Staying Put

At slightly different times, and for slightly different reasons, Nerdstar and I both decided we'll be staying put here in our little house in Northern Virginia for the foreseeable future.

It had been a long time since we'd been in Texas in the summer months.  It's not that you ever really forget the Texas heat, but those memories can be a little dulled.  Experiencing it again, with Noah, really made me re-think moving back.

Weather permitting, Noah and I go to the park six, if not seven, days a week.  On weekends, we sometimes go twice a day.  He loves to be outside, running and playing.  I'm really enjoying all this outdoor time, but that's because the weather here is much more moderate more of the year.  Yes, we've finally gotten hot and humid here, but it's still ten degrees cooler than Texas, and it cools off some when the sun goes down.  If you've never lived in Texas from June to September, you cannot know just how oppressive that heat is.  I lived there over 30 years and never got used to it.

Now, the biggest factor with the heat is how it affects Noah.  His skin really doesn't like it.  He gets sweaty and his head gets itchy.  Poor boy ends up scratching his head a lot while he's outside playing.  His face also reacts badly to sun screen.  (We're still trying to find one that works for him.)

Noah's going to spend a LOT of his time outdoors over the next many, many years.  So will we.  I just don't think Texas is the best climate for that!

The second big factor is jobs.  The reality is that Nerdstar's current line of work is only available in this small little part of the country.  And changing careers is possible, but not easy.  It's something we'll keep looking into, but for now, the money is here.  And it's good money - we're just going to put as much in savings as we can and see what we can do in the future.

We talked a little bit about moving slightly north, closer to where most of her jobs are.  (We're sad her gig at Quatntico ended and now she's back to over an hour drive each way.)  There just aren't any suitable houses in our price range in that area.  We got really lucky with the price of our current house.

So, we're taking a look at what we can do to enjoy living where we do.  The good things:  We like our house.  It's not super nice, but the rooms are huge and aesthetics can always be changed.  We can always add a little counter space/cabinet in the kitchen if we need to.  And if we get really ambitious, there's a huge space downstairs that can be converted to an upscale bathroom and walk-in closet!

We love being on a cul-de-sac for Noah, it's just safer for his run-around self.  We love the park that's a mile from the house.  It has lovely shade trees and is on a hill so it gets a nice breeze all summer.  There are also a lot of other nice parks in the area.

One other downside is we find it hard to make friends in this area.  We're not sure how to remedy that, but we'll see.  So many people are military and only here a year or two.  Or they live ten miles away which is forty minutes in traffic.

Home is home for now.

Park Time

We're very fortunate to have a really nice park about a mile from the house. There's actually a decent water park, a playground, two baseball fields, and a nice through the woods walking trail.  The two best things about the playground are the shade trees and that it's on a hill and gets a nice breeze.  (Well, the breeze isn't so nice in winter.) 

We've been going there since Noah started walking.  I love the mornings because the other people there tend to be SAHMs with kids around Noah's age.  Then, in the evenings, it's more of a free for all UN situation with people from different countries and kids of all ages.  Seriously, there are eastern Europeans, Asians, Hispanics, Blacks, everyone.  It's cool. 

What's been the neatest thing in the past month is seeing Noah really starting to interact with other kids, not just so his own thing all the time.  I think it started when we met some friends of ours there and Noah had a blast playing with the boy who's about a year older than him.  Then the next time it was just Noah and I until a neighborhood mom showed up with her little boy, just about Noah's age.  They spent a lot of time running around and around after each other.  Noah still has a limited vocabulary, but he's really sweet and tries to play with kids.  It's still so funny to watch little girls try to boss him.  He has no idea what they're trying to tell him to do and it makes me laugh. 

Today a big family showed up - seven kids of all ages.  At first Noah was happy to see a bunch of kids.  Then even more happy when he found some little toy dump trucks of theirs to play with.  But they just weren't into letting him "in" to play with him.  They were in no ways mean or rude, just not inclusive.  I'm glad that so far Noah has no concept of people be "nice" or "mean".  He's a sweet, sweet boy and I it's going to be hard for me when he realizes people aren't always nice to him.

Days Go By

I feel like I/we haven't done very many actual Noah updates lately.  I guess that things are just chugging along and don't seem very exciting.

We think the biggest constant is he grows a little bit taller every day.  Even that isn't in dramatic growth spurts.

He's started this kinda weird thing where he whispers this "ehh ehh" sound a lot of the time.  No idea why.  Sometimes it makes me think of horror movies right before someone gets stabbed.

