[Crunch, crunch, crunch.]
There’s nothing better than crunching through fall leaves.
Except maybe diving into them.
Tag Archives: Milo
M83 Backup Singer Audition
So the other day I watched this video of a guy trying out to be a backup singer for M83. I don’t know anything about M83, but it was kind of a funny video. The best part is that Lexi and Milo were watching it with me and started singing along.
A few days later, the song, “Midnight City,” came on the Current and Lexi and Milo both started singing the backup part. Hilarous.
New in Nov: M83 Vocal Audition (Nov 3rd) from DaveAOK on Vimeo.
Mudula Mamas Raise $50K for Clean Water
On Sunday the Mudula Mamas competed in a triathlon in Dallas and raised more than $50,000 for clean water in Mudula, Ethiopia. All three of the Mudula Mamas are mothers of children born in Mudula and the money will provide one-third of the total funding needed for the Mudula Water project.
I was pushing the project hard last week, including a special push for matching funds on the Ethiopian holiday of Meskel (which we easily secured).
You can see pictures and learn more about the Mudula Mamas on the Facebook page, which thanks to this effort went from something like a few dozen fans to more than 800 (it sure helps when some kind souls offer to donate $1 per ‘like’).
Thanks to everybody who donated and helped spread the word. I’ve been a little too busy to really get behind some charity efforts in the past year or so, and while I didn’t even do that much for this effort, it’s encouraging to see people give in support of clean water in Ethiopia.
When Milo gets older and starts asking questions about Ethiopia I want him to know that we still care about his homeland. That’s why I get involved in projects like this.
A Sunday in Ethiopia
I wrote a piece for The High Calling about adoption. Specifically I wrote about the day we met our son’s family in Southern Ethiopia and the roller coaster of emotions that day held.
We woke up early on our third day in Ethiopia. Today was the day we would meet our son’s family.
In March of 2009 my wife and I traveled to Ethiopia to adopt our son. We looked into his eyes for the first time on Friday. We spent Saturday morning holding his tiny body in our arms as he slept. On Sunday we wouldn’t see him at all, but we would meet his birth family.
We crowded into a van and drove three and a half hours to the Hosanna region in Southern Ethiopia. We were told to expect a harrowing journey—bumpy roads, no seat belts, crazy drivers. This trip is the reason we purchased emergency medical evacuation insurance. But the newly paved road was smooth and offered beautiful glimpses of life in rural Ethiopia. We saw cows and goats crowding the road. We stopped to tour a traditional thatched roof hut. I saw women gathered around a muddy stream with yellow jerry cans, collecting their daily water.
Read the full story.
If you want more on our adoption experience, you can always check out my book Addition by Adoption: Kids, Causes & 140 Characters.
Family of Five
Now we’re a family of five.
Say Hello to Yeshumnesh
We announced earlier this spring that we were pursing the adoption of an older child. We never imagined that a few short months later we’d be welcoming an 11-year-old girl into our family. But that’s what happened.
We’ve been pretty tight-lipped about this adoption, both because of the speed of the process (we got the call on June 8) and the nature of the situation. But it’s happening. So the beans get spilled.
Last week Abby and our good friend Nicole traveled to Anchorage, Alaska to meet Yeshumnesh (pronounced Ye-shem-nesh). They return today (hopefully). She’s a bright, out-going and active Ethiopian girl who will turn 11 in August. She originally came to the United States in December of 2009, but that original adoption is being disrupted (that’s adoption lingo for what happens when a child is placed with a family and it doesn’t work out). The reasons behind that disruption will remain private, but in general this family was not the right fit for Yeshumnesh.
Yeshumesh will go to school a few blocks from our house. She’s very athletic and enjoys soccer, biking, cross-country skiing and ice skating (hockey!). She likes to color and enjoys listening to stories. She loves movies, including High School Musical and Hannah Montana. She’s pretty good with her English though is still catching up. She’ll have her own bedroom across from Lexi & Milo’s that we hope we can decorate together.
This has been a pretty insane week. And I’m not in Alaska. I stayed home with the kids and tried to maintain some normalcy. This is the longest Milo has ever been away from Abby and I realized it’s also the longest I’ve been away from my wife in, well, I don’t remember how long. Definitely since we had kids, probably longer. Maybe since we got married.
And I’m sure it’s been crazier in Alaska. Welcoming an older child into your family isn’t like adopting an infant. It’s a whole new ball of wax. We’ve had a rollercoaster of a summer preparing for this and it’s finally coming together. It’s not going to be easy. Yeshumnesh needs to get used to our family—and an entirely new life—and we need to get used to her. Lexi and Milo will have their own transitions, so it could be bumpy all the way around as we get used to one another.
We’ll be leaning on a lot of folks for support, from social workers and therapists to friends and family. I’ve been leaning on them pretty hard this week and it’s just me and the little ones. I don’t know where we’d be without help—definitely not here, that’s for sure. You can’t do this kind of thing without help.
Our friends and family have been incredibly supportive of Milo’s adoption and we’re hoping to find the same love and support this time around. Any efforts to shore up our sanity are always appreciated. If you’re the praying type, we could use lots of prayer for the remaining legal issues, travel, transitions, family bonding, logistics and financial considerations.
I never imagined I’d be the father of three and rocking a mohawk at 31.
Head-Spinning Summer
This summer was supposed to be relaxing. Abby would be home from school and we’d have some free time. We had a lot packed into the summer, but it was summer and it was going to be nice and slow.
