It's Official

Carlos is my son. On Wednesday February 27, 2008 I adopted Carlos! Man, am I lucky or what? - Two sons in a matter of a few months. We were all a bit nervous about going to court, but luckily things went smoothly. We were joking around quite a bit on the way to court (shocker) as I was practicing my go-to court lines, including such favorites as:

I'm out of order??? You're out of order!!! This whole damn court is out of order!!!

and the ever-popular:

You want the truth? You can't handle the truth!!

After I got through doing my best Jack Nicholson we started joking about the judge putting Carlos on the stand after I finish the first tirade (This whole damn court is out of order!!!):

Judge: Carlos, does your Dad always swear like that?

To which Carlos responded:

No, he mostly just lies, Mom's the one who swears all the time.

Hahaha, we were rolling. (For the record I pull people's legs .... lie is such an ugly word).

Anyways, we learned later that the judge himself has two adopted children so he was well suited for our "case". I got to take the stand and the judge threw me a softball asking how I felt about Carlos. Fighting back tears I told him and Carlos that I feel truly blessed to have found Carrie and Carlos and have no doubt that God led me to them. I truly couldn't ask for a better son, Carlos is such a thoughtful and considerate young man. If Jack turns out to be half as good as his older brother than he'll have a leg up on anybody else.

Carlos has endured the learning curve I undertook (and am still taking) by switching from a relatively immature, short fused, self-centered, impatient boy into the slightly more mature, less self-centered father that I am today, to which he is owed a lot of credit. It's common knowledge that the oldest child gets it the hardest, and I imagine this is compounded by having a young and inexperienced step-father who tends to be somewhat of a hardass discipline-wise. But Carlos has never been disrespectful, has never questioned my leadership, which speaks lengths about his character. It seems fitting that now that I am being thought the lesson of patience from nature's little teacher; an infant, Carlos is entering the most formative (and from what I hear the most trying) years of his life - the teenage years. It seems like my lesson couldn't have come soon enough. I still have a lot of work to do, but I'm getting there ...

Well, that's all for now. I'm in lovely Binghamton NY, and still have a bit of work to do before I can call it a night, along with a late night treadmill run. Remind me to tell you about the last time I was in Binghamton and decided to take a jog outside at 1:30 in the morning ... They say engineers are book-smart but lack common sense ... not me!