Hi Everyone

I got a couple of nice comments from fellow bloggers, so I thought I'd say a quick hello. It's been a long time since my last post.

Everything is great - M and the Buggins and TOB are doing great. Honestly, we are having the time of our lives. My boy is such a good spirited little man, despite the fact that he seems to be growing a full set of teeth a couple years early.

I'm afraid I don't have much more to say beyond that. Here's a recent picture, taken in Aruba last month:



I hope everyone reading this (all three of you) are doing great as well and are enjoying your Spring.

A Perfect Little Man

He's Here!
He weighed in at 8 lbs 4 oz., and he was born on 9/10/08 at 10:08am.

We'll call him BAM for blogging purposes, because those are actually his initials! Here's a picture:



During the C-section, M and I looked at eachother and we both thought "What a long, strange trip it's been". There was a radio on in the operating room, and at the moment of birth, Steppenwolf's "Born to be wild" was playing. God help us...

Buggins is bursting with excitement to see her baby brother today!

T Minus 48 Hours

Sorry I've disappeared....I've been caught up in baby prep and it took Mony calling me a "macho sh!thead" to jar me out of my lazy fog.

M goes into the hospital on Wednesday morning for a scheduled C-section at 9:30am!
She is pregnantiest pregnant person ever. I can't wait to meet my little man.

I'll update with news. Thanks to those who have left me comments despite my absense...I read them and appreciate them!

Jeeze, look at all these cobwebs...

SOMEONE has not been keeping this place up.

So, where was I?

Oh, that test. The CFA Level II. Yeah, I took that. It was f'ing hard. Like quantum physics hard. Like Stephen Hawking in his tricked out wheel chair was sitting next to me in the exam room, and he was STRUGGLING hard.

In the middle of the exam, while I was wrestling with a particularly bitchy question about futures backwardation and its relationship to storage costs and interest rates, I decided to get up and take a bit of a wee wee to clear my head (or perhaps I just think better with my junk in my hand). Anyway, as I stood at the urinal, I realized that the gentleman standing at the urinal next to me was quietly SOBBING. Not a positive indication of his exam performance.

Also, after the exam, I saw a girl run out of the room and blow chunks in a large trash can.

So yeah, it was hard. Most importantly though, it's OVER. At least until August, when I get the results.

So what else is new? Buggins is awesome...she'll be 4 in Sept, if you can believe that. And TOB (That Other Baby) is due just 3 days before her birthday, so September is going to be a busy month.

M is doing ok, but pregnancy this time around is a different experience. For starters, she's 4 years older, and those 4 years are sort of important ones (if you catch my drift) so her body is definately not reveling in its current state.

But she's keeping her spirits up and Buggins is really looking forward to being a big sis. She talks to Tob every day, and when she's walking next to M, sometimes she'll walk with her hand on M's belly. When asked what she's doing, she replies that she's holding the new baby's hand. It's really the sweetest thing.

In my life, I can only remember crying out of happiness twice. The first time was when M told me she was pregnant with the buggins (although I was a little buzzed at the time). The second time was when we told buggins that we were having another baby. It was the sweetest, most rewarding experience I have ever been through. I hope all of you experience that kind of joy someday.

Anyway, I'm not sure how often I'm going to update this blog. I'll keep it up because I want to reserve the right to come back to it someday. But this is not going to be a daily journal, that's for sure. Just no stinkin time for that.

By the way, some of you left comments for me wishing me luck on exam day and I want you to know how happy that made me. Thank you. Even though I haven't posted in 2 months, the fact that I still get comments wishing me well is an amazing thing and I truly appreciate it. I wish all of you well also.

Until next time -

I Can Only Stay For A Minute

Hi Everyone...

Feeling terribly guilty about my lack of blogging and for the fact that I even basically stopped reading all blogs. It's this damn CFA program. Level II is SO much freaking harder than Level I was, and the test is in about a month and a half. Every waking minute I'm studying. I'm studying on the subway (the "T", here in Boston), I'm studying during meals, I'm studying at work, I'm actually studying while I type this. If I pass, I basically get 6 months off before I have to study for Level III, so things should free up after that.

Oh wait, except for that whole "having another baby" thing.

