What a difference a family makes

When we met

her she was

quiet and scared.

She did not laugh much and she just sadly looked at us. This beautiful, abandoned child.

She had people to watch her but it

was just a job for them.

When we took her home she owned nothing. We

had to bring her clothes to come home in.

Now she laughs all the time.

She dances and hugs. Sings and runs.

When I pick her up

she tells everyone around us

"That's my daddy!"

I saw on the web someone who asked

"How can you love someone else's

child?"

I can't get the answer out of my head. "She is not someone else's

child. She is my child"

Everyone should have room to love just

one more child. A child who needs you.

147millionorphans.com

Things no one told me about raising a daughter

So I thought I was a pro. Three sons under my belt, how different could a daughter be. Well, over a year into my adoption of a beautiful little girl and I have learned:

Shoes: I really thought the whole women and shoes thing was a learned trait. However, after watching my daughter I am convinced it is gender related. At 3 she not only loves shoes (she has like 8) but 98% of the time she can pick out shoes that match her clothes...my success rate is more like 50%.

Potty: No matter how much a little girl wants to stand up and pee in the toilet like her brothers it is not going to work and it is quite messy.

Private Parts: It is one thing to have a boy proudly display his privates. However, when a little girl does it, daddy has to be peeled off the ceiling by a laughing mommy. If I could afford a therapist I would be there right now.

Fighting: Little girls don't get mad they get even. A was roughhousing with RP. She took it the whole time with a bit of whining. However, I will never forget the smile on her face when she slammed shut the door on A's hand five minutes later. I feel sorry for the man who gets on her bad side when she grows up!

Clothes: In the last 14 years none of my sons has danced around the house telling everyone "My clothes are pretty!". My daughter does it all the time.

Food: My sons eat the entire pizza and then start eying the box. My daughter eats a bit of 5 different foods, grows almost a foot but does not gain any weight.

Bedtime: With my sons, if they woke up they came straight out of their rooms. It never seemed to occur to them that they were going to get put back in there. My daughter will wake up and carefully sneak down to her big brother (C1). Sometimes it is hours before we realize she is in there watching him play Xbox.

Well that is about all I can think of right now. I am sure I will come up with 100 more as soon as I hit post!

Today I will accomplish nothing!

So today I am proud to say I accomplished very little and in all likelihood I will forget this entire day in a year or two.

I woke up this morning with A and the RP as usual. We actually slept into 7:45! Last night was a night of musical beds though. A and the RP went to bed in their rooms and the Wife and I slept in our room. Somewhere around 3 I woke up with A, RP, the Wife and myself all in one bed. So I grabbed the RP and she and I went to A's room (he has a queen bed) and went back to sleep. Then around 5, A woke up and went looking for me. He then climbed in bed with the RP and I. So I wake up in a queen with two kids and the Wife is sprawled in her own king bed(what is wrong with this picture)!

But I digress. So having woken up successfully, we woke up C2 and went to Starbucks. For some reason C2 has gotten very clingy lately. He wakes up for breakfast with me everyday and now he wants to be woken up on Saturdays for the breakfast trip. Surprisingly enough on Sunday's when we have Mass he seems fine with the the idea of sleeping in and missing church!

After Starbucks it was off to Walmart and then(drum roll please)....nothing. Absolutely nothing.We spent the rest of the day sitting around, reading and watching TV. C2 and I spent a bit trying to clean up the playroom (sort of a never-ending task we tackle every once and a while) but other than that we have been gloriously unproductive. A is actually running around with no cloths on and watching TV (he is only 4 so I guess it is okay).

I think it is great sometimes to just stop and enjoy life. I spend all my time endlessly doing something but every once and while it is great to look at your day and say "Today I will accomplish nothing!"

Fun things about living in South Florida

I thought I would put together a list of some of the interesting things I have experienced/learned over the last year living in Miami:

1) Every Saturday morning a Spanish language newspaper is delivered to my house. I have no idea why or who is paying for it. I don't know how to speak enough Spanish to figure out how to cancel it. But the paper has not stopped in a year and it just keeps coming.

2) By my office close to the airport in Miami there are people who sell fruit and water bottles beside the road. As you stop they run out to the cars and sell their wares. It is like being in a foreign country! There was even a guy who sold these great churros (a sugary pastry) but he disappeared one day and I have not seen him since.

3) The further south you go, the more optional the stop lights become. I was driving home recently and basically both sides of a stop light were running the lights. So all the people with the red light were driving through it. That meant that the green light side was stopped. So when the green light started to turn red that side started going...and ran their red light. Then the cycle began again!

4) Cuba is not just a concept down here. It is very real. You meet many people who fled the country and they are not amused by Castro at all.

5) It is really that hot. You get about two weeks of cold and then it peaks back up into the 70's and 80's during the day. At night it is in the 60's. Most neighborhood pools are heated so people swim all year here. You can go to the beach in January and it is packed with people sun bathing.

6) People think a lot about hurricanes. They are sort of the elephant in the corner of the room. No one wants to talk about them but you always have to think about them. People sit around talking about the best way to maintain generators and what neighborhoods have the most buried power lines.

