Posted by Patrick Corkum on May 26, 2010
Ahh… late spring! That means… STRAWBERRIES! So my daughter (Mia) and I hiked off to the berry picking farm (a.k.a. our backyard) to pick strawberries. We have a relatively small patch out back that is mostly contained which has just massive amounts of strawberries. We were really looking forward to the production this year since last year the patch was tiny and it grew about ten times its size last year after the June harvest. Just today Mia and I picked almost 50 strawberries! They are sooOOOooo good! There is nothing like strawberries fresh from the garden. Never-mind the learning experience that goes with it for the kiddos. One of the best parts was when we washed them off. Mia got to practice her counting. I would wash one off, hand it to her and she would count it. We practiced her “th” sound with thirteen, thirty, etc… We also practiced that after 29, it is not “twenty-ten”, but thirty. See, it’s all about using everyday experiences to teach. That is how they learn best!
Posted by Patrick Corkum on May 10, 2010
Growing up, my wife took dance lessons with the local Recreation & Parks. So, as she has gotten older, she has really wanted to go back and dance some more. So, this year, she did just that. Well, this past weekend was her performance. I took the kids to her first performance on Saturday morning. We sat through an hour and a half of their interpretation of “Annie”. Fortunately, we did not go to the afternoon performance which was 3 hours long. Yikes!
Afterwards, I asked Mia whether she enjoyed it. She did. I then apologized to PJ for making him sit through it. <He did claim that he enjoyed it though.> Ty said that he liked it too. I think he did, but I’ll never know because he repeats everything the other two say, no matter what it is. “I like sardines”…. “I like saheenes”.
Then there’s me. I enjoy dance. However, recreational dance makes me think that I’m on recreational drugs. I don’t want to put anyone down, I am sure they worked hard at it, but I am not going to play it up… it is what it is. My problem is that I look for people to mess up. For instance, we went to see the Rockettes back in November. I pointed out every inaccuracy that I could find to my wife. This is just what I do. I love to notice problems and figure out how to improve them. Saturday’s performance made my brain tired. How many times can I watch 3 year old girls dressed in silly glittery outfits tap their feet and turn around, just to repeat tapping their feet again in absolutely perfect disarray to the oohs and aahs of the audience? Torture, I tell you…. torture! If Jack Bauer saw this, he would never use physical force again.
Okay, I know parents think it’s cute and all… I have a little girl too… I can understand. But you know what happens when it isn’t your little girl (or boy) up there anymore…
Posted by Patrick Corkum on May 8, 2010
So, I had to watch Ty yesterday afternoon all by himself. I can’t get much done inside with him, so I took him outside to play. He is quite good at entertaining himself in there. Well, he’s pretty good entertaining himself inside too. Outside, he plays in the sandbox, on the slide, with trucks and all kinds of constructive things. Inside, he screams, yells, whines, bangs things, and anything else that he can think of to annoy the heck out of me. If the other two are home, he will add hitting, taking toys and bugging. So, outside we went. Besides, I had plenty of work to do in my garden.
So, he played for a good while and was generally behaving, which doesn’t happen all that often. I was off watering the plants, tying back the raspberries, building a “trellis” for my peas and green-beans and a support thing-a-ma-bob for one of my grapes. Ty comes over to me and tells me that he wants to ride on his scooter. I tell him, “no, go play in the sand, you can’t ride your scooter with flip-flops on.” He goes away and plays with trucks. He comes back over to me and says “Daddy, I want go inside. I hot.” “Ty, it’s not hot out here [it's like 72... in the sun]; we’re staying outside. Go play in the sand.” Ty walks slowly over towards the sandbox… walks right past it, finds a chair in the shade of the red maple, and climbs up. He then puts his head on the arm rest and doesn’t move for the next hour and a half.
I love how some people can just pick a spot and sleep. I can’t even climb into a hotel bed and sleep, no matter how tired I am. Some people have all the luck!
Posted by Patrick Corkum on April 30, 2010
This is now the third breakout (out of four) that I have been in with Michael Monroe of Tapestry. It is the second one that he has done with his wife Amy. I LOVE these guys! They are so passionate not only about helping families around them, but helping other ministries. They have so many materials out there to help you do what they do.
This session is the session that I have been most looking forward to as it really relates to where I am right now, knowing that there is a huge need around us (and for us) in the Maryland area. This session is about post-placement support. What is post-placement support? Well, your adoption agency typically helps you through the adoption process and right up until the adoption is finalized. What then? They try to tell you about things that you might encounter, but there is no way to REALLY prepare you.
Adoption comes with problems that are unique to adoption and there is a huge gap out there helping people with these problems. The church does not do a good job, partially because they just don’t know that there is a need and partially because they are not equipped. We have heard so many times that people wish that there was help, they wish there was someone to help them through the post-adoption process (which is life-long).
