T'anksgibbons

All right - now that we've gone for weeks without posting, now that we've lost just about every reader of this blog, now that our ratings are in the pits, NOW is the time for massive posting. Oh yeah - that's what we call stragety. Or stagrety. Or... something. Definitely not strategy.

Anyhow, Thanksgiving was a blast. The Withers clan set up camp here at Overhill, arriving in waves. First in, Aunt Wren & Uncle Joe, followed by Grandma Marjorie... with a surprise appearance by Grandpapa Scott! Well, he called ahead, so it wasn't really a surprise, but I'm trying to build drama here.

Aden was thrilled to see each and every one of the houseguests, especially because they gave him kisses on his belly and took him from his parents whenever they needed to do other stuff (the parents liked that too!). All sorts of new developmental milestones were achieved that week, including: giving high fives, babbling in a death metal / cookie monster voice, getting everyone sick with a cold, blowing snot, throwing things at the dog, and eating delicious mashed-up "big people" food. It was pretty awesome.

On Thanksgiving day itself, Melissa, Aden & I went over to Uncle Chris & Aunt Kim's house, and had a lovely mid-day dinner with Chris, Kim, Steven and Grammy Barbara. Sadly, we don't have any pictures since I was sporting a massive migraine on the way over (which thankfully resolved itself by the time we sat down to eat) and forgot to pack the camera. But dinner was great, and Aden even tried a little pie and squash, which he enjoyed very much. Since it was unseasonably warm, we got to play on the lawn after eating, which is the first time Aden's ever gotten to crawl around on grass (that we know).

After that, we came back home to Overhill for an evening Thanksgiving dinner - by the end of the night, the turkey wasn't the only one who was stuffed!

While it was sad to see everyone go at the end of the week, Aden got some good one-on-one time with each and everyone, and had a great time.

As mentioned earlier, Aden and Nugget reached an entirely new level in their relationship this past week when Aden finally started interacting directly with the dog. Namely by draping himself over the dog, who had been sleeping, and pounding on Nugget's flank with a toy! Shockingly, the dog didn't eat him, and just laid there taking the abuse. Of course, I didn't have my camera for that... but I sure had it ready when Aden came back for round two, climbing up on the supine dog and grabbing fistfuls of fur. The dog didn't even stir for that one.

Since that formative event, the two have begun playing a game that we here like to call "slimy and slimier." It goes like this:

1. Aden puts a toy in his mouth
2. Aden takes the toy out of his mouth
3. Aden puts the toy in the dog's mouth
4. The dog chews on the toy for a second or two
5. Aden takes the toy out of the dog's mouth
6. Aden puts the toy back in his mouth
7. Repeat

So far, everyone seems pretty happy with this game, and Aden's shown no signs of lycanthropy (that's what dog drool causes, right? Just a slight case of werewolf-ism?), so we're going to let them continue building their buddyship.

Clearly, we've got plenty to be thankful for. And the gibbons aren't so bad, once you get used to all the banana peels around the house.

Working up to Thanksgiving

Whew. That was a whole lot of turkey. In fact, we got so conked out on all that good stuff, we're weeks behind. So, let's start with the Thanksgiving ramp-up.

Aden's been around family since before we even touched down on American soil - Gramma Marjorie was there on our first trip to visit him in Guatemala, and Grammy Barbara met us at the airport on our triumphant return home (I think that if the airport officials had let her, she would have been in the control tower making sure that they brought us down safely). But Thanksgiving promised to be a veritable onlsaught of relatives, so we began warming up the weekend before.

First, we brought Aden to visit Grandpa Bob and Gramma Leslie. We all had a great time - Bob proved fluent in Aden's native tongue (gibberish) - whenever Aden would squak at him, Bob would squak right back, which Aden of course found hilarious. Both Bob and Leslie read this blog, so we they prepared for the visit from The Supreme Bananan Smasher by stocking up on extra cleaning supplies... which, astoundingly, they didn't have to break out once! Bob and Leslie's beagle, Twinkle, wasn't too excited to meet the new houseguest, but did very well under the circumstances, and we've got high hopes for a future Aden/Twinkle friendship.

