The Little Event

Well, we're getting closer to surgery day. Ten days ago I got my blood drawn. Then, last Friday I spent over an hour at the hospital getting pre-registered and meeting with a nurse to fill out info and learn about the process from start to finish. I've never had surgery before. I also met with the surgeon for about two minutes last Friday. I actually like that he's young and no-nonsense. The nurse I met with at the hospital said he's really good.

So, I show up at the hospital at 9:00 Friday morning and go straight to the surgery area. Thankfully I don't have to go through registration that morning. Then it's an hour and a half of getting ready for surgery - changing into gown, getting the IV in, talking with anesthesiologist, whatever. Then, as long as they can do this laparscopicly and don't have to open me up, the procedure will take about an hour. Then it's a couple of hours of post-op recovery. With any luck, we'll be at the hospital around six hours. Not bad.

Now, I'm not worried about any of it. Which is weird for me. But I do think the whole surgery thing is strange. I'll come home missing a part of me. Now, I'm really glad (and optimistic) that they don't have to actually open me up to look inside. I've always thought that would be so creepy.

Nerdstar and Noah will be at the hospital while I'm there. We're still trying to sort out billing from Noah's birth, so she'll hopefully be able to speak to someone in person and explain that they have failed to take into account $ the insurance company gave them. Ugh. It's been so crazy. We always wonder what people do who don't have the skills/time to keep up with wrong bills like this - they just get screwed it seems. That will keep them busy part of the time. Other than that, we'll pack lots of snacks for Noah and hopefully find a nice, long hallway for him to crawl up and down as fast as he can.

Monday, my parents should be arriving. They're driving up from Dallas this weekend. My techno-phobe folks even bought a Garmin for the trip. They had been planning a road trip this summer already, and I explained that they should drive the rest of the way here for Noah's birthday. Then this surgery came up and we scheduled everything so they'd be here for it and his bday. Because even if everything goes well, I can't pick up Noah for about a week.

So, that's the run down.

So far.....

Hi everyone! This is Nerdstar and I'm just here to put in a long overdue entry. We're about 11 days away from Noah Maxx's first birthday, and 4 days away from B's gallbladder surgery. Life is moving on in its usual fast pace.

After almost a year into my tenure at the big bad defense contracting company, I've arrived at the conclusion that it's no longer worth it, the long commutes, the cooperativeness at work, and management whose sole concern is profit and nothing else. (It's really what companies are supposed to do anyways, but there are better ways to do it and keep the employees somewhat happy, aren't there?) So I'm going to try and look for a hopefully better alternative...wish me luck!

Noah Maxx, at almost one year old, is amazing as usual. I'd get such kicks out of watching him crawling at lightening fast speed, his determination, feeding his huge appetite, and "conversating" with him in his baby speech. Heck, we've even napped in sync! Took a rare nap yesterday while he was taking his, not only did we we both sleep for almost 2 hours and both of us were also so quiet that B. thought that she had to check on both of us to make sure that we're still alive!

Hope that B's surgery goes well. Noah Maxx and I will be at the hospital waiting for her while the surgery and the recovery are taking place. I really hope that there are spaces that he can craw around and explore in!

Little Changes

No, this isn't our version of Big Pimpin'.


I sold my motorcycle this evening. I really miss riding. There's just not much out there like it. It takes enough concentration, and then if you're lucky, there's nice enough scenery to push out all other thoughts. If you know me at all, you know that's a big deal. My brain is deadly.

But, I've never really enjoyed riding here in northern Virginia. Yes, you can get out into horse country, but I'd need a GPS for that. I enjoyed riding with a group our first summer here, but it fell apart and finding another one just didn't happen. Then, well, Noah came along. And while I don't have to sell it, I could ride on some weekends if I really wanted to, it's just not worth the time away and the inherent risk.

My current daydream is that in a few years we'll get a nice little RV and a couple of mopeds and do some of our big road trips.

Buttons and Stairs

It appears we're in a stage where Noah is doing new things all the time. A few weeks ago we bought him a helicopter that plays music and stuff. Last week he figured out how to push the buttons to get it to play different songs. I think we only showed him that a few times.

He's been pulling up on just about everything in the house for a couple of weeks now. He's not walking, though. I try to get him to practice, but it's too slow, so he speed crawls around instead. As I've said, we spend most of time upstairs. There's a gate at the top of the stairs because he is fearless and would go head-first down the stairs given half a chance. But yesterday we were downstairs before heading out to run errands and he crawled over to the stairs and pulled himself up on the first one. I had a feeling he was going to start climbing up so I stood behind him. Sure enough, he just started climbing on up - no hesitation. I let him get about four stairs up before getting him down.

We keep saying he's been ready to run since he was two or three months old. It's crazy to watch him get closer and closer to being able to. We have no idea how we're going to keep up with him!

11 Months

Wow, 11 months. The big 1 year is coming up soon!

You're doing new stuff on a regular basis and continue to be quite the goofy boy. You still do your inchworm, military, special olympics style crawl, and pull up everywhere. You still like to throw balls and go get them. You're changing your nap schedule, which is good. You insist on sitting on my lap when I'm at my desk. You still love going out to eat, and we think you did your first flirting with a lady at the restaurant the other day.

I got you a mirror yesterday and we think you loved seeing/playing with yourself more than anyone else. You waved at and smiled at and kissed yourself in the mirror. It was cute and funny.

You take in the world with your serious face on. You laugh with us.

We still love you more than anything and love hanging out with you. We know you're just going to be even more fun in the future.

Favorite Video

So far Noah doesn't watch tv. That's 90% because there isn't a tv upstairs where we spend most of our day. But the times we are downstairs where the tv is, even with kids shows on, he doesn't really pay much attention to it. He's a boy in motion and wants to stay in motion.

Nerdstar and I both spend a good amount of time on the computer, and he likes to sit in our lap while we do. She watches entertainment/interview shows from Taiwan with him on Saturday mornings. We both find him a few kids' videos on you.tube.

We both think this is a really cute video for Twinkle Twinkle Little Star - and Noah really seems to like it.

Protect MY Family

Apparently, election season has begun. Oh joy. I think I read it's 505 days until the election, and yet, here we go.

Naturally, both parties become all about "family" during election time.

But I'm pretty sure none of them are about helping or protecting my family.

It got me to thinking about the "It Get's Better" campaign for gay young people. I think it's a great project, it's just not something I'm all that into.

I thought it would be cool to have a "This (insert family photo) is my family. Protect it."

Yes, that's a huge part of the gay marriage fight. But it's also about adoptions laws, property rights, inheritance, etc. (Gay marriage would solve all of it, but I'll take it piecemeal if I have to.)

But it's like my type of family doesn't even exist in the eyes of most politicians - local, state or national.

So, I was thinking last night how to change that. How to literally put our faces out there. Sure, there could be a FB campaign, or you.tube or whatever. I don't know. How effective are they?

Just my thoughts last night.