I can’t wait to watch the video series called Empowered to Connect that they have created with Dr. Karyn Purvis! Check out the videos they created here.
Posted by Patrick Corkum on April 23, 2010
Yesterday was PJ’s baseball practice. He plays coach pitch. This is a really strange thing for me as I really don’t get why they just don’t use tees. Maybe they are finding kids hit better when they start this way younger, I don’t know. Anyway, 5-7 year olds are really funny to watch on the baseball field. Their minds are EVERYWHERE! Well, everywhere except baseball. I was watching my son on the field playing first base (really just the kid closest to first). He’s jumping all over the place, throwing pretend baseballs, pretending to catch baseballs that are just far enough away from him that he needs to jump or dive. Who cares about the batter, right? Of course, then you have the kids that are on the bases. The ball is hit….. I said the ball is hit…… ooo… look at the airplane! I think they need a coach for every kid to tell them exactly what to do and when, because they just stand there, oblivious to what is going on.
Posted by Patrick Corkum on April 20, 2010
Last weekend, I was driving my mini-van back home from DC after the Cherry Blossom Festival. My parents, my mother-in-law, PJ, and Mia were in the car with me. I expected Mia to fall asleep quickly. Instead, we got the super-talkative Mia. At some point along the trip, she wanted to play Rock/Paper/Scissors with someone in the back seat. Well, there were no takers. So, I thought I would be clever and see if she would play with me, “Mia, I’ll play with you, just think about what you choose and then we’ll tell each other and see who wins.” So, she agreed and we played.
BOTH: Rock, Paper, Scissors…. SHOOT!
Daddy: Mia, what are you?
Mia: Rock
Daddy: I’m paper. Ready, Rock, Paper, Scissors, SHOOT! What are you?
Mia: Scissors
Daddy: Oh, I’m a rock! I win again.
Well, this went on for a good while until someone convinced her to ask me what I was first.
BOTH: Rock, Paper, Scissors, SHOOT!
Daddy: Mia, what are you?
Mia: No, what are you?
<back and forth until finally…>
Daddy: I’m paper.
Mia: Me too!
Laughter ensues throughout the car.
Daddy: Okay, let’s do it again! Rock, Paper, Scissors, SHOOT!
<same conversation as to who says first>
Daddy: I’m rock.
Mia: I’m scissors.
So, no matter which way it went, I don’t think that I ever lost! Fast forward 1 week….. PJ and I are sitting on the couch waiting for the others so that we could watch a movie.
Daddy: Let’s play rock/paper/scissors. But, I don’t want to use my hands, we’ll just tell each other what we are.
PJ: Okay! Rock, Paper, Scissors… SHOOT! I’m paper!
I am a horrible father!
Posted by Patrick Corkum on April 17, 2010
Okay, I am going to be a bit more serious in this post for a change. There has been a significant amount of news and discussion around this family who took their adopted child and sent him on a plane with a one-way ticket back to Russia. People are so quick to judge this family and their action. Did they do the right thing? Absolutely not! I cannot condone what they did. However, who was providing them with the needed support?
We in the US are horrible at this thing called community. It is indeed true that it takes a community to raise a child. It is especially true when the child has been adopted and even MORE so if the child was not an infant when adopted. However, in the US, we are a “strong”, “independent” people that cannot show weakness or request help from others. This is just pure hogwash. We are no different than anyone else; we need other people. There are not enough people supporting adoptive parents. I know first hand that raising an adopted child that was not an infant when adopted is hard. It has been much harder than raising my biological children.
The Church needs to step in and support these families. If we as a Church do not step in and support these families with whatever it is that they need, meals, counseling, an ear, anything, then we are as much to blame for these kind of events as the family. We need to stop complaining and step up and make a change. We cannot simply hope that somebody else is going to take action. YOU must take the action and help. And if you need help helping, Melissa, myself, and several others are here to help you!
Via con Dios!
Posted by Patrick Corkum on April 11, 2010
My parents came into town this weekend for the Cherry Blossom Festival down in DC yesterday. Unfortunately, as I am sure you could figure out from my post on Puking, my wife and youngest son (Ty) were unavailable to attend the festival. There were a ton of people down there. It was unfortunate because the festival would have been really cool. That is, if you could see anything. The day was rather interesting and I could’ve chosen about 10 different things to write about from yesterday. I may still do that, but I thought I would post on our dinner because I love the restaurant so much. The restaurant is bd’s Mongolian Barbeque. The place rocks! I have been going there for over 10 years now. Everyone that I bring there loves it!
