teamhuerta

Creative Play

// April 9th, 2009 // No Comments » // Children

I came home yesterday and supermom shared with me all the fun, exciting and not so exciting things that happened in her day.  Then she told me the story of how Manny, our youngest, was playing with his trucks and legos and what not.  He ended up having a conversation with his imaginary friends, which seem to be charicatures of people we interact with on a daily basis.  Well she went on to record what he said and did.  The background noise of my wife’s day looks like this.

(In Manny’s Play world)
We goin to da stor!
Hey lets go to wa-mat.
ok
i wike (like) 2 sodas for me and my kid…I’m tha poppy.
and ahhhhhhh
A BIG ONE FOR ME!
Yeah, A big one for me cause I’m tha poppy.

I know you won’t be able to quite get the picture without hearing the different inflections and intonations that he has, but just imagine your kids around 2 years old trying to speak…makes sense but sounds cute!  Maybe we’ll have some video or something in the future, *cross fingers.

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Orphan Annie is a myth!

// March 10th, 2009 // 1 Comment » // Adoption, Children

Children are some of the most resilient things I know.  When people abuse children I believe God’s heart truly breaks.  Sometimes when I consider what we are going through as it relates to our children, I want to excuse it away with, “…well, they’re adopted!”  Sometimes, we don’t know what to do!   How do you help a child believe that you won’t send them away or hurt them like the other adults have in their life?
Before we completed our adoption, I used to think that adopting a 5 or 6 year old child would be the same as adopting a 0-3 year old.  Now, not so much.  The 5 or 6 year old, although it’s only 3 years difference, has had 3 more years of hurt and confusion and uncertainty in their lives.  They may not be able to verbalize what it is, but I see it, it is there.  Now compound that with the adoption of a 7-10 year old and you would think there is not much difference from the 5-6 year old, but there is, and it IS significant.

The hurt is so much more internalized and the survival methods, whatever they may be, from “fits of rage” to “infantile whailing,” are more evident at this stage.   I have come to the conclusion that little Orphan Annie with the ever present optimistic mind is a myth.  I think the hurt of being “abandoned or abused” is too great for a little mind to reconcile and God, through his Grace and people, is the only one that can truly heal.  Don’t get me wrong, many children waiting to be adopted are hopeful and prayerful for a forever family, and Annie’s adventure filled story helps give children hope.  From my experience, just having a forever family doesn’t “immediately” wash away the years of hurt.

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Make it stop!

// February 4th, 2009 // 1 Comment » // Children, Fathering, Life, Parenting, Uncategorized, Youth Ministry

I am a bit overwhelmed as of late.  I have been doing lots of research, reading, watching and writing on media, ministry, and teens.  I have also found a love of the documentary.  I just finished watching a trailer for a documentary that disturbs me.  Although, SuperSize me, focused on the obesity of America through McDonalds.  This documentary focuses on how our society is creating “SuperConsumers.”

We feel this pressure as parents, I surely understand it from my childhood experiences, but when I watch what is being promoted and fed to American children through the “Tube.”  My knees get weak and my eyes swell up.  I want to throw the TV out the window.  I want to move to Alaska or Iceland and live at the foot of some mountain.  It breaks my heart to see kids forget how to play, how to show grace and mercy to one another.  I want to scream, STOP!

My heart aches for the millions of children who will grow to be adults and not know how to say “NO” to stuff, to things!  The rise in weight related illness amongst children is staggering.  Kids are sedating themselves to death, and the collective ‘we’ as parents are allowing it to happen.  But The cycle has started, how can we break it?

(Here is the trailer to Consuming Kids)

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New Life

// February 2nd, 2009 // No Comments » // Children, Life, Parenting

It has been several months since we last blogged.  For that we are seriously sorry.  We have started many new things and enjoyed many exciting times together. 

Last week several things happened for us.  First, we tore carpet out of our sunroom and painted the floor (it’s like a basement floor now).  We finally got rid of the ugly green carpet and have a more clean, feeling and smelling room.  Secondly, a crippling ice storm left an inch of ice, 3-5 inches of snow and power outages all throughout our region.  Luckily, our big tree that broke in two didn’t hit our house.  The ice kept kids out of school from last tues until tomorrow…(the following tuesday).  Finally, Supermom and I became an Aunt and Uncle for the first time last week.  We now are the pround Tio and Tia to our Niece!  YIPEEEEE….