After that, Aden got to meet Uncle Chris, Aunt Kim, Cousin Steven and Great-Aunt Carol. Again, many hikinks were had, and there were giggles all around. The kid's a charmer!

We also had a visit from our friend Jen and her kids Jalen and Isabelle (I have a hard time remembering exactly when in the weekend, given the haze of turkey and stuffing that clouds my memories of the last few weeks). Aden fell in love at first sight with Jalen, which makes us wonder if he might have had an older foster-brother in Guatemala. Jalen is 5, and Aden crawled right up to him and hugged him at first sight. That was pretty fantastically cute.

And then of course, there were all the visits from Bill, Tori, and Jessica (all of whom, of course, are Aunts or Uncles in their own way), not to mention Ben & Kate Hitmar. Oh, and Aden's first visit to Schwadesign, where he got a ride from Josh; Amy and Alyson stood around and made googly eyes at him; and Anna wanted to eat his ankles.

Given that Aden made it through all of this pre-Thanksgiving build-up without a hitch, his status as a charmer has officially been confirmed. As always, though, we'll let the pictures be the final proof of that.

Crawling out of the tryptophan coma

If there's anyone out there still reading this blog, we apolgize. The entire Withers family has been hibernating, trying to metabolize the huge dose of turkey, potatoes and stuffing that we recently ingested. Regular posting will resume as soon as we can roll off the barcalounger and download photos.

However, it should be noted, pictures or not, that Aden really digs every one of the relatives he's been introduced to in the last two weeks... almost as much as he loves pie. And that's saying a lot, because he really, really, really loves pie.

3 Generations of Goofballs

Well, Grandpapa Witherses visit concluded today, and it was a complete raving success. GP bestowed all sorts of wisdom upon Aden, like ways to improve his funny face techniques, the joy of hollering through the storm door, advanced belly tickling, and various other Grandpapa-type things. To our amazement, Aden did not try to use Papa's moustache as a handle for wild acrobatic tricks - we had assumed that was a given.

It's great to see Aden thriving so much as a social butterfly, especially since his dance card for the next week or so promises to be packed. Hopefully everyone will be able to handle his love of drool and fart noises. Personally I think that in his hands, they're elevated to an art form, but we all know that not everyone knows what to think of avant-garde art. And if there's one thing that Aden's proving on a daily basis, he's a (little) man bent on pushing the boundaries of his age. Like Picasso without all the anger-management issues, or Van Gogh with both ears, or, uh, Jackson Pollock with a bottle full of formula. You get the idea.

Blogsplosion!!!!!

Holy smokes people - it's easy to fall behind on this whole blogging thing! Especially when there's so dang much going on... since the last post, Aden's done so much more than mangle bananas. He's gone on long walks with the dogs, met his new buddy Julian, gotten his first ever Schwadesign shirt, met his Grandpapa Withers, learned to smoosh his face against the storm door, gotten tickled, laughed a lot, climbed multiple sets of stairs (yeek!), licked all sorts of things that shouldn't be licked, done a bunch of stuff that I won't have room to mention (sorry, folks!), taken his first trip to Ikea, and generally been incredibly cute in any number of diverse situations. Phew!

Rather than go on and on, we'll just let the pictures do the talking... and there's plenty of them to be had!

Rants & proclamations

In the last post, I mentioned Aden's favorite new game, "Stand Up in Front of the Stove and Yell Into the Oven Window." It should be noted that this is actually just a new subset of his old favorite game, "Stand in Front of Any Window, Pound on the Glass and Rant Gibberish, Pausing Only to Lick and Drool on Said Glass."

Yesterday was a big morning - Aden woke up at 4, so there was plenty of time to play The Window Game, as well as the Harass the Cats Game. That one's great because now that the weather's cold, the cats don't run so fast, and they keep pausing in warm spots so Aden can catch up to them.

