Look, I’m kind of a geek. I always have been. I went to a college well-known for its nerd factor. My mother’s only consolation to this was that my chances of marrying a future lawyer, doctor, or engineer were much higher because mostly, that’s all anyone goes there to study.

Soon after starting college, I met Mark, a future engineer and Class A Nerd. He and his friends introduced me into realms of nerdom that I never knew existed. Like the XKCD comic series.

(Side note: Mark actually insisted on using this XKCD comic to tell his family we were expecting Smudge.)

(Other side note: I do find these comics amusing about 30% of the time, when I can actually understand what the joke is.)

Well, about six months ago Mark excitedly told me the following story. The creator of XKCD had slipped about 32 puzzles into his latest book. The solutions to the puzzles formed an encrypted string which, decrypted, yielded a time, a date, and a set of GPS coordinates. The coordinates were for a spot in San Francisco’s Central Park, the date June 26th. He had me mark it in my calendar and I forgot about it till, oh, Friday the 25th.

So, after the church BBQ and depressing USA loss, we loaded up the car and headed into SanFran with NO idea what would await us (if anything!) in Central Park. We arrived and parked with 14 minutes to spare. Since I’m too slow, Mark took Menininho and rushed ahead, which I tried to hustle my preggo self. With two minutes left, I heard Mark calling to me from up a hill.

“Hurry! There’s only 2 minutes left! If I’m going to make it in time, I’ll have to climb down this cliff quickly. I’ll take the baby and you take the stroller and keep walking along the trial and meet up with us when you can.”

And I did. I let my husband grab our child and climb down a cliff to join the small crowd below. And as I pushed the stroller through the park (uphill, I might add) while I heard them screaming a count down that ended in “Happy New Year!” (the heck?!) And I braved some shrew/mole creature that popped out of a hole and tried to eat me.

But Mark was so happy! He was among his people (including the guy in front of us, who’d flown in from New York for the event). People who flew kites and passed out homemade brownies to everyone in line and wore video games shirts and, yes it’s true, acted out mock fight scenes in slow motion.

I know you’re wondering what the event was. The creator of XKCD flew out to sign autographs and pass out booklets of never-before-published comics. Although we were towards the front of the line, it took an hour to get to him because he spent so much time chatting with each person in line (of which there were over 100 in total). Really nice guy! He loved the story of Mark using his comic to announce our pregnancy and even signed Mark’s thesis project (that’s how big of a fan Mark is).

Honey, I love you.

I can’t believe how fast 3 years has gone by! It also seems like a lot longer, but I suppose that’s because we’ve been together almost 7 years now. I am so grateful for a husband who is truly a partner, who does everything he can to support me, and who relishes his role as father. Here’s to many more, Love!

There are some parts about Marfan syndrome that no matter how you spin it just are no good. Like our feet.

Most of us have huge feet. Narrow feet. Feet that were not made for shoes. In fact, now that my feet SHRUNK after having Menininho, I wear a shoe size that is not made by most shoe manufacturing companies; 10 1/2. I finally gave up, bought men’s sneakers for when I need to do a lot of walking and otherwise wear Old Navy flip flops.

So, when I found out Menininho didn’t have Marfan I was happy for his little feet. He would, I thought, have a life of careless shoe shopping from whatever store he wanted and for reasonable prices.

I forgot about my husband’s feet.

We affectionately refer to Mark’s feet as “hobbit feet.” They’re extra wide and all his toes are pretty much the same length. It’s kind of like his feet are bricks.

A few weeks ago we took Menininho to get his feet measured for new shoes. Lo and behold, he’s wearing a 4.5 XW. There is only ONE store that makes children’s shoes in an extra-wide, and it’s not just their sizing system because went to other stores and tried a size larger or a size larger in a wide and nope, still too tight. I’ve been trolling Ebay, Amazon, and Zappos looking for used shoes but nada. Time to buckle down and pay full price for a pair.

Apparently, if the shoe fits, the foot doesn’t belong to a member of our family. Poor Baby Smudge…s/he never even had a chance.