Dreaming of a Magic Kingdom

 

Our new Orlando unit has rented well so far this year. Closing on the place in early summer and then having to quickly tend to some enhancements (some big, mostly small) put us behind the eight-ball in terms of getting the place booked up, but my in-town unit manager Michelle has been extraordinary in her speed, attentiveness, and keen eye. Summer can be busy in Orlando, and thanks to Michelle we had very high occupancy.

As we are squarely in a deader season and looking ahead to families starting to look at 2025 trips, I want to document a few positive characteristics I've heard so far from folks who have stayed at our place and were kind enough to leave glowing reviews (including friends of mine who I asked to train a critical eye and spare no complaint):

* I'm glad Michelle convinced me to bring in her assistant who handles decor ideas, as the subtle enhancements of bedding and color scheme have been noticed by our guests.

* Folks love that the place is a close commute to everything you want to do in Orlando, namely the Disney attractions and other theme parks. I even had Eagles fans capitalize on the fact that Davenport, where the unit is located, is barely an hour to Tampa, so they were able to catch the Birds against the Bucs in Week 4. (They were happy with the lodging but not with the game.)

* There were also a lot of rave reviews about the property itself. Any good Orlando vacation is full of going to places but also leaves room for quieter and closer activities, and the resort our unit is in is full of them: lake, multiple pools, restaurant, tennis courts, basketball, spray park.

I will try to get out there twice in 2025, once with the whole family and once to host my first annual golf weekend. I truly can't wait! I will not divulge how many of my current waking hours are spent daydreaming about this, but I will acknowledge it is a lot.

One fun thing I am looking forward to, which is different from all our other properties, is that it is decidedly a very suburban and car-oriented environment. A selling point for all our other places, which we got not only for revenue potential but personal enjoyment, was walkability. The Delaware waterfront in Philadelphia, the Adams Morgan neighborhood in Washington DC, ocean block in Ocean City NJ, and bay side in Miami Beach are all places where you don't need a car and can still easily get to restaurants, grocery stores, shopping, and scenic views.

This resort is one large gated community, so big that I think we may need to drive to stuff within the grounds. It is near impossible to get anywhere from the place to anything else. I joke with my kids that when we are there, we will be cosplaying as suburbanites, driving to the grocery store and movie theater and take-out restaurant. Not our usual or preferred way to roll, but fun to think about how it will provide a change of place.

In closing, I would be remiss if I didn't provide links to where you can book your own magical vacation. You will not be disappointed in the place or in Michelle's responsiveness.

AirBnB https://bit.ly/4eCfWlH

 

VRBO https://t.vrbo.io/aS9f0O9fbNb

Happy Gotcha Day to Jada

 

Nineteen years ago today we were handed a little girl to take care of as our daughter. She is now more adult than kid, always our Jerds and ever making that moment a special one for our family. Happy Gotcha Day!

Hair Apparent

 

Black hair is not something Amy or I had much of any experience with prior to adopting Asher. We’ve stumbled through thanks to the generous advice of many people in our lives (and we welcome additional feedback going forward!). Along the way, we wondered how long it would take until Asher took an interest in his own self-care, figuring it would be something on the order of age 9 or 10. 

Fast forward to the present, and sure enough as Asher nears 9 ½ years old, he is giving increased attention to his hair as a form of self-expression and identity. We have tended to keep his hair short to make it easier to brush and wash, and lately Asher has requested lines and lightning bolts, even going so far as to show me examples from social media that have caught his eye. 

But what he really wants is to grow his hair out. He doesn’t particularly like me hovering over him with the short-haired brush at breakfast and dinner, and would much prefer for his hair to be long enough to “pick” out, and even better for him to be doing the picking. Which, Amy and I believe, is right on time for him to take responsibility. 

Since we have typically gone no more than a couple of months between his head shaved down to the scalp, it’ll be somewhat new territory for us for him to grow his hair out to more of an afro length. But it’s what he wants, and we think it’s appropriate at the age he’s at to let him do that. DMs are open for any advice folks want to offer!

Jada Huang, World Traveler and Ambitious Adult

 

Very cool that our Jada, confident 19 year old woman of the world, was able to conceive, plan, pay for, and execute a 5-city, 16-day solo jaunt through Europe. (London, Paris, Barcelona, Bologna, and Florence.) It was the trip of a lifetime, although I am guessing it is the first of many. And, an important life skill, to be able to coordinate and navigate across the pond. Go Jerds!