In fact it was such a long morning that he even decided to try something new, and dabbled with this napping thing that everyone's talking about. Nothing major, mind you - he's not ready for a total napping commitment - but he got a good 45 minutes in laying on his dad's chest post-bottle. So, as the saying goes... baby steps.

Banana carnage, pt. 2

Those of you who might be faint of hear when it comes to our yellow-peeled friends might want to look away. What is posted below may not seem pretty to those of the banana persuasion. However, this blog is not about prettiness, it's about reality. And we all need to face the facts, here, people: Aden... eats... bananas.

Actually, now that I think about it, you really can't see too much carnage. But that Cheerio stuck to his face pretty much says it all: the kid is a cold-hearted banana killer.

Also for your review: Aden & Nugget, peacefully co-existing together. Note that the toy in the photo is almost perfectly equidistant between them. This is not an accident, on anyone's part.

Finally, we have a picture of one of Aden's favorite games: "Smile and Giggle as I Push Your Face Away." That's a good one. Almost as good as his newest fave (not yet captured for posterity): "Stand Up in Front of the Stove and Yell Into the Oven Window." We're not sure what he's trying to accomplish with that one, but he takes it very seriously.

Ba-na-nas

Just a quickie for the morning: we're still working on the whole pattern and rhythm thing, but let me tell you, Aden's sheer aversion to napping has reached a fever pitch. For the last two days, he has fully resisted both morning and afternoon naps, which means most of his day from 11:00 on has been a slow (or not so slow, in patches) meltdown. We've got plans, schemes and strategies going on, though. We will take down this nap resistance!

Yesterday, we had a visit from our adoption agencies social worker, just to see how Aden's adjusting to his new home. She agreed with everyone who's seen him so far, and says that he's a well-adjusted super-cutie (good thing she visited in the morning!).

This morning was particularly great - after another 12-hour marathon sleep, Aden awoke at 5 a.m. After a quick change and bottle, he was good to go. And go he did! There was plenty of playing, standing, wobbling, chasing the cats (he almost caught Dudley, who was particularly lethargic today), falling on his butt - all sorts of good stuff. Then, we topped it off with a nice meal of oatmeal mixed with blended apples, blueberries and bananas. Melissa came down to join in the breakfast action, and as a special treat, Aden got his hands on some REAL bananas. Which meant, essentially, that Aden got to cover his entire body and highchair in a slimy banana paste as he waved his arms around in the air (he waved them like he just didn't care, to borrow a phrase). Yum!

And now, now is the changing of the guard, as I head to the shower and Melissa gets the dog and the kid ready for a nice morning walk. Good times.

I promise to upload some photos of the banana slime fest this evening, so you can all witness the carnage first-hand.

Whew... what a weekend!

As Melissa said earlier, I did indeed catch The Sickness. I'm not sure whether I got it from the traveling or the kid, but whatever it was moved fast and took no prisoners. Thankfully, after a crazy-fast onset and miserable peak, I seem to be back to normal - normal enough to post, anyhow...

So, as hinted at in earlier e-mails, it's been quite a trip, but Aden's been an amazing trooper. We weren't sure how the whole airport / airplane thing was going to go over, so we prepared his diaper bag as though we were going on a cross-country hiking trip - food, toys, multiple changes of clothes: the whole shebang. The airport was a little overwhelming, but he handled it in stride - once we got through the seemingly endless check-in / documentation / paying random taxes / getting through customs, we found a wide-open, lagely un-trod-upon area across from our gate, so Melissa and I spent a little time playing with Aden there, and letting him crawl around.

We weren't sure how he'd handle the airplanes, but all told, he did just fine. We had been told that he should suck on something during takeoff (so his little inner ears wouldn't get uncomfortable from the pressure). Of course, in classic chow-hound fashion, he downed his entire bottle before we'd finished getting up to speed... but amazingly, he didn't seem to care as we got up to altitude. In fact, with a little rocking, he passed out cold, and stayed asleep for over half the flight.