M's pregancy is in it's 17th week. Can you believe that? And guess what it has? A JOHNSON. And based on the ultrasound, the thing is HUGE.

We're having a boy! We're calling him Tob for now (TOB = That Other Baby). Buggins doesn't even know yet (waiting for results of amnio before we spill it).

I promise I'll check in again when I cram the contents of all these books into my brain, and then barf it all back up into a 6 hour exam on June 7th.

Until then - take care -

Houston, We Have A Heartbeat

Baby Smarshy is looking good, for someone the size of a grain of rice. And it's little heart is pumping at about 120 beats per minute.

Dr. Google informs me that based on this, our chances of miscarriage have dropped precipitously. I love it when the good Dr tells me things I LIKE. More often he's telling me things that make me want to soil myself.

It occured to me yesterday that I've been afraid of this little baby. I haven't made any sort of emotional connection to it, and that's primarily because I simply saw it as something that could potentially cause me and my wife tremendous sadness and grief.

But now that there's a heartbeat, well...that changes it. Maybe I'll get attached to it just a little. It could still destroy me, though, so I have to be careful. But I guess all kids can do that. Buggins can still destroy me with a glance. Take last night for example. She was VERY upset at the prospect of going upstairs and getting ready for bed. We all went upstairs, and I started helping her get ready. She looked at me and screamed "Get out of my room! I just want Mommy".

I gave her a hurt look, then turned silently and went downstairs(and continued watching the republican debate - why is it that the crazy guy, Ron Paul, was the only one making sense? I stand a better chance of being elected President than him, though.)

Anyway, a few minutes went by, and I heard the little patter of footed PJs coming down stairs. There was Buggins, with tears and snot all over her face. We looked at eachother for a minute, and then she said "Daddy, I'm sorry. I love you". I smiled and gave her a big hug, and she ran back upstairs and I heard her exclaim "Mommy...I said it!!".

Where was I? Oh yes. Heartbeat. So everything looks good. She's at 6 weeks, and everything appears as it should. We go back for an ultrasound at 8 weeks.

I've started studying for the CFA Level II exam, which is in June, so I don't know that I'll be posting as often as I'd like...but I'll try. Certainly if anything interesting happens, I'll mention it.

Go Pats -

What a Long, Strange Trip

Whut up Playas

So I got this very nice comment from Monica saying that she had read my entire my blog from beginning to present. That's a veritable crapload of reading. Like 180 posts, some of them quite long and boring. I mean, you have to really want to punish yourself to do a thing like that. What, you couldn't find anyone to perform waterboarding on you that night?

But as I thought about it, I wondered what it would be like to start at the beginning, in Sept 2006, and read some of the drivel I have spewed out over the months and years.

So I did it. This past weekend. Just after my waterboarding appointment.

The first thing that struck me was that many of the people who commented on my blog back then are the same people still with me today. You folks have really been with me for a long time...I mean, besides my wife, some of you are the longest female relationships I've ever had. It must be because we're holding off on the sex. I'm telling you though, I can't hold off forever.

The next thing I noticed was how many people I missed, who seem to have disappeared. Jenny from the IF Block, which block did you move to?

The thing that really struck me, though, is the anti-climactic way that this process unfolds. I mean, if you were to read over the course of 2 years all about how my wife and I were dreaming of having a baby, and read all the details of our failed IVF cycles, and about the tears and fights along the way, and about the unbearable grief of infertility and how it was tearing us apart, you'd certainly expect there to be some kind of big party at the end, when we found out she's pregnant. I mean, all that grief led to this, and now we finally have gotten what we want, so there should be a big celebration, right?

Well, no. All that happens is that the grief turns into fear. So we spent 2 years grieving the fact that we couldn't make more children, and now we'll spend 9 months living in fear that it will somehow be taken away from us.

At what point can we really celebrate? Perhaps we can finally celebrate when the baby is born, but we'll be too f'ing tired to celebrate. The first time, with the Buggins, we celebrated as we held up a dripping wet pee stick. But we're WAY to jaded and beaten down to be that stupid now.

Anyway, thank to all of you for hanging out with me over the years. Your company is appreciated.