The restaurant is a really cool idea, and I have been to other Mongolian BBQs before, but this one really Americanizes it (is that really a word?). The premise of this place is that you take a bowl, fill it with raw food (everything from beef, shrimp, pork and chicken to different style noodles to an assortment of vegetables), fill a little cup with a sauce (such as Teriyaki, peanut, Szechuan, etc…), add some spices if you want, and then bring it to someone to cook on a really large grill right before your very eyes! <Here’s where you say “ooooohhhhh”, “ahhhhhh”>. Oh yeah, then you eat it. Now, I am a moron for not taking a picture of the food bar. But, I did take one of the grill:
Unfortunately, the picture I took does not really do a great job of explaining what goes on. Go Patrick! What they do is take a lot of people’s food and cook each person’s food right next to each other and three guys walk around the grill (not sure how they don’t get cooked themselves being over the grill for so long) and use these long knives to cut up and cook your food, moving one to the next. The great part is that when you get your food at the end of it all, you sometimes get a surprize! What is that surprize, you may ask? Well, my daughter figured it out quite quickly, noticing a green pepper on her plate. <She didn’t choose peppers from the food bar>. Now, you are saying, but I am a vegetarian, what if someones meat gets mixed in with mine? I say to you, stop being a vegetarian and eat some meat for crying out loud, it is good for you! They, on the other hand, have some sympathy, if you tell them, and put up barriers between the food to help you out. If you have an allergy, they have a grill in the back that they will cook the food on, just let them know.
I always love the food and there is something for everyone, no matter what mood you’re in. I took a picture of my creation <I love cheese and throw a lot on, I’m weird like that>.
Oh, you get to go back for as many plates as you want and they won’t make you eat one that you made if you don’t like it. Isn’t that nice? Anyway, moving on, my son was not feeling too well, it seemed he was quite tired. His appetite was a bit off, so he just got noodles:
Which, may I add, he ate almost nothing of. To show you how much he ate, I doctored the picture above a little to let you play a game of “Find the Missing Food” to show how much he ate:
Yes, there is food missing. It was his birthday, so they gave him a free sundae, which I took a picture of and which he ate more of than the noodles:
If you can’t tell, my daughter loves being on front of the camera. Fortunately, PJ didn’t eat too much of his dinner, because my wife would’ve had a lot more work to do when we found out in the middle of the night that he too has the bug that she and Ty had/have. See yesterday’s post on Puking. Anyway, all the employee’s wear shirts with sayings on them that really fit my sense of humor. The sayings are also scattered around the restaurant on other things too. For instance, on my soda glass:
Okay, I’m wrapping up the post, I swear! I know it is getting long. I am sorry, please forgive me. The place has one down side, in my opinion (at least the DC location). The food is good, but it is the kind of food that can make you have to use a special room, if you catch my drift. And, as for the men, they have a special room on the main level, which is a one person special room, and another up a short flight of stairs which has two standing spots and one full-service throne. That makes a total of 2 useful places for men for a large number of people. Fortunately, it has not been an issue for me, but, I imagine someday it might be. Anyway, if you have one near you, take your kids there, they will LOVE IT!
Posted by Patrick Corkum on April 10, 2010
Last night both my youngest and my wife were in the bathroom kneeling before the throne, emptying their stomachs. Okay, my wife was. My youngest I think was just out to get us, puking twice in his crib and forcing my wife to do laundry in the middle of the night as he soiled EVERYTHING in his crib. Seriously, I have NO IDEA how puke got in some of the places it did. It is almost as if he was the kid from The Exorcist, and his head spun around as he was puking. I think kids just have a knack for making things as complicated as possible. After the two incidents, we put a Pack & Play in our room and let him sleep in there. He proceeded to throw up yet again. This time, we were prepared for we had given him the Happy Bucket! So, we told him that if he had to throw up, to do so into the Happy Bucket. Indeed, when he threw up, he did. However, he is three, his English isn’t great yet and he is not the most intuitive child in the world. So, when he needs to throw up, he laid the bucket sideways and threw up into a horizontal bucket. He might as well have thrown up on a table. Oh well, fortunately it wasn’t much. After we learned that he couldn’t use the Happy Bucket effectively, we taught him. We sat there and made him practice until he could get the action down three times in a row. So, we said, “What are you going to do if you have to throw up?” So, he lays the bucket on it’s side and makes a funny pretend puking noise. No. No No No No No. Okay, we sit him up, “Sit up, then throw up.” Ask him again, “What are you going to do if you have to throw up?” Again, he lays the bucket on the side, repeat whole process. Again…. Again…. Again… Finally, through my irritation, he gets a stern talking to about listening and doing what daddy says. Well, that fixed him good… three times in a row, he sits up and makes his funny throw up noise into the bucket. It is days like this that I am SO excited to be a parent!
Update…. My wife comes over and tells me that my potty-trained 3 year old has diarrhea in his pull-up! Hooray!
Posted by Patrick Corkum on April 7, 2010
Okay, so I’ve done PJ and Mia on the past two days. Now it is time for me to express Ty’s personality through pictures taken on Easter. Please remember, the point of this gallery is to express his personality. I needed a much bigger gallery this time than the two before. Please be sure to click each thumbnail as the pictures are intended to be seen in their full size!