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Sign of the times

// October 5th, 2008 // No Comments » // Children, Christianity, Life, Music, Uncategorized, Youth Ministry

Listening to the radio here on the local pop/rock station I hear a song that is popular come on.  Rockstar by Nickelback.   In the song there are references to drugs and other things a “rockstar” of superstardom would be tempted with.  I sometimes find myself listening to this song but this one day I had an epiphany.  This is the sign of our times.   When this popular radio station and pop music and culture in general are telling of the society we live in.  Why? You may ask is this a ‘sign of our times.’

First off, most radio edits to modern music bleep out words or phrases that have been deemed inappropriate for public use.  However that standard has slowly been bent and pushed over the years to the point where 2 different radio stations have different radio ‘edit’ versions of the same song.  (mostly due to the stations producers interpretation of that word ‘inappropriate’) But this particular song, Rockstar, had one word cut out, (I know this because I have heard both the uncut version and another radio stations radio edited version)   That word was the word “PILLS.”

I thought, isn’t it ironic that they would let words and phrases like “girls come easy and the drugs come cheap”  and “playboy bunnies” make the radio edit while editing the word ‘pills’ from the phrase “pop my pills from a pez dispenser.”   But being a youth minister and working with teens helps me understand why. Teens today are struggling with addictions to prescription drugs and “pills” have quickly become the number one teen problem.

Although I don’t condone such behavior or even like such lyrics in music, this is the kind of songs that are played at high school football games, middle school and high school dances and on popular radio stations all throughout America.  In case you don’t listen to anything but Christian music, I would challenge you to know what is being fed to our Children’s minds through their ears.

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Dead Animal!

// October 2nd, 2008 // No Comments » // Children, Funny, Life, Manhood, Parenting

    A couple nights ago, our cat, was acting kind of strange.  She was chasing an imaginary animal in our sun room.  Staring intently at the wall and pawing at the floor we thought she was going a little senial.  We couldn’t see anything but she was on alert attacking the wall and pacing back and forth ready to pounce on whatever she was stalking.

    She is old so we just let her be in her world of imaginary fun.  Ohhhh how wrong we were.  The next morning supermom went to work on the compy in the computer room and the stench of dead animal overwhelmed her.  After about an hour of contemplating the smell of the litter box, the smell of the area still smelled worse than a litter box.  So the family deep cleaned the sun room, but to no avail.   The cat must have been on to something, no she didn’t die (unfortunately), but something else did.  We have come to the sober conclusion, after checking the crawl space and attic that there is a dead animal trapped between our walls somewhere and it STINKS.  Aside from cutting holes between every stud in our walls to find the critter, we must wait this out.  Glad that the air outside is crisp and clear.   So it makes the waiting a little more bareable. 

    This morning I took the boys with me under the house and Manny, our littlest, excitedelly exclaimed, "Dead Animal, I going to get Dead Animal!"  Oh how I love being a dad.

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Corruption of the Few!

// September 29th, 2008 // 1 Comment » // Adoption, Children, Christianity

    Over the last couple of weeks supermom and I have been keeping close eyes on a subject that is dear to our hearts….No, not the "economic" crisis we seem to be in, (we’ll talk about that in later posts)  but the tragedy of our agency.

    When seraching for adoption agencies, a couple years ago, we fell in love with CHI.  Now CHI is slowly fading away, due to some unscrupulous  individuals that worked for them. I deal with Christian organizations as a profession and I have worked for and still work for different ones.  One thing I know is that Good Christian Organizations are run by people, and people are not perfect…just take a look at David or read Romans 3:23. 

    CHI is fading away and the fragment that is left is trying to pick up the pieces.  They are no longer able to fulfill adoptions in many countries because they lack the necessary credentials that were stripped from them because a handful of people that used to work for them, lied.   

    This makes us sad.  So as our government attempts to ‘solve’ a global economic ‘crisis’ we gasp and hold on to hope that our adoption agency, which we love and are grateful for, is able to once again unite families together forever.

