As I sit here at 6:30 am writing this during the craziest of football times. Just over 11 hours until kickoff, a day after learning that the hokie bird gets to kick the shit out of a tree on a regular basis and while I am deeply involved it doesn't matter.
I am not up at this hour preparing to drive the bburg, or preping for game day festivities. I wont even be watching the game tonight, or any games today. I've known all this for about 2 weeks. I've packed my bags, reminded my wife to hurry up, as we have to catch out flight. It's rough after a sparsely slept night due to more anxiety than I've ever had, but we are as prepared as we can be for what comes next.
We are going to the middle of nowhere to meet for the first time two lovely young girls that were hope to adopt very soon (not soon enough if you know anything about the foster system, and these girls have it fairly ok). We hope they like us, we hope it goes well and they are I'm sure as nervous about this as my wife and I.
My life is going to change in a big way today. Amd football won't be around because there are more important things, way more important things than a hobby that we all love. I hope the team shows up and wins, I really hope we win. But if we don't it won't matter because hopefully my life will be changed for the better today.
Comments
Well, if we don't win; it sounds like you and your wife have and those two little girls won as well
Life, family, compassion, love. All of these are more important than sports. Always have been and always will be. Thanks for the perspective. I wish you and your wife (and those girls) the very best in life, regardless of how it all unfolds.
Well thank you for the punch to the feels this morning. Keeping you all in my thoughts. I won't bullshit you, parenting is hard work. But honestly, you can't mess it up as long as you're acting out of love. Best advice I can give is don't beat yourself up when you feel like you make a mistake, because your kids won't care. Have a safe flight and I hope to see some photos later!
As a father to seven (the youngest of which just moved out today to start his post-college career), I concur with Joe's sentiments.
...if that empty nest starts to get to you, my 8 and 4 year olds are available for outsourcing.
And my 10 and 13 year olds.
Ha ha! Your kids would come back to you tired and with dirty clothes from playing outside, but with smiles on their faces. And, my "outsourcing" fees would be astronomical.
I also have five grandkids, but sadly they don't live that close to me.
My youngest is a recent VT Marketing grad. He's very active looking for a career job. Many phone interviews, zooms, and a good number of in-person, but yet to find a match. He has a sales internship, but no future with the small company. I like him around the home, but looking forward to him being settled on a path and on his own.
Here's to adding two more members to Hokie Nation! Hope everything goes fantabulously.
Thank you James. I hope everything goes smoothly and you are soon a complete family. I've pointed out in the past that it's important to keep perspective (although due to a negative occurence). It's always encouraging to hear about something happening to someone that is life changing in a positive way. Safe travels to all of you.
There's no greater joy or heartache than you'll feel as a parent. You're gonna do great. I'm excited to be taking my two little ladies to their first game in Lane next week.
Best of luck, hoss. I really hope it goes well for all involved.
Congrats man. My close friends just adopted, I know how grueling the process is.
Football is special because it's the thing that brings us together. Don't give it up. Bring your kids into the fold. Bond over your misery. Sign them up for TKPC now. (/s at the end lmao, but serious at first)
Happy Game Day to you, sir, and hope you remind them that the day they joined your family was the day we kick started the Pry era by curb stomping ODU. Best of luck on the journey you start today. Joe said it much better above, but make your your decisions from a place of love and always keeping in mind the kind of people you want them to grow up to be and you'll do great.
"Daddy, what is curb stomping?"
How old are they? Are they sisters?
Best of luck to you and your wife. No doubt it will be an incredible journey filled with joys and stresses.
You didn't ask for it but I have these two pieces of advice:
a) Love them the best you can
b) Listen to your wife and follow her lead on raising them, but never forget they need a father's input on their lives.
Thank you for sharing!
I'll echo what Joe said above, if you're present, humble and loving you can mess up a whole lot and still be a great parent.
Safe travels and good luck with everything!
I guess the only promotion higher than King would be Dad.
Good luck.
I have had no greater joy than my kids and grandkids in my life. I wish the same for you and your wife.
Wishing you all the best of luck and future happiness. Thoughts and prayers.
Dude, you and your wife are a credit to humans and the various influences on your life.
Kudos to you and your wife for having the correct priorities, and for opening your heart and home to those who need you. And thanks for reminding us all that as much as we love our Hokies, there are far more important things in life.
Awesome. Excited for you and your wife. Hoe is indeed correct. Parenting is hard work. So rewarding, but literally the hardest thing I have ever attempted. Best advice: own your mistakes. Say you are sorry, ask for forgiveness, move on. Best thing I can think to model for kids. Congrats man. Go Hokies
Classic typo. Or...
