free hardcover book, two softcover books, and a CD with all the photos burned onto it. The more poses you select the more freebies you get, and the fewer poses you select the fewer freebies you get. This whole deal is, of course, meant to make customers feel like they're getting a deal when in reality you're paying for every one of the freebies. I have no method of verifying this but I would hazard a guess and say that the photogs (who double as sales staff) are more than likely working off of commission.

We then went through the process of whittling down our selection so that we could try to get to a price point that wasn't quite so ridiculous. For me, this became like what happened last year when I took my truck in for service to get the brakes done. What I thought was going to be a $200 bill wound up being almost $600. In this instance, what I thought would be a $60 bill wound up being $100 (the package we picked was around $200 and, thankfully, Jill's Mom was generous enough to pay half of the total). We paid our due, left to have lunch (it was roughly 1:30 PM by then, and I was feeling every bit of it since the only thing I'd had to eat thus far that day was a fiber bar), then came back about an hour and a half later to pick up our photos.

I made a comment about our experience on Facebook and a friend of our family chimed in with the comment, "Been there, done that, got the t-shirt." Along those lines, the lesson I take away from this is that it's all a part of being a parent. Sure, the pictures are good and we'll undoubtedly treasure them for as long as we can, but this is one of those times we'll look back on in 10, 15, 20 years and say "Do you remember how silly this day was?" Then we'll see the pictures with that little boy and his perfectly round head, and the money won't matter. The standing around won't matter. The pain in my knees won't matter. What matters is that we have a family and we did this together as a family.

Our Road to Building a Family - 10 Things I've Learned from "The Duke"

I will be upfront in saying that with this list I'm ripping off my wife's recent post over at her blog, The Truesdale Times, wherein she discussed 10 things she's learned from the time we've had thus far with our foster/hopefully adoptive child, who will be known in these parts until further notice simply as The Duke.

10) I don't know what we would do without family & friends

I pointed out in my previous submission to this blog series the fact that my wife & I had absolutely nothing in our home that would make it a suitable dwelling for a newborn when we got the call about The Duke being available. As a matter of fact, we had gone to great lengths to prepare our home for older children as we never anticipated we'd have the opportunity to potentially adopt a baby. Everything we were told in the training sessions we were required to sit through before we could be approved as adoptive/foster parents lead us to believe we had a better shot at finding a four leaf clover, getting struck by lightning, and winning the lottery all in the same day than of getting a baby.

That said, I don't know where we'd be if not for donations and gifts from the people we're lucky enough to have as family and friends. What most couples prepare for over the course of 9 months we did in a matter of hours, but only because we are surrounded by people who love us and who were willing to participate in The Duke's life. To anyone who helped us in any way, shape, or form, we can never say thank you enough!

9) Uninterrupted periods of sleep don't exist

I have to say that this has not been so much a learning experience for me as it has been for my wife.

Before The Duke came along I would typically get in bed around 10:30 PM, watch a little TV, and finally conk out by 11:30 or midnight. I drink a fair amount of water in the evening, and as a result I have to get up usually once or twice a night to relieve myself. (Too much information? Probably, but we're not done yet with the subject of bodily excretions in this blog entry, not by a long shot!) As such, I'm somewhat accustomed to having to put myself back to sleep every night after an interruption. The biggest difference now is that the "interruption" has to be fed, have his diaper changed, and then settled back into his own slumber before I/we go back to Dreamland.

The Duke is in a pattern of becoming needy about once every 3 to 3 and a half hours. So long as we time it right even with having to tend to him we can still get a good 6 or 7 hours of sleep per night, which is about what I was getting before.

8) Burping is not only necessary, it's encouraged

If you consider how newborns receive sustenance, you'll quickly realize why it is that they need to burp. They're on a liquid diet and they're going to wind up swallowing air. That air can be quite painful once it's trapped in their tiny bellies. Their little bodies aren't finely tuned enough to be able to bust out a burp as needed, so they need some assistance in the form of a pat on the back.

That said, The Duke burps like a grown man. He has all the power and volume behind his belches that I do, which is saying something seeing as how I've got roughly 34 more years of experience in the matter than he does. I'm sure that as he grows up he'll continue to hone these skills so that he's ready to vocalize a proper burp - because being able to throw a lighthearted jab at one of your buddies through a burp is part of what being a man is all about.

