Celebrating Superheroes the Quarantine Way

April 4, 2020 Michelle Cuthrell

When we asked them to make a decision about their birthdays two months ago, we had no idea that Covid would make the decision for them.

Superhero 1 and Superhero 2 share the same birthday, three years apart. (Count back nine months from April 4 and you’ll see that Independence Day is an extremely important holiday in this here military household. Fireworks, people. Just call us patriotic.)

So it’s a good thing that, when given the choice between a birthday party or a birthday experience or a birthday gift, both boys this year chose a gift … in the form of an experience we’ll be gifting them when this is all over.

Which means that today, on the day 50 percent of our children were born, we’ll be doing what we’ve been doing every day for the last three weeks.

Laughing.

Playing.

Running.

Reading.

Returning to simpler days and simpler times when togetherness was the best birthday gift of all.

And eating take-out from two locally owned restaurants to support local business while we do it.

The New Year's Eve Firecracker: Celebrating Superhero 4's Six Years

December 31, 2019 Michelle Cuthrell

On his first birthday home, Superhero 4 attended the New Year’s Eve wedding of our beautiful niece, where a DJ and an entire ballroom of very happy guests sang to him as he panted over a multi-tiered cake that our unpretentious diva clearly assumed was just for him.

On his second birthday home, Grandma and Pop (with Mom and Dad in tow) took him on the traditional 5-year-old grandchild visit to Disneyworld, where this Mickey Mouse lover spent five days in the land of his dreams and stalked — I mean met! — the heroes who graced every shirt and jacket and pajama piece he owned at the time.

So on this, Superhero 4’s third birthday home, we basically prepared ourselves for disaster.

The Miracles Made in the Monotonous

October 17, 2019 Michelle Cuthrell

We received the email the same week we met and received the newest member of our family in China.

Our team was traversing this country we loved and falling in love with the sweet and spicy 3-year-old superhero who orphanage workers had just told us may never walk, and back at home, enthusiastic middle school coaches were preparing for upcoming seasons for teenagers they would soon teach to run.

Our new middle schooler who received 50 percent of his genes from a woman who couldn’t even pass her middle school mile had thus far not shown a lot of promise in the realm of athletics.

He’d tried soccer. (He essentially signed up for the snacks.)

He’d tried football. (After getting a weight waiver because he was legally still small enough he had to sit in a car seat on the way to and from practice, he decided that padding up and facing large boys twice his size was maybe not his athletic gifting and, following the post-season party, told us he would “prefer not to die.”)

He’d even tried some back-to-back seasons of rec basketball (where, during his last game of his last season, his teammates and even opponents tried to pause the game long enough to give this uncoordinated boy the chance to shoot a basket … that he, sweet thing, for the life of him, just could not make).

Ball sports, he decided, were just not his thing.

But putting one leg in front of the other, he thought, could be.

This boy who loved our Saturday family runs had participated in races before. He’d entered local 5Ks and 10Ks, and he’d even won a few in his age group — mostly because, let’s be honest, at 8, 9 and 10, he was one of the only ones IN his age group at the time. (No third place finisher means the competition ain’t exactly cutting.)

So, three days after stepping off the plane that brought his youngest brother home from China, Superhero 1 started 6th grade, and with it, a new club called cross country.

Getting a Leg (or Two) Above

September 10, 2019 Michelle Cuthrell

When Super-Spouse took him to the ortho specialist in August and he heard that he would be having surgery for the very first time in his life, Superhero 4 looked up at his daddy and asked, "Daddy, what's surgery?"

"Well, the doctor is first going to put you to sleep."

"Sleep?!" he cried. "I LOVE sleep!"

"And then," he proceeded, "the doctor is going to do some things to your legs while you are sleeping that will help you learn to walk."

"Walk?! Superhero 4 LOVE to walk!" he exclaimed.

"Then, when you wake up, the nurses will give you popsicles."

His eyes about bugged out of his head.

"Popsicles?! SUPERHERO 4 LOVE POPSICLES! When I get surgery?!"

Today was the sleep-enjoying, walk-anticipating, popsicle-devouring, not-quite-as-awesome-as-Christmas-morning-although-he-woke-us-up-at-5-with-his-surgery-day-announcement-like-it-was day. 🏥😴🍦

When Half Are a Decade Old

September 4, 2019 Michelle Cuthrell

We have some kind of big news around here.

Superhero 1 and Superhero 2 turned double digits and teenager (!!!) …

… five months ago today.

🤦‍♀️

I’ve been trying to write about these boys who get the short end of the adoption blog stick (but definitely NOT the short end of the mama cabby stick, thanks to 5 billion activities that keep my gas tank permanently on E) for the last five months, but for some reason, the humans in my house always need something.

Like groceries.

Or snacks.

Or Breakfast No. 7 because Breakfast No. 6 happened like 15 minutes ago.

With twice as many opportunities to write about Superheroes 3 and 4 with both birthdays and Adoption Days to celebrate, we somehow always manage to sneak in posts about the younger boys. (Their triumphs and victories are often so huge considering their hard histories and losses in this life that they’re hard NOT to document and publicly celebrate.)

But before I know it, the older two boys will be in their college dorms Googling this blog and taking themselves to therapy because Mom was too busy feeding them and driving them to publicly celebrate their awesomeness, even though she somehow posted regular videos of the superhero who takes videos of his own awesomeness when I’m not paying enough attention to his comic greatness.

So, while we have a hurrication day off school, and before they’re 10 ½ and 13 ½ (one month shy — that’s killing it these days!), I had to share what these boys are doing in this, their last year of elementary and middle school.

[Insert mama sobs and copious amounts of streaming-tears emojis here.]

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