Since I have a second to catch up, thanks everyone for the advice and well wishes.
Girls are sisters, middle school age.
I am not giving up football watching, but today is one of the few chances I get to spend with them and they have a say in if they want to come and live with us. So the anxiety is really over that, I am not as worried to parent as you just handle whatever comes at you and it could be anything so why worry about infinite possibilities. I have 3 weekends in person to make a great impression, while not setting stupid expectations (yes they can have a coke with dinner, no you can't have cake for dinner).
There is a much longer drawn-out story about our journey with these girls that has been stressful for 4-5 months. But we has our first face time/phone call with them 2 weeks ago. There have been a lot of downs in our journey to adopt and we are really excited that this is finally a major turn for the better so we really want this to work out.
Middle school / starting puberty is a tough time for all kids, but especially girls. You my think you understand the female mind but I'll bet you will be amazed at how different they are than anything you have read or experienced. Your wife will understand far better than you will. BUT hang in there - the crazy times will pass and the reward for your patience will be worth it.
I 100% do not understand the female mind so I've got that going for me.
At least you're self-aware enough to know that.
When my wife and I were talking about kids right after the wedding she asked if I was prepared for kids that could happen in the next year. I said no, no one is prepared for kids. No matter what you do those kids will do something you're not prepared for. I was ready for kids then, but not prepared. That conversation was 11 years ago. I am still ready for kids (with more doubts cause I'm 11 years set I'm my ways) but I'm not prepared, and I've had tons of training most parents never get. None of that means I won't be a great parent, it just means that I know something is going to happen that I can't fathom that were going to have to get through, and we will, but I don't know what that is or how we'll do it.
I offer you all a very heartfelt "FAM".
I kinda get why, but man, adopting shouldn't be so hard.
It's also usually pretty expensive too. I get it too, but yeah.
Being in Northern VA the expense isn't really a factor once you figure out what kids will cost on a yearly basis. It's not cheap, but employee assistance (for me) and other things make it not that bad. If you want a kid fast there are some less than upstanding places that you pay $50k to and go and get a kid for you, but lots of places look down upon those agencies.
The difficulty is really two fold, 1) every state is different and has their own set of confusing laws and requirements which often means more paperwork. 2) everyone is underpaid, by a lot and under staffed, by a lot. So things that should be smooth aren't. We were originally delayed to be eligible because CPS didn't tell anyone that we passed our background check, so we waited and then missed the tone period to do paper work that needed to be done 30 days after CPS was done. Since no one has time to check daily, CPS failing to do there job set us back 3 months.
I am glad that we ended up not needed the perspective on Saturday as the Hokies won.
The trip went well, one girl wanted to leave with us right there and then and the other wasn't as ready to open up (which was as expected based on what everyone told us) They visit us in two weeks and it sounds like my wife is taking them to get their nails done so I might get to watch some football, but if not then so be it, football will be there once they move up permanently and we don't have a limited time to make everything work. I think being in our own home well help as there aren't check-ins and checkouts to worry about and how to fill the time/where to go while you don't have some where to go. Also ina small town in the middle of nowhere where there isn't much to do anyways. We are excited and exhausted from the weekend, but already working on the plan for when they visit (cake decorating!)
I feel you, man. I'm going to be missing the next two games due to birthday parties (one where mine is an invitee, the next where she's the celebrant). That means a full-on social media / TKP blackout, until I can watch the games on demand later those evenings. It can be maddening at times, but as a parent, you just gotta do what you gotta do. The priority has to be the fam.
Good luck, and hope everything works out with the girls.
9 am local kickoffs solve most of these problems!
At least I hope you're not.
In my case.... VT kicking off at 9am here and its 80 degrees out and I have the rest of a saturday to fill obligations, go hiking, catch a 7pm ASU kick the same day and tailgate? im being a little bit serious, yes.
Oh, right, forgot about your new location for a moment. I need to get out there and ride.
Honestly, that's one of the things I love about F1 right now. This next race on the 17th is at 0800, done before 1100 (contractually, they shorten the race if things are redflagged long enough) but most likely by around 1000, and the rest of the day is mine.