7) Baby formula is ridiculously expensive

We noticed that when The Duke was on a traditional formula after we first brought him home that it appeared to be going straight through him, meaning he wasn't getting the nutrition he needed. After talking to his doctor, we switched him to a soy-based product and he's really taken to it. He was a little over 6 pounds when he was born but I would say he's closer to 8 by this point in time.

I will admit that I had never looked at formula prices before now - all I can say about the matter is holy crap, why is this stuff so expensive?! It's just a powdered mix, how can it cost that much? Are soybeans on some kind of endangered species list? You'd think he was drinking something derived from a rare earth metal. And it's not like the stuff is packaged in a glass vial that was shaped by a master craftsman then scrubbed and polished by hand. It's a can for crying out loud!

Of course I say that even though when I was still working out regularly I used to pay $20 or more for a tub of protein powder. I guess that was different seeing as how I might take one or two doses a day versus him who's taking 7 or 8 per day.

6) Daycare is ridiculous

Up until now I had only heard stories of how daycare operations are so overcrowded that many have waiting lists and that if or when you do get approval for entrance into one the costs can be staggering. Suffice to say that we can verify both of those presumptions as being factual.

5) Baby poop is a horrific example of the sort of material our bodies can produce

I discussed formula earlier in this entry and I also mentioned how The Duke is on a soy-based formula. It still baffles me, to a degree, how a person like him can ingest what is a liquid (albeit one that is certainly loaded with vegetable fiber) and then poop what is most certainly a solid. It went in one end as a fluid but it came out the other end as this oddly chunky, not quite mustard yellow but not quite beige colored matter the odor of which is somewhere between rotting animal carcass and construction site port-a-potty.

It's a visual and smell that I wasn't necessarily prepared to have to deal with. I haven't gone so far as to invest in a HAZMAT suit but I am considering purchasing one of those inclosures with the rubber gloves in them - you know, like the type you see in monster movies where a scientist needs to examine a specimen but doesn't want to touch it for fear of contamination? I may have to run a ventilation line but that's alright.

4) When it comes to interpreting the needs of a baby, science has failed us

The Duke is a grunter. As in when he makes his presence known it's not through a coo or some kind of gentle sound, it's through a "HNNNNNGH!" or a "WUUUURGH!" When he starts to grunting you can safely bet that in short order he's going to need either a bottle or a fresh diaper.

That said, our boy isn't a particularly fussy baby however there have been times where he'll cry and we have no idea what his need in that moment actually is. Are you hungry? Here's a bottle. Wait, why are you still crying? Your diaper is full? Okay, lets change it - wait, I did what I thought you needed, why are you crying now? You don't like being naked and it's chilly in the house? Well why didn't you say that to begin with?

I'm shocked there isn't some kind of gadget out there that can accurately predict what it is that a baby like The Duke needs when he begins to sound off about a given displeasure he's experiencing. I don't know what a device like that would cost but I would be willing to at least consider buying it if it existed. It would seem to be a more worthwhile product than a lot of the other seemingly useless and/or limited baby tech that's out there.

3) Babies require roughly the same amount of gear as is needed for a military deployment

Speaking of baby tech, I am dumbfounded at the volume of gear that is available these days for parents to equip and accessorize their baby. I can only compare it to the cellular phone industry in that there exists this insane, fanatical culture centered around outfitting today's children with stuff that they don't know they have and would more than likely be just as well without. What's worse is the fact that to the modern parent all of it is apparently necessary, although I would say that aspect has more to do with Mom and/or Dad wanting to maintain a particular social status level through ownership of a certain stroller, car seat, or what have you than it does with serving the needs of the child.

There are things in my house right now because of The Duke that I have no idea what they do (some of which I have no desire to learn what they do) or that I could do without because I already had a device or process that accomplished the same task. Case in point, after we brought home The Duke I bought a lidded trash can (with the little step you can press to raise the lid) and a pack of stick-on air deodorizers thinking that would be an adequate containment unit for diapers and other waste. All totaled, it cost about $11. Was it sufficient?

Someone gave us one of these things, a Diaper Genie by Playtex.

If you've ever seen the bio-hazard disposal boxes mounted on the wall of a hospital or doctor's office examination room, this is essentially the same thing only instead of needles and bloody gauze this is for poopie diapers. Depending on what model you opt for, these things will set you back anywhere from $30-$40. The kicker, though, is that it doesn't use ordinary trash bags - instead it uses a cartridge pre-loaded with a sleeve of plastic that you must cut and tie off as needed. How long will the cartridge last? Who knows but refills of these cartridges cost $7 a pop!