Charlotte was a little hairier than we had hoped - our sources had told us that immigration would take only fifteen minutes, and that the people there were very kind and helpful. And while I would not necessarily call them "UNkind" in our experience, they seemed a little too swamped to be all buddy-buddy. Basically, we got shunted off to a waiting area where we waited... and waited... and waited. Finally, when we realized that a) we only had 45 minutes left to make our flight and b) our little bundle of joy had dropped a bundle of his own in his pants, it was time to take action. Thankfully, through a stroke of luck, when I went out to see the head officer about getting ahead in the queue, she was working on our papers. So we got through that as quickly as we could, Melissa got Aden to the bathroom (where he proceeded to pee all over himself as she was changing him), and we managed to get out just in time to make our flight.

While Aden wasn't at all upset on the flight home, he was in prime Drunk Monkey mode. So we ended up passing him back and forth, trying to keep up with the crazy wiggling. Thankfully, he didn't shout too much - just a few crazy hollers at the end.

And then, like that, we were home! It was so amazing to wake up in our own bed, in our own house, in our own hometown. As I said to Melissa, "It feels bizarre to be able to walk around freely without having to wait for our names to be called over loudspearkers, or to need to present documents to someone."

On Friday, we took Aden to his first pediatrician's appointment. Dr. Rexford, his doc, was great, and proclaimed him to be in perfect health. We had been a bit worried about his weight, but she put those fears to rest, pointing out that he's a little guy, and his weight is in perfect proportion to everything else. Further, the Guatemalan pediatrician had suggested that Aden was lactose intolerant, which Dr. Rexford doubted. She suggested that we try phasing lactose formula back in, which we did, and sure enough there were no problems at all.

Saturday and Sunday were also big days, and went by in a blur. While Aden isn't quite sure about the giant dog-beast who keeps licking his face, he is positive that he'd like to catch one or both of the cats. The cats, of course, have other opinions about that. The big lesson that we received today was all about his rhythms - with the end of daylight savings today, we missed his nap window, which meant that by this evening, he was a total over-tired, overstimulated mess. Total meltdown ensued, but after an abbreviated bathtime and quick change, he was down for the night - he fell asleep in a record-breaking fifteen minutes. Lesson learned - no skipping naps from here on out!

We've decided to try to keep the blog up, both as a record for our far flung friends & family as well as for ourselves. Posting may become a little more spotty now that we're not cooped up in a hotel room, but we will do our best to keep it as regular as possible. And without further ado, here's a brief pictoral summary of the big weekend.

A little sickness for Jeremy, but getting better!

Good news: We are doing great and Aden is adjusting awesomely. Last night he slept in his crib for 12 hours after only about an hour of fuss. Tonight, only 15 minutes of fuss. And happy as a clam are we all. Bad news: jeremy is sick. that's why no photos. tomorrow we hope he will be better.

Went to the doctors yesterday and aden passed with flying colors. he even took two shots on the leg like a total tough guy. doctor was impressed by him all around. yay for us!

Last thing: read this editorial if you can. I think it's the closest thing to true I have read about guatemalan adoption yet!

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/02/AR2007110201782.html

We made it!

Home sweet home. Aden is asleep in our bed catching a long overdue nap. We got in last night around midnight and after some quick settling in tried to catch some zzz's. All in all, the trip was realtively easy. Of course aden decided to pee all over himself while I was changing his diaper at the airport. And of course he decided to take a huge poop during our immigration interview. I think it was strategy--create such a "stink" that the agent expedited his processing. Aden is now a freshly minted US citizen. We are SOOO happy to be home. Thanks for all of the love and support while we were imprisoned...um, I mean visiting...at the Marriot Guatemala City. I think we would have gone completely bananas without it. We're going to keep the blog going so we hope you will continue to visit.

Today we go to the doctors and the grocery store...i am sure that there will be many more stories to tell. Jeremy has the perfect pictures to post later today that capture our 2,000 mile journey home, so stay tuned. Much love! MW

Outta here!

So we totally lied last night when we said that would be our last post from Guatemala. THIS is our last post. Scout's honor. Next time you see this dancing monkey, he'll be 100% USA certified.

Whoo-hoo!