7) The Caribbean is literally in your backyard. For 25-$30 you can hop on a boat and go over there anytime.A boat leaves from the port 20 minutes from my house. It goes out every day at 8 and is back by 10PM.

8) It is really one long city. From the tip of Miami to the north of Palm Beach is 100 miles of residential neighborhoods all stretched along the coast.

9) The freeways are huge and rarely full. Most of the major roads here are built to get a lot of people out of town as quickly as possible(hurricanes again). I rarely drop below 80 on my morning commute. I am frequently passed by police doing 85-90!

10) It is actually a great place to live if you do not mind that you have to learn some Spanish and you basically have no seasons.

A typical weekend

This is not going to be an interesting post. Mostly me just getting background down in the blog for later posts. I really hope through this blog to better remember my two youngest children's early years. Now that C1 and C2 are getting older it seems like I cannot remember much of what it was like when they were really young. I know we had a blast but is all seems a bit vague. So through this blog I am hoping that in ten years I can look back and remember better all the great times I had with the kids.

Now that we are in Miami we have settled into a pretty good weekend routine. The routine starts on Saturday at the bright and early time of 6:30 AM. A and RP are used to waking up then Monday through Friday and they don't really care that it is Saturday and we are supposed to be sleeping.

So up we go at 6:30-7:00 AM. We load up on the bike and ride to our local Starbucks (about 4 miles away). We eat breakfast and sit around there for about an hour. The Starbucks folks are used to me and my kids showing up in various stages of undress every day. I am dressed but sometimes the kids are in PJs!.

After we get back home it is time to clean up the downstairs and figure out our shopping list for the week. Then the RP, A and I head to the Super Walmart. We tried to shop at the local grocery store but when you are feeding 6 people it is just too expensive. The 15-20% I save at Walmart is well worth the 10 miles I have to drive to get there.

So that leads to a nice 1-2 hour adventure in Walmart. We usually end the ride with several opened items in the cart since the kids seem to view our load of groceries as free game if they get hungry.

By the time we are done it is lunch time. So back home we go. Saturday afternoons are sort of free time for us. Usually A, RP and I end up on some type of adventure. The rest of the family sometimes joins, sometimes not. It is really variable. Right now we have built a sort of menu of amusement options. We can go to the zoo, the beach, the playground, the train or some other adventure to be named later. Usually it is just the 3 of us though.

Sunday starts the same way around 7. Except we drive to Starbucks. There are three Starbucks in my area. We call them near, far and downtown (the Starbucks is in the town center). Since we ride our bike to near, usually Sunday is far or downtown. After Starbucks it is time for church.

Church is really an adventure. It is usually A, RP, myself and at least one of the older children. After Church you get to go to brunch which is a big treat. I do not like to eat out (too many kids) so that is the best chance the kids have of going somewhere fun.

Then Sunday afternoon is open time again. Usually on Sunday we combine something local with some work around the house. Then Monday starts the work week again!

How to make Cuban Coffee

I had a request to explain what the heck Cuban coffee is. Cafe Cubano (as it is called down here) is a very strong mix of sugar and espresso. The Cubans tell me that you should be able to taste a good cup of coffee for a solid 10 minutes after you drank it. As a certified caffeine addict I begged one of the ladies in our office to teach me the secret of making it.

So you start with an espresso machine (like the picture here). This one cost me $35 at Walmart though I saw it on sale during Christmas for $26 or so.

You are also going to need a small pot to mix the sugar in(see above). I use a metal creamer but a coffee cup works also (though it is harder to use).

For every cup of coffee you are going to need 2 TB of ground espresso and 2 TB of plain white sugar. You pack the ground espresso into the machine just like you always do when making espresso. Then you take the 2 TB of white sugar and put them in the mixing container. Then you crank on the espresso machine.

The next piece is critical. You capture the first 6-8 drops of the espresso right as they come out of the machine. This is the hottest and strongest of the espresso.I thought this was sort of silly when I started making the coffee but it does actually make a difference. Then you put the espresso pot onto the machine and let the machine brew the rest of the espresso.

While it is doing that you are going to mix the sugar. Taking the first drops of espresso you carefully pour a little bit onto the sugar and start stirring it hard with a spoon. You have to get a thick light brown colored paste. Too much and it is liquidy, too little and the sugar is still too granular. So you essentially whip the sugar and the drops of espresso together.

Then you pour the espresso over the sugar paste. Stir that mix and then pour it back into your espresso pot. In the end you should have a cup of espresso with a thick, light brown head on (almost like a beer). Then you drink it! Usually at work the Cubans will drink the coffee from a 2 TB little cup. It is definitely a sipping drink.

Thanks Annie

This is what is left of the buttermilk pie I made based on Annie's recipe on her blog One Mother's Day. This was T + 5 minutes after oven removal. I suspect it will be gone be EOD. And it was easy enough that even a guy could make it! This is about the most complicated cooking I have done in several years since it did not come out of a box (plus water and eggs)!