So, just to re-cap where we stand with my trash can versus the Diaper Genie...

My Trash Can:
- Initial investment: $11
- Recurring costs:
     * $30 for 1,000 trash bags purchased from buying club
     * $3 per pack of deodorizer inserts

Diaper Genie:
- Initial investment: $35 (I split the difference)
- Recurring costs:
     * $7 per cartridge

If you do the math, the trash can wins handily in terms of cost of ownership over the lifetime of the device. Plus, who's to say manufacturing of the refills doesn't up and stop or that a new & improved model won't come out leaving you with no way to wrangle the poopie diapers? You're left with a gun for which no one is making bullets and that's not a good thing. Also, you can continue using the trash can well into the future either in the child's room or somewhere else in the house. At some point the child won't be in diapers anymore - what will you do with the Diaper Genie then? You might have gotten your money's worth out of it by then and I guess you could hold onto it until you're wearing Depends. The latter option is a personal choice and not one I'm ready to make right just yet.

2) Stores specializing in baby gear are oddly terrifying

My wife & I went to a Buy Buy Baby location last weekend in Columbia, South Carolina. (As it turns out, BBB is a sister store to Bed Bath & Beyond - whoever owns these things has some affinity for the letter B apparently.) It was the first time I'd ever set foot inside a store that sold nothing but baby products. To say that I had a hard time digesting the entirety of the thing would be an understatement.

Why? I can't hammer it down to be totally honest with you. I guess I assumed that babies weren't so complicated that the breadth of offerings in a store like that one would be as vast as they are. Sure, a lot of it is worthless stuff that people buy because they can, but I couldn't get over how it is that all of those products exist. Because if they exist, someone bought them and uses them. Babies have gotten along for a very long time without things like the Pee Pee Teepee (I'm pursuing a patent on a rival product right now, which I'm calling the Tinkle Tent), but there's a Mom or a Dad out there right now that won't change their son's diaper without it because they're mortified at the thought he might score a head shot on one of them with a well-timed stream of whiz.

1) Priorities

There was an indie professional wrestling event last Sunday (November 2) in Cayce, SC promoted by a company called WrestleForce which I have featured previously in my Rasslin' with Redbeard YouTube show. When I'm at events like that one I typically will record the matches (provided the federation in question has voiced no opposition to my doing so) then later on I'll add them to my YouTube channel (which you can find here at this link). I don't want to toot my own horn but after that particular show I was contacted by three of the wrestlers that had performed on the show who wanted to know if I was there because they were eager to see and share footage of their matches.

I wasn't at the show. For obvious reasons.

That's not my way of saying I'll never go to another pro wrestling event; far from it, actually, as I would hope to be able to get to one or two a month even now. I had just spent the night in North Carolina the weekend before in order to attend a show in that state. Even though the building where WrestleForce runs their shows is less than 45 minutes from our house, it wouldn't be fair of me to take off two weekends in a row and leave my wife to tend to our child by herself.

Only I would use professional wrestling as an analogy for pertinent life lessons, right? It's a valid example of the fact that we're parents now and there will quite often be times where our schedules, needs, wants, and desires are going to play second fiddle to The Duke's schedule, needs, wants, and desires. Parents have to be prepared for that.

To me, sacrificing things like personal interests for the sake of being a considerate, involved parent is just one more way of showing how much you love your children. That doesn't mean giving up on your own aspirations, rather that as a parent you've got to acknowledge the responsibility that comes with the life you're charged with shaping while continuing your own life. For some that might mean not going to the movies or out to dinner as often, for others it might be that your work hours have to change or that you'll have to look at your classes to see what will be best going forward. Everyone can do it, you just have to be willing to put in the work to make it happen.

Being a Mom or Dad takes a level of maturity that a lot of people just plain don't seem to have these days, and I feel like that's why some relationships fail after children come into the picture. My wife & I aren't as young as a lot of new parents are when they bring home their first child. We're fortunate enough to have already done a lot in our lives and are fairly content with where we are emotionally and professionally. I've made the comment before that I don't have a whole lot of goals left in my life. I met a President of the United States. I've traveled abroad. I have a stable career. I was front row at a Metallica concert. I could name others but I'm sure you get the idea. Saying you've checked off a lot of items from your list of things to do isn't bad. It means I can be more in tune with allowing things to happen in my life as opposed to having to chase them as hard as I would have otherwise. It's an especially good thing now because it will allow me to enjoy being a Dad without feeling like I've got to impose my will on my wife or The Duke in order to pursue some arbitrary gain that, in the grand scheme of things, doesn't matter as much as making sure that little boy grows up to be healthy and happy.