Instead the past month has been pretty head-spinning. Our slow, leisurely adoption plan that likely wouldn’t have seen a child join our family until next summer went into overdrive with a single phone call we received about 30 days ago. Since then that relaxing summer plan has gone completely out the window. The best-laid plans, huh?
Let’s recap the last 30 days:
- We skipped an all-church camp weekend in Northern Wisconsin due to sickness (failed plans is going to be a recurring theme).
- Lexi started weekly swim lessons.
- I pitched my book to the Social Media Breakfast crowd and raised some extra money for charity: water (proving once again how much I hate and am terrible at public speaking).
- We celebrated a birthday and Father’s Day.
- Abby had an entire week of day-long conferences.
- We had a major article appear in the local paper hyping my book (still getting comments about that one—so cool).
- I spent the night and a separate evening at church.
- I skipped out on the week-long youth group missions trip to Chicago I was supposed to chaperone because things were too crazy.
- A brand new niece came into the world (and I’ve lost count of how many people are pregnant right now).
- We moved Milo from his crib into a real bed.
- We switched Lexi and Milo into a new bedroom.
- We installed a new cabinet in the bathroom and somehow acquired three large pieces of furniture.
- Both sets of grandparents visited on the same weekend.
- We averaged 4-5 meetings, playdates or non-standard commitments every week. In a normal week we maybe average one.
- We’ve had a total of 12 meetings or scheduled conference calls regarding the adoption. When I added them all up I was actually surprised it wasn’t more.
- Tomorrow we attend the massive Summer Mehaber, a picnic for Ethiopian families, and my book will have its own booth (thankfully I hired a couple guys to run the booth for me).
- The only reason I have time to write this post is because Lexi is sick and we’re staying home from today’s massive zoo trip with Ethiopian families in town for the picnic.
Father’s Day in the Pioneer Press
I woke up to seeing myself in the Pioneer Press this morning as a part of a Father’s Day feature, Tweet Dad: West St. Paul father writes about his kids’ lives 140 characters at a time.
OK, not really.
I actually woke up to Milo storming into our bedroom at 5:45. We graduated Milo to a real bed last night and are now very appreciative of the cage-like qualities of a crib.
But after that I saw the incredible Pioneer Press feature on my book, Addition by Adoption: Kids, Causes & 140 Characters, complete with a little photo gallery and lots of details about my life as a twittering dad. I love that they mentioned my blogging history going back to 1998—and my comment that it was really bad back then (it was). I’m glad they included our latest addition at the very end. And I can’t quite pick a favorite picture—our kitchen dance party with Lexi in her ballerina, the fact that Milo in sporting his Red Wings shirt, or the five of us—dogs included—piled around the laptop (a rare moment indeed). But my favorite part about the story is that I didn’t say anything stupid to the reporter.
If you’re checking out my site for the first time, thanks for stopping by:
- You can follow my tweets here.
- You can buy a copy of Addition by Adoption directly from Amazon or check out other purchase options if you’d like to donate more, or want multiple or digital copies.
- Finally, you can donate directly to charity: water to support our efforts to build a clean water well in Ethiopia. We need roughly $3,500 more.
And a bigtime thanks to everyone who makes this stuff happen. I should specifically mention TriLion Studios and Ronald Cox, who volunteered to do the book’s cover and layout respectively, and the Pioneer Press for doing such a great story.
Thanks and happy Father’s Day!
Hotel Pools, McDonald’s and a Funeral
Last weekend we went to the funeral of Abby’s uncle, Lee Erlandson. It was a whirlwind 32-hour trip:
- We intentionally picked a hotel with a good pool to give the kids something to do. Turns out Milo is suicidal around pools. He’d just walk right off the edge into the water, not even attempting to jump or push off at all. I thought he was going to crack the back of his head on the side of the pool, never mind the whole toddler drowning thing.
- We had to explain a funeral to Lexi, who was still trying to process Jesus dying and rising again from Easter. Not a good combo.
- Lexi had also been watching Beauty and the Beast in the car and wanted to know who killed Uncle Lee and whether or not he was a princess. Thankfully we had that conversation in the hotel and not at the funeral home.
- Lexi managed to sit through a 75-minute service with a minimum of interruptions and outbursts. Milo, on the other hand, spent most of the service outside with Abby. Yes, we were those weird people who brought kids to a funeral. We actually had no babysitting options and thought it would be a much shorter service. In retrospect, I think sitting through the service with a 4-year-old brought some levity to the whole thing (though I’m not sure if anyone else felt that way).
- And when did McDonald’s get so swanky? We stopped for a quick break and enjoyed a little Nickelodeon on the personal TVs in our cushy booth. I was tempted to bring in the laptop and check out the wifi with a little frappuccino. OK, not really. But it was an option.
- I know I’m not good at smalltalk, but I’m really bad at funeral smalltalk. I think “So how’s it going?” was the first question out of my mouth to just about everyone. Including a brother and son of the deceased.
What I found especially thought-provoking was the funeral itself. The service stretched on so long because they opened it up for anyone to share memories about Lee (open mic at a funeral?). I didn’t know Lee very well at all—I’ve only seen him a handful of times—so it was interesting to hear coworkers, friends and teammates share their memories and impressions.
Teaching the Kids to Watch Hockey
Tonight I watched the Detroit Red Wings with the kids. The Wings faced elimination against the San Jose Sharks, but they battled back and won 7-1 (the first time in 45 years the Wings have won when facing elimination in a 3-0 situation—or something, didn’t quite catch that crazy stat).
Anyway, the Wings scored five times in the first period (on only 9 shots!), so I had plenty of opportunity to teach Milo how to say, “Goal!”
I also got to show Lexi an octopus (a Red Wings playoff tradition).