A Labor of Love

 

Real talk. Parenting a special needs kid is tiring. It is a labor of love, to be sure. And there is a lot of love. But there is also a lot of labor. 

Any parent, perhaps particularly adoptive ones and where special needs are involved, must sublimate what is natural, comfortable, and easy, in order to do what is necessary. It’s a high bar, especially when juggling other kids, a hard job, and one’s own life challenges. 

Let me provide a small and mundane but telling example. I would not consider myself an absolute neat freak. But I skew heavily towards wanting things to be tidy and minimalist. When Asher is away for sleepaway camp during the summer, I can clean house, literally and figuratively. Even better, once cleaned, things stay clean. Toys put away stay put away. Rooms, once swept and vacuumed, feel neat. 

Very few people enjoy the cleaning itself. Many people enjoy the consequence of cleaning. I am one of them. (Truth be told, in small doses, I do also enjoy the cleaning itself.) 

Asher is a bit of a tornado when he is home. Tornados require massive clean-up, which is hard enough to summon the time and energy for but at least yield a return to equilibrium. But imagine not one tornado to clean up from but a constant cycle of daily tornadoes. At a certain point, you give up cleaning up because what’s the point if you’re going to need to clean up the very next day. 

To be sure, part of parenting Asher is teaching him how to not be a tornado. And he and we can do better in that regard. But, in another sense, he is not likely ever going to not be some level of tornado. Which means we have to either decide to constantly clean up messes or live with the messes. Both scenarios weigh heavily on me. 

The path forward is probably a little bit of both. Sometimes we have to suck it up and get to cleaning when what we want to do is veg. And sometimes we have to accept a level of mess because there are bigger battles to fight. It is truly a labor of love. A lot of love. And a lot of labor.

Kids on Transit

I’ve covered this topic before but feel compelled to revisit and reassert the point. Cities are great places to raise kids of all ages! And access to and use of mass transit is a big part of that. Let me count the ways, based on my own experience growing up in the suburbs and then being a parent in University City:

 1.      Freedom – There were many years I was old enough to want to go out with friends but not old enough to drive. During that formative phase of childhood, city kids can go anywhere and do anything.

 2.      Thrift – Buying, insuring, and maintaining one car for each person 16 and over is a lot more expensive than…zero. Public school kids ride for free from 7 to 7 on weekdays. And Asher can ride for free when he’s with me. 

3.      Safety – Far all the hand-wringing about it being dangerous to ride the subway, it’s pretty clear to me that driving is the far higher-risk activity we regularly engage in. And, accompanying your parent to stations and trains, and then navigating them on your own, is a good way to learn how to carry yourself in the world so as to protect yourself. 

4.      Environment – Not sure how we all know that driving is way worse for the planet than the bus or subway, and then make major life choices that make it impossible to get anywhere without a car. And then have the nerve to make it seem like leafy suburbs are more “green” than “dirty” cities. That’s not what I want my kids to think. 

5.      Diversity – Driving literally cocoons us with our own. Riding mass transit connects us to, well, “the masses.” Where else will you find a guy in a suit sitting next to a guy in rags? As with the environment, somehow we justify massive differences between what we say is important for our kids vs. the settings we actually put our kids in. 

6.      Convenience/Predictability – Admittedly this is a mixed bag. There are trips that are way easier to do by car as opposed to being beholden to a train schedule. And there are times when mass transit lets us down in terms of a broken-down train or a bus caught in a detour. But I submit that there are many other times when the opposite is true, namely the very times when everyone is trying to do the same thing, like get to school/work or coming/going from an event, and it is terribly inefficient to drive through traffic and then have to figure out where to park your car. 

Alas, for many of us, our ability or inability to take mass transit is preset, in that we either have easy access to it or not. But, I suspect there are many parents out there who have easy access to it and yet choose not to capitalize on it. And I suspect there are many parents out there who are at the point of making decisions about where to live, who either do not account for or actively consider it a negative to have transit access. I’m here to tell you it’s a very good thing for the kids and the parents when you can forgo your car and get around on mass transit.

Say I Do

 

Twenty-five years ago today, on September 9, 1999, an auspicious day for entering into long-term commitments (the Chinese word for "nine" sounds like the word for "forever"), I asked Amy to marry me and she said yes. She remains the love of my life, and I am grateful for the journey we have gone on and will go on.