Our Road to Building a Family - When You Least Expect It

Since I last made an entry to my "Our Road to Building a Family" series, my wife and I had been doing our best to remain cautiously optimistic about our prospects moving forward.

We'd more or less re-established ourselves as we were prior to the moment when the three children who were placed with us came into our lives. We got back into our own routines; work, hobbies, house work, date days/nights, work, and more work. Jill's efforts at being an advocate for us were quieted - not silenced but they definitely became more reserved. Heartbreak has a way of making you rethink what you did to get to where you are, obviously. Her candle had been burning at both ends for so long and so hot that the wicks just couldn't sustain that same fire anymore.

I feel as though we both had accepted the fact that we might have burned a bridge with the organization we'd been working with in having to relinquish custody of the sibling group that was placed with us, and that in so doing we might have put ourselves into an "undesirable" category within their filing system for potential adoptive parents. You'd hope that sort of thing doesn't exist in a program like this, and just to be clear we have no legitimate reason to believe it does. (I wanted to make sure that statement was made as the Department of Social Services in the state of South Carolina gets dragged through the mud enough as is.) Even so, paranoia will make even the silliest untruth seem feasible.

Work, for me, has been particularly busy the past few weeks. As someone who works with information technology in the public sector, the beginning of a new fiscal year tends to be on the other side of ridiculous in terms of expectations. Offices and officials have budgeted for certain items and they want to purchase those items as soon as possible so that they can enjoy the benefits of having new tech in their employ. Quite frankly I can't say as I blame them. Between new installations and service calls, I haven't spent a whole lot of time behind my desk as of late. It's tough to juggle at times, however it's been a welcome respite as it's been something I can use to take my mind off things that have been bothering me. Feeling as though we'd missed an opportunity and not understanding why we had to go through that, mostly.

Similarly, my wife's work has kept her moving as of late. I don't know that I've ever mentioned this here but she's the assistant director for the Calhoun County Council On Aging. I will tell you that I know what she does for a living although I don't know a whole lot about what she does for a living, if you catch my drift. I hate to say that because it makes me out to be an inattentive idiot of a husband but I promise you I'm not. Our occupations really are extensions of our personalities. She's thinks with emotion, I think with logic. She works with people, I work with machines - go figure, right?

There are so many aspects of this process that can, have, and continue to blow my mind. Main among them is the speed with which entire lives can change. Case in point, with the sibling group, we were on vacation in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina when we were called about having been matched with them. We didn't have to rush back home because of it but the fact of the matter was that we suddenly had a choice to make: Play the hand you've been dealt or keep rolling the dice. Likewise, our lives changed in a flash again this past Tuesday when my wife received a call from our adoption worker that a baby had come into their custody and was in need of foster care.

My wife in turn called me - she didn't know if the baby had medical needs or if the child was a boy or a girl, black, white, Hispanic, or Kryptonian. All she knew was that a baby was being offered to us. I, of course, wanted to know more details. (I can't help it; I'm the one with the logistical brain, remember?) I didn't want to say no to the opportunity but at the same time I didn't want to immediately say yes and we wind up in another situation where we'd have bitten off more than we could chew seeing as how we've been down that road already.

Jill got more details on the situation and we talked again. The baby is male, Caucasian, roughly 6 pounds and 18.25" at birth, with no signs of defects or abnormalities. He is, for all intents and purposes, a perfectly healthy baby boy. The identity of the father is unknown. He came into the state's custody as a result of his birth mother having given a verbal relinquishment of custody, however there is a statute of limitations within which she can still claim him.

That last bit wrenched at my heart. Since he is a foster child, he could be with us for days, weeks, months, or forever. A child with circumstances like this is considered a high risk placement due to the fact that any number of biological family members could emerge and pursue custody, and that, in turn, can lead to legal entanglements. The notion that we might grow to love this child only to then have him leave us was so difficult to process. Nevertheless, we couldn't say no to this risk, this chance, this opportunity, this blessing. (As a humorous aside to this I'll say that after my wife & I spoke for the second time she said I had 10 minutes to decide whether or not I was okay with accepting the baby. Yep, 10 minutes. I can't take a shower in 10 minutes and she's expecting me to make a decision of this magnitude?)