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Fathering…”the ride”

// June 22nd, 2008 // 1 Comment » // Children, Fathering, Parenting

the ride, originally uploaded by Abba’s Girl.

When did you learn to ride a bike? Remember your first time? I sure do.

Just the other day I took Monkey and Mowgli on their 1st mountain bike ride. Although it isn’t completely fair, they had to ride their single speed ‘bmx’ style bikes. Although singlespeed is really cool, not so on a bmx bike. They were tackling the heavy roots with ease. Bobbing and bouncing as if they were riding a bucking bull.

We ended up getting through the 4 mile trail unscathed. As I reflect back on that afternoon under the canopy of trees I will always remember their giggles as they were laughing so hard when we were going over a very rough patch of roots sticking up. They had so much fun. So did I. We were able to enjoy seeing the swollen Ohio river as we rode along the mountain 100ft or so above the rivers edge.

Is this what God feels like? I wonder, if our heavenly father who has adopted us into his family has as much joy as I had exploring a very familiar mountain bike trail with childlike awe!?!?

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Fathering…”The Fish’s”

// June 21st, 2008 // No Comments » // Children, Fathering, Parenting

Originally uploaded by Abba’s Girl

I wish I could describe to you how much fun I am having with my kids this week.

OHHHHHHH….However, I must be honest…10 hours one day of working with our eldest on being obedient and his refusal to listen obediently to our directions took its toll on this “old” man. It drove me to exhaustion and precipitated some feelings of anger and hurt. But we worked through it, albeit slowly and painfully, he is beginning to understand what obedience looks like. Thank you Jesus.

After our struggle to be obedient this week we did something today that we haven’t done in a couple weeks. We went fishing. That’s right I took the 3 Amigos out for a day of fishing. WOW, I am so glad SuperMom, Grandad, and I taught them how to fish a couple weeks ago. Once we settled into our spot, they all visited the woods to pee at least 4 times each before we even all got to cast once. (frustrating)

Once we got to fishing those pesky little fish kept stealing our worms, so every 30 secs to 1min, we were replacing worms…then it happened. Mowgli bagged a largemouth…however he swallowed the hook and died so we kept him close to shore to take home….then after catching more weeds, a small tree, and the trees on shore, I finally bagged the finale fish of the day…about one and a half the size of Mowgli’s, we now have a pair of largemouth bass that we are going to filet and enjoy this evening…

I am glad to share these memories with my children. As their father, I desire to see them grow up and I hope and pray they will still be able to tie a knot, cast a rod, throw a frisbee, catch a ball, play an instrument, read and comprehend, kick a ball, ride a bike, and ultimately Love; God and others, like they see Mami and Papi do.

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Oh! the Father!

// May 30th, 2008 // 1 Comment » // Children, Christianity, Fathering, Parenting

I stayed up last night watching an episode of Raymond.  It was the episode where he begins to be more authoritative and get his twin boys to clean their room and he stunk.  After some guilting from his wife, parents, and brother he admits that this is hard.  He can’t be the "mean" one and whines to his wife to be the mean one. 

His family and his wife then recall how they continued to disobey their strict parents by doing things as teens and young adults that their parents didn’t know about.  Raymond then goes upstairs and offers this not-so-great parenting advice to his 5 year old twin boys. 

"Promise to obey what your mother and I say until your 65?" "yes, dad!"  "We know you will do things when you get older and we can’t stop you or there is nothing we can do about it…just don’t let us find out.?"

First off, let me acknowledge that I believe our children will make poor decisions as teens and young adults, but I don’t believe there is nothing we can do about it.  We, as parents, have a great responsibility to not only try but seek help from others to help our child go from good child to Great Man or Woman. 

The second piece of his advice also rubbed me the wrong way because it told me as well as his twin boys.  Everything you do is okay with me especially if I don’t know how stupid you are going to be, or how close to death you come.  That kind of parenting is a lot like russian roulette… load it, spin it, then pull the trigger.  In other words what that says to kids is this, I give you permission, just don’t tell me, you can do whatever you want, I will close my eyes and pretend to not know, and hope you survive. 

Turn your head, close your ears and deceive yourself kind of parenting doesn’t work.  Instead we should, Open our eyes, turn our hearts toward God and our kids, and always correct and love them. 

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