I think his feet are like cats' tails.  He's always flexing his toes or moving his feet somehow.  I'm not sure he's even aware of it.  Although, he does pay a lot of attention to his toes.

And then here's some thoughts I started as a comment over here.

Somewhere along the way,  we decidedon just not arguing with Noah.  This means we give in. Now, he’s not really all that demanding.  But, once he wants some juice, he's going to stand there and say "juice" until we get him some.  Or, if we're at a restaurant and he's ready to play his game on the Kindle before we're ready for him to, well, he generally wins that battle.  We say he’s a really great kid right up until he’s not, then he’s more hard-headed than we are.  I used to say of our cats that they had nothing else to do all day other than to get us to do whatever it was they wanted done - feed them, open the door and let them out, open the door and let them in, whatever.  They had more time than I did, so they won. It was good training for dealing with a toddler. 

One good thing is that he can also be really easy to bribe.  The promise of that same juice or game can get him to leave the park when we're ready or sit in his high chair another thirty minutes.  

Mostly our days just go by.  Which is kind of nice.  We watch a lot of Curious George.  We go to the park at least once a day - or find a way to let him run.  We listen to music. We eat snacks.  We wait for Ma to get home.  Then when he sees her, he always says, "It's MA!"  So cute!  And if she's not in sight he asks "whereshe?" all run together. 

Noah at Zilker Park in Austin

Praying For A Wife

It's been a while since I really thought about being an older parent.  This morning, after I showered, I was lying on the bed relaxing before Noah woke up and it just sort of came to mind.  Poor Noah sort of has a double whammy - not only are Nerdstar and I older than most parents, but he's also an only child. The last thing we would ever want for Noah is to be lonely in life.

Now, I have every intention of living at least another 45 years, and hope Nerdstar does, too!  But our backup plan is for Noah to find a really, really good wife.  That means we have to raise a really, really good man to find and keep a good wife.  And that means we have to be really good parents.  Funny how that works.

Also, many years of his mothers' prayers.

5 Weeks

It's been a long, full, fun, frustrating five weeks.

Five weeks ago, Nerdstar lost her job.  I was ready to pack up the house, put it on the market, and head on down to whichever city in Texas and start over.  Nerdstar, not quite as ready.

Because she was getting paid to not work for three weeks, and then cash out almost 100 hours of leave,  we decided to take that time and see what happened.  She had a couple of local jobs that might come through.  It would also give her some time to talk to a few people and see if there was anything for her job-wise down in Texas.

On the last day of her paid three weeks, she got the official job offer here in northern Virginia.  Slightly higher pay than her last job, but back to a stupid commute.

We decided the job here in NOVA would be a good thing.  It buys us time.  Time to look more into things in Texas.  And it would also allow us to buy a house down in Texas before having a job down there.  (more on that coming up)

Anyway.  Noah and I have been lucky enough to have Nerdstar home with us for these few weeks.  I'm not sure it was exactly a vacation for either one of us.  Noah has so much more energy with her, and bosses her around so much more!  Some days it was nice taking a back seat and letting her handle things.  Other days it just felt like I had two kids.

One cool thing was that Nerdstar's sister was already planning a visit for Memorial Day weekend, so she had time for that.

This also allowed me to go to a nearby casino and play some poker.  I got lucky (and played decently) and doubled my money in a couple of hours.  I then took a hundred of that and played craps for all of ten minutes and walked away with $240.  I love to play a $5 12 - which means the next roll of the dice will be a 12 and it pays 30X your bet - $150 on $5.  Yep, I hit it!

We decided to go ahead and take a little vacation down to Texas before the new job started.  Noah needed some family time and we needed some of our favorite foods.  The money I won at the casino was our spending money and it lasted 90% of the trip!

The trip to Texas was crazy in that it sort of changed our positions on moving to Texas.  It made me a little more cautious and Nerdstar a little more ready.  But for now I think that's another post.

Slippery Slope

Those darn slippery slopes.  Nerdstar's sister gave her a kindle for her b-day.  It's cool, but we don't really need it for web surfing or anything and so far haven't had time to load or read any books on it. 

Noah's speech therapist has some learning apps on her iPad and will let Noah play one or two at the end of their sessions.  We loaded one of those apps for Noah on the kindle to use when we go out to eat at "real" restaurants.  It works like a champ.  But, we used it a bit much on vacation. 

This evening Noah wanted to play his app while watching his cartoons.  I guess at least he can multi-task.  He has his snacks, juice, app and cartoon.