After we'd made up our minds we contacted our adoption worker and began to make arrangements to pick up the child. Since our worker is located in Charleston we both assumed the baby was there. As it turned out he was only minutes away at a local hospital.

When we got to the hospital, we first had to figure out where we were going - we had a room number but no real idea of how to get there seeing as how neither of us knew a whole lot about the layout of the facility. We encountered a friendly member of the nursing staff who saw us wandering around and she directed us to exactly where we needed to be.

We met with several members of the neonatal nursing staff, a doctor, and a caseworker from DSS. Everyone kept addressing us as "the parents" or "Mom and Dad". (I've tried not to read too much into that, mind you, but you can't help but take impressions from the way people with more information than you about a given situation talk about that situation.) When you hear those words and aren't expecting them they have something of a sizzling effect on your psyche. It forces you to realize at that moment, if it hadn't already before then, that this is happening.

The doctor, a young woman who looked to have been in our age range, was very kind in her manner and took the time to go over a lot of answers to first-time parent questions without us ever asking them. The nursing staff were also very pleasant to work with. I have to say that seeing them handle the children in their care is like watching a skilled craftsman. Not to say they were twirling babies in the air while walking a tightrope, just that they clearly know what they're doing.

As part of the discharge process we had to watch a video on shaken baby syndrome and sign a batch of paperwork. Before we knew it, a loaned car seat was installed in the back of Jill's ride and we were on our way back home. The whole process took less than an hour.

I am in no way ashamed of saying that after Jill & I got him inside our house that I cried like men aren't supposed to admit to crying. I had accepted that I just wasn't going to get to have certain things in my life - in that moment, hope for those dreams returned.

Jill's Mom and Dad came to our house that evening and they brought with them a literal smorgasbord of stuff related to maintaining a baby that family & friends had given to them to share with us. (I've said it before and I'll say it again, we wouldn't be where we are without the support of loving, generous people. We've got some of the best family, friends, and co-workers imaginable!) I know my way around the realm of information technology but baby technology is a whole new ballgame for me, personally. I was introduced to several varieties of bassinets that either swing, rock, vibrate, or some combination thereof. I had heard the term Pack and Play previously but I'd never seen one - seemed kind of like a kennel for a child, but who's to argue with that logic? Also knew to me, the boppy pillow, which is a great example of what can happen when someone takes an existing product (the travelers neck pillow, in this instance), increases its size, and gives it a cute name. In addition to this, our kitchen is now overrun with baby bottles, cans of formula, and various accessories related to feeding. From the amount of bottles alone you'd think we had 5 babies instead of 1, however I'm quickly learning that bottles are much like .22 ammo - when you think you have enough, you don't.

The baby's biological mother did give him a name. We're not especially fond of it, so if or when we have the chance to change his name we already have one picked out. It's one of the names that Jill & I had talked about a while back when we were toying with ideas for baby names. I can't publish his real name because of the fact that we have to protect his identity, and I'm going to hold off on doing the same with the name we've given him until such time that it's appropriate. Don't worry, though, he's not going to have any identity issues because my Father in-law and I already came up with a nickname (or codename, as I've said to some people) for him - The Duke.

Feel free to read into that as you would like. And no, his name is not John Wayne. If it were that easy to figure out do you think I'd bother calling it a codename?

Back when we were still working with the sibling group, we had applied for a license to be foster parents. We did this in addition to being approved as adoptive parents because of the fact that it would have served as something of a contingency for that scenario due to timing of the proceedings. In hindsight we were fortunate in that we did apply for our foster license. Since they weren't ours, permanently speaking, we were able sever the relationship due to the disruption they had caused and have things end there. Not to make those children out to be horrors but I don't know what would've happened to us - my wife & I - had we not been on a foster to adopt path with them instead of straight adoption. That having been said, it is ironic that we finally received our foster license in the mail on the same day that we brought home The Duke.

At this point we (all three of us - well, four if you count our dog, Roddy) are settling in and adjusting to our new family dynamic. The waking up at night is what's going to take the most time to get used to, I do believe, but we'll get there. Interpreting his needs is an interesting thing to tackle; he's not a particularly fussy baby so when he does cry it genuinely means he's either hungry or in need of a fresh diaper. Jill took him to his first doctor's visit and it was recommended that we put him onto a soy-based formula as it seemed traditional mixes weren't staying with him long enough to get him the nutrition he needs. He checked out fine other than that and a little redness around his bottom for which the doctor prescribed an ointment.

