Mike

We got Timothy Michael Rose just after he turned 2. Christy drove into Palmdale to pick him up and when she got home this little kid with golden brown skin and the brightest blue eyes I have ever seen came bounding out of the car and ran up to me and said "Hi Dad!" I have loved him from that moment.... I wish I could relate here what he endured but I will just say he had a pretty rough time getting to be two years old. Mike changed his name when we signed the adoption papers from Timothy Michael to Michael Timothy, he did it just to make me crazy I think. He turned 11 on November 6th and he is in the 5th grade.

We got Christian about two days later and they are true brothers they play together and fight with and for each other just like biological brothers.

(Picture is from the day he was adopted)

He is a handsome boy and will be a real heartthrob when he gets older, he has a new girlfriend almost every week and they call him constantly. I am not looking forward to the teen years at all. I think that it is going to be a constant day to day struggle keeping Mike and all the rest of the kids focused in a positive direction.

He is very athletic and has a physique like Carl Lewis, looks a little like him too. He runs like a deer, he is the fastest kid in the 5th and 6th grade. He has a high gear that reminds me of Tony Dorsett breaking through the line, or Dion Sanders pulling away after intercepting a pass, I have seen him chase down other boys his age, he finds some extra overdrive and accelerates like he's jet propelled. He likes Soccer but he is a less than gracious looser and his team is pretty poor this year. It is a major challenge for him to get through a game without loosing his temper. Their team is actually the worst in the league. The team has scored only 7 goals this season and Mike scored 6 of them the seventh was a ricochet of one of Mikes kicks off a kid named Brandon who happened to be standing in the right place at the right time. He is truly gifted and I hope I can do right by him, he will need to be in the right place at the right time with the right coach.

He seems to be easily influenced by others I think it is my job to see to it that the others are influencing him positively. I am not so foolish as to believe this to be an easy task. Mike seems to need to be stimulated constantly. He is the only one of the kids I can count on when I need help or there is work to be done. He is the only one who will see a chore that needs to be done and do it on his own. The other side of the coin is that he has a volatile temper and will fight at the drop of a hat. He is his own worst critic and is very self-conscious of his shortcomings. The school is working with us and he is getting a lot of special help. He takes Ritalin to help him control his impulsiveness and it really is working wonders. He is able to concentrate, his teachers can tell within twenty minutes if he has missed a dose. He understands and remembers anything that is read to him but he can't really read very well yet. He has a reading disability, it is a struggle for him to read, it's almost impossible. Most schoolwork is difficult for him and it bothers him a lot. He is a very intelligent boy, tests designed to compensate for a reading disability show him to be have above normal intelligence.

He wants to be in the Olympics, and he may just do it. I wish I had some idea how to prepare him. Unfortunately, Acton isn't the Athletic Capital of the world. They have no athletic program to speak of in the elementary school and the High School has only rudimentary facilities. They do have a football team but no Track & Field that I can detect.