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Nicky is doing great.  Still wrestling with some nausea, but nothing too bad.  Other than that he’s pretty much himself.

All went well.  Nicky was pretty calm today.  He opted out of the “giggle juice”.  It doesn’t work particularly well to relax him and we all agreed it’d be good to give him some control.  I did go back to the OR with him.  He started crying after settling in there, but went to sleep really fast.  He’s getting so big.  He was calm and composed nearly the whole time.  And, as opposed to the last 2 surgeries, they didn’t put me on the gurney with him, I got to walk beside him with the nurses.

Noelle asked for 4 pony tails this morning … “because it would be like a rainbow.”

There is nothing like the internalized stress of an upcoming surgery of Nicky’s to make me susceptible to strep.  (Assuming he does not catch my strep, and we did share a croissant this morning, his next VEPTR expansion is on Thursday.)
I never got it as a teenager, when it runs like wildfire through high schools.  My sister did, as did my brother, but not me.  My kids have never had it, though I suspect the bug comes home on them and infects me while their bodies just stomp on it.

The last time I got it was when Nicky had his VEPTR install surgery in July 2007.  Noelle was off on vacation without me to Cape Cod for a week and a half, the longest we’d ever been away from one another.  Carlo had only been with us for 2 months and I was leaving him for 4 days with my Mom.  Two days after the surgery, I left Nicky with my Dad, knowing that P/T was likely to happen, to come home and visit with Carlo so he’d know I meant it when I said I’d return home to him, only to find he’d burst an ear drum and I had to take him to the pediatrician to treat his ear infection.  I got back to the hospital after that go round and had the nurse take my temp, which was raging.  We never did do a culture, I’d have had to have gone to the U. Penn Hospital next door — my doc just called in a script for me.

The time before that was my first work trip to Ann Arbor after adopting Noelle.  I had to leave her with my Mom for several days.  I got off the plane in Ann Arbor and I knew something was really, really wrong.  I got back home Friday night and on Saturday Noelle and I went in to my doctor’s practice.
Stress in the common factor in there, isn’t it?

We did pizza for dinner tonight, on paper plates.

Can you believe it?  I had encounters with both this morning and SS definitely came out on top.

I was in and out in 23 minutes and they let me apply for a SS card and number for Carlo.  I wasn’t sure it would work.  I’ve got the US state adoption decree and a US state birth certificate, but there is no question that his stuff looks odd without a Certificate of Citizenship or foreign adoption documents (I do have the foreign docs, but they are all copies, and SS clearly states they want originals, and they don’t do anything to prove he’s *my* son).   None-the-less, my reading of required documents seemed to indicate that the NJ birth certificate and adoption decree should be enough.  He is a citizen, now, I do believe.  That was granted by the fact that I, a US citizen, adopted him in the US and it was approved by a US state court.  I’m appyling for his certificate of citizenship, as well, we want all the bases covered and I’ll need it to get him a passport, but I think I’m just applying for his certificate with that request, not the actual citizenship.  At least, that is my understanding of the law.

The fellow at SS did ask for the immigration documents and I just responded confidently, the US state birth certificate proves citizenship.  It was a domestic adoption for me.  Another family adopted him internationally and I only have my documents, not their documents.  He looked slightly non-plussed, took a careful look at the documents I had provided and Carlo’s health insurance card, which I was using as ID, and then entered it all into the computer, handed me back my documents and gave me the receipt.  Thank goodness, because I must admit that I’d like a wee bit more cash in the bank and the IRS owes me money.  I couldn’t take Carlo as a dependent without a SS# last year.  With the SS# in hand, I should be able to refile with amended information.  I was not happy thinking that I might have to wait until that CoC arrived in 12+ months, before I could get a SS# and take him as a dependent.

Now, Staples took twice as long.  I wanted to print a couple of long documents and have them spiral bound with vinyl covers to protect them.  I keep printing out these documents, because they are easy to mislay, the front pages rip out of the staples, they get all dog eared, etc.  One of my coworkers did this for a big standard we use a lot a couple of years ago and that sturdy package is still working hard for me.  You should be able to do this on-line.  Upload the document, pick your binding/color/etc. selections and pick it up at your local store at your convenience.  I make all the requests on-line and hit submit and later in the day get a call from the local Staples that my documents didn’t upload — never mind that I could preview them on-line just fine.  Feeling good about how quick the trip to SS went, I stopped by the Staples on the way into the office this morning.  Good lord.  They must have freaking DSL or something.  It took forever for me to download the docs from their hotspot connection and I never could VPN into the work network to get to the copies I had stashed, so I had to redownload them from the source.  The guy helping me was a typhoid mary, coughing and sneezing and dripping.  He was using this hanky and he’d just bunch it up and leave it on the counter and then go about touching things (like my documents and USB thumb drive) and then pick up that hanky again later.  I wanted to go buy some hand sanitizer and clean-up after him.  He kicked off my jobs right away, so I decided to stick around for them, but it took forever and he kept hacking the whole time. I came into work and washed my hands and rubbed my documents down with bleach wipes.  Not sure it’ll help.

Next time, I’m using Kinkos.