Many people have asked if there are things that we need. At this point, I feel as though we're on good standing thanks to what has been donated to us (it seems as though almost everyone we know has gently used baby gear tucked away in storage somewhere), but we would never say no to things like diapers, wipes, or gift cards. Jill had the idea to suggest bringing a meal - fresh or frozen - for us wouldn't be a bad idea either.

Above all else I would ask that you pray for our family. Like I said earlier in this entry, we don't know how long this ride will last but we're going to take it for all it's worth. With God's will and love, we'll endure. I believe The Duke was sent to us for a reason - we're going to love him with all the affection we have because that's what he deserves.

ICE-OCALYPSE 2014

Living in the South, you get used to almost never seeing anything in the way of frozen precipitation; anything aside from hail, that is, which is odd because it typically accompanies severe thunderstorms that hit our part of the world during the warmest, most humid times of year. We Southerners are more accustomed to sweltering heat than frigid cold, so on the rare occasion that the skies part and something icy does fall we tend to panic (sometimes unnecessarily as school districts, government offices, businesses, etc. located here have been criticized - read, made fun of - for being too quick to pull the trigger on closing up shop at merely the threat of wintry weather). Bread and milk become hard to find, a fact I've never understood because neither of those are food items that hold up all that well (I'd sooner go for something canned like Beanie Weenies and Spam, personally, but that's just me), and people forget how to drive with any sense of caution. These sound like stereotypes regarding Southern culture but that's the thing about stereotypes, usually they're at least partially true which is what makes them funny and/or offensive depending on your point of view.

People in my adopted hometown of Saint Matthews, SC talk about an ice storm that hit the area back in 2004 as having been a horrible scenario. I wasn't here for that one, however my wife and I did make it through a particularly rough ice storm back in January of 2011 when we were still renting a house in Orangeburg. Our home, cars, and everything around us was encased in ice during that event. At the time, it seemed like something so extreme that we'd surely only encounter it once every decade, if that.

As it would turn out, we got it again only this time much worse and less than 5 years removed.

Over the course of February 11-13, we (along with the rest of the residents of the midlands of South Carolina) endured what I have dubbed ICE-OCALYPSE 2014. The precipitation began as rain on the evening of the 11th then changed over to ice during the night. The ice continued for almost a full 24 hours, finally ending in the early portion of the 13th. My wife & I were out of work for two days because of the conditions. What was worse was the fact that power in many areas was knocked out for almost a week; we were lucky as ours was out for maybe 5 hours, total, over the entire two days we were at home. Power lines, trees, and other structures were severely damaged. The terrain began to take on the look of an area that had been hit by a hurricane instead of an ice storm thanks to all the downed limbs and trees.

I'm going to stop writing at this point and let the following pictures do (most of) the talking.

My wife and I both complained when a crew showed up to begin clearing the wooded lot beside our house to make room for a new house to be built about a month or so ago. What we didn't realize then was that they were more than likely doing us a huge favor as certain of those trees were either dead or dying. I fully believe had they not done what they did, at least one of those trees would've wound up on our house as two of them were huge pines. Just goes to show you that when you think your world is changing into something you don't want, oftentimes what it becomes is exactly what you need.

Here we are literally a week removed from the storm and aside from the huge piles of limbs stacked along the road you can hardly tell that 7 days ago our little town was covered in ice. The ice storm wasn't the last encroachment of Mother Nature that we'd encounter, though. This past Friday, February 14, we had an earthquake of all things!

The shake was centered on Edgefield, SC but it was felt all over the Carolinas. My wife & I happened to have been in our kitchen when it happened (why we were in our kitchen at nearly 10:30 PM is a story for a different time) and we knew something had caused the house to rumble. How did we know? My wife keeps a piece of cookware from Pampered Chef in our microwave; it's technically called a deep-covered baker but I refer to it as the voodoo pot because it's magical in what it can do with food. It's a heavy clay pot, more or less, and when the quake began we heard a rattling noise coming from the area of our range. My wife thought there was a pipe rattling behind the wall but I knew there were no pipes in that area. Turns out the rattling we heard was that of the lid on the voodoo pot shaking against the body of the vessel.

Remember how I said frozen precipitation is rare in South Carolina? Earthquakes aren't unheard of but they're even more rare. I'm not saying what we're witnessing is a Biblical event, but at this point if a plague of locusts hits I wouldn't be too terribly shocked.