If your publishing site  was built using a publishing  Portal then you
won't see anything when creating a child site than the Publishing site
with workflow. That's controlled by the original publishing site
definition in some way, but I haven't really looked into it. I'm not
sure you can retrofit it after the fact to allow other site definitions
to be viewable. I'll do some more research and try to provide a more
detailed answer in another day or two. In the meantime was your top
level site created from Publishing Portal or collaboration  portal site
definition. I'm assuming Publishing Portal.

I did use the Publishing Portal. I'll be specific since I am
unfamiliar with alot of Terminology and its nuance.

I'm Office SharePoint Server 2007, and after loading Central
Adminstrator, I chose Central Administration > Application Management
> create  or Extend Web Application > Create New Web Application

- Chose to create a NEW IIS web site
- Chose NTLM, no anonymous, no SSL (this is a test site)
- Created a new Application Pool
- Used the Network Service acct for the resulting pool
- Chose to require a manual IIS restart (simply because I was
concerned how the other option might impact others on this dev  server
- Specified the SQL Server and chose Windows Auth
- Hit Ok

--- PAUSE FOR VM TO SLOWLY GEN UP THE APP ---

- After doing the required iisreset /noforce, I proceded to create
the site  Collection, choosing the Publishing Portal Template.

So, I'm pretty sure the answer to your question is YES, I used the
Publishing Portal template  (basically, I walked through this while
composing my reply to be sure I was accurate).

The "theory" is that once I develop this template, it will be
deployed to a pre-existing Publishing site, so either way I need to
figure this out.

Perhaps I'm going about this the wrong way? This sub-site will
include hidden and public lists of various natures, but specifically
Document Libraries, discussion lists, Calendars, and Announcements.

Yes you are creating subsites under a Publishing Portal and Publishing
Portals limit site  creation to one site definition  "Publishing site with
workflow" I don't know if there is a way to get around that after the
fact or not. But that is indeed the problem. If I can find you an
answer I'll report back with it. But you may have to start over.

I usually build Publishing sites  by making the root a blank  Site and
then turning on Publishing Infrastructure and Publishing Features in
that order to avoid the problem you are having.

I found the answer. To make additional site  Definitions or Site
Templates available in a site based on the Publishing Portal you need to
go to Site Actions > Site Settings > Modify All Site Settings. On the
Site Settings page click the Page Layouts and Site Templates link under
the Look and Feel column. In the Site Templates section of the page
that appears you will see a list box to the left that contains all the
Site Definitions and Site Templates available in the installation. In
the list box on the right you will see a list box containing just
Publishing Site with Workflow, which is the only site definition
currently available. Find your new site definition  in the box on the
left, highlight it and press the Add> button to move it to the box on
the right. Click OK and the next time you create  a sub site your new
site definition should be available.