I feel you though. I remember listening to many VT games on the XM app at soccer games, family parties, etc. I have missed more VT games than I can count for band gigs too. I do really enjoy the time change in regards to sports. The LSU FSU game was over here by 8:15pm. So you aren't knodding off to sleep. If I was in a band, I could have watched the game, and then made load in time at a bar. It's awesome- NFL games starting at 10am being a negative? nah, I disagree - pour a bloddy mary
Agreed, I lived in SLC during the 2015 season and once I found a bar open at 10am and willing to put VT on it was a pretty solid setup. Bottomless mimosas and everyone stopped to talk to the crazy guy at the end of the bar yelling at the only TV not playing the Utes game. Still had time to go on a hike or head up to Park City in the afternoon.
That's quite a different situation than living almost close enough for a noon kickoff but too far to arrive for a 9 am kickoff.
That 11am kickoff last season was a bear! I didn't get home after Friday night til 230am; asleep by 3- up by 330am to drive down to tailgate(then was out til 2am sat/sun after the game.
skippypbm:
Well I am back here in the airport, a lot has gone on since my last post here, VT failed its Big Ten audition, or we gained votes from the bottom of the Big Ten so they have some one to beat on.
While adoption is messy and so complicated by legalities that differ by every state, and while we trek through the mess the girls were pulled from their foster homes and relocated since labor day for reasons that were not them. This is our last childless flight as today is the day we gain daughters*. I won't be watching the game because of timing, but again perspective, there are more important things for me today. Whether we win or lose remember there are people going different life struggles today, these girls will be moving 1000s of miles away from their friends in to what is going to be a culture shock. And while most people think that these girls are gaining parents, they are doing so with some loss, and this is a happy day for them. Lots of people will go through worse than their team losing today. As always, I hope we beat Marshall, Go hokies! But my mind will be elsewhere
*We have to foster for 6 months, that 6 months won't start until the social worker flies to our house to inspect it (our local social worker has done this multiple times, but legalities), so later this week we will have official custody.
Safe travels and good luck! That's awesome news to start a Saturday on, I'm really happy for you and your wife and for the girls.
Congratulations James! Wishing you and your family all the best. Godspeed ans safe travels!
Wishing you all the best. I'm going out today with my daughter to Turkey Hill Experience for ice cream making. One of our favorite things to do. Frosty's mom has lactose issues, so when she has some Girl Scout conference, we often take the day to go to Turkey Hill. Hope you make many great memories with the young girls.
Congratulations!!
Been thinking about you periodically over the past few months. I hope the transition for everyone is going well and this was the first of many special Christmas's together!
Thanks. It's been crazy, but good. Some how the holidays get exponentially more work with 2 kids. They met most of my family at thanksgiving in which they gelled with their cousins very well. We spent the past weekend at my parents and had more fun chilling with the cousins.
Today we spent at my in laws and they met my wife's extended family.
We did have the first xmas at our house, which was good but different. The girls had a lot of fun in the morning before we went over to the inlaws.
They are starting to make friends which we're excited about, but I don't know if it's kids today but inviting kids over and spending time with them outside of school isn't something they are comfortable with yet.
We have been lucky, the girls are great but it's still a lot of work, getting them to doctors and appointments and getting glasses and just everything they need that they didn't have before. But things have been smoothing out with a lot of the stuff.
Yeah-you have the first kid and think "wow this is hard"...then you have the second (or more kid(s))- and you think OMG, I wasn't truly a parent til I had the 2nd- sibling rivalry, "not me" syndrome. they never sleep at same time.
Then there's my mom who had 7 kids(plus five miscarriages)- with the oldest 6 of us all within 9 years. before I was born , they were moving from upstate NY to Okinawa(USAF family) . Dad went ahead to secure housing so my mom traveled BY HERSELF across the US and the Pacific Ocean with a 6 year old, 5 year old, 4 year old and twin nine month olds! The oldest three on harness and "leash" and one baby on each hip.(While I'm not a fan of leashes for kids, I think I'd give any mom in thatsituation a pass on that lol)
Our agency and family (others with kids) prepared us well for most of it, everything up until Xmas was as expected. Even the fights that we've had to drill down and find the real reason for the fight and got some fucked up situation that had nothing to do with anything we were apart of, we handled it, hopefully we'll, but Xmas was just massive. School concerts, shopping for more people, give more gifts from the girls to people, advent calendars, etc. Everything was notched up, some of that was our fault cause we wanted them to have a perfect Xmas. and the oldest commented its been like Xmas for the last 3 months because we have been buying them lots of things (clothes, school supplies, headphones, toiletries) so we really had to do xmas. Also my wife can't help herself.
Personally, I'm researching industrial shredder machines so the Amazon box jungle in my house can fit in my recycling bin. Also, whoever still uses Styrofoam inserts in this day and age can eat a bag of rotten dicks.