Did I Brush My Teeth Today?

Loyal Readers,

I decided to move my blog to another host. The formatting is much more flexible and I will be able to include many more elements than I can here. All new posts will be avaiable on the new site, which is called "Academomia". Here is a link to the new blog. I hope you'll continue to stop by and leave comments just as you have here. See you there!!

Becca

Here is the address again: http://academomia.blogspot.com

Despite Charlie's as yet to be developed fine motor skills, he has managed to escape from his diaper three times this week. There is nothing like waking up to the sweet cooing of your adorable baby boy, sleepily walking into his room, seeing his face light up when he recognizes you, reaching down to scoop him up and getting two hands full of wet pajamas, a mysteriously naked bottom, and today, POOP.

Maybe I'll add to this later, but right now I am going to figure out what is wrong with the program I've been working on so Dr. Advisor doesn't make ME poop in my pants at our meeting on Monday.

A local grocery store chain holds a dinner for Valentine's Day every year. Last year we got all dressed up and went and we had a great time. It was super convenient to pick up milk on the way home too. Here's a picture from last year:



Here are some pictures of Ryan and Charlie and me this year:




And WOW WOW WEE WOW:



The meal included two of my favorite food groups, potatoes obscurred by cheese and red meat. And we had chocolate mousse cake for dessert.

Dinner was served in the food court of the grocery store. The tables were set beautifully with white tablecloths and red cloth napkins. There were candles and pink carnations. There was prime rib. And waiters. And it was the only place we felt comfortable taking a three-month old thirty minutes before bedtime. And he did very well. There was only one instance of loud diaper activity ("Would you like the salmon or the prime rib?" ppbbbbffftttt...pbbbt...fffffffttth!!!! "Prime rib? Wonderful choice").

Ryan took Charlie to the men's room to change his diaper and while Ryan was working Charlie tried to strike up a conversation with a man at a urinal. Ryan hasn't had a chance to teach Charlie all the subtleties of being a guy. #1, no speaking in the men's room.

The meat came with this tasty white sauce. It was good on the meat and when I ran out of meat I found that it was also good on asparagus, little pieces of potatoes, the end of my fork, and my finger. Ryan came back from the men's room with Charlie before I got a chance to start licking it out of the bowl. But it was ok because that's when they brought dessert. I ate my whole piece of cake and part of Ryan's. It's lucky the button didn't come flying off my pants--someone could have lost an eye (I was wearing PRE-pregnancy camel colored pinstriped wool pants too thankyouverymuch! And a black sweater with a bow. Not bad considering I spent five minutes getting dressed and three of those were spent burrowing through my pre-pregnancy clothes looking for those pants. The pants that FIT did I mention?).

After dinner we went to the car where I wrapped a tshirt I found in the back seat around my freezing cold head and we drove home to hide from the snow and watch the last two episodes of Big Love, which we rented from the video store. SO sad we're done with those.

Today: Snow likely. Cloudy, with a high near 23. East wind around 10 mph. Chance of precipitation is 60%. Total daytime snow accumulation of less than a half inch possible.

Tonight: A 40 percent chance of snow. Cloudy, with a low around 17. Northeast wind around 10 mph. New snow accumulation of less than a half inch possible.

If people were meant to live with this kind of weather we would still have fur.

Charlie's cold is back. Since he's had this for a little more than a week we decided to take him to the pediatrician (because the pediatrician TOLD us to bring him in if he has had a cold for more than a week. this detail is important).

I decided to dress a little nicer than normal because I want to make friends with other moms and I think the little "homeless chic" thing I've been doing lately (read: clothes that are clean and fit correctly do not exist. And also it is cold and I tend to overdo the layers when I am cold) is a turnoff to potential friends. I wore a long skirt and brushed my hair. It was glamorous.

Charlie and I sat between a very well dressed woman (including makeup and earrings! ooh fancy!) with a seven-month-old named H and an exhausted looking cropped sweatpants and sneakers mom with a five-day-old named J who was there for a weight and color check. (J weighed as much as Charlie did during my last ultrasound when they decided to induce me, yikes!) Earrings Mom and I had a nice chat about our respective babies. Charlie and H both had "the cold" and both enjoyed staring at eachother. Sweatpants Mom and I really hit it off too until I asked her twice in less than a minute how old her baby was (because I am a really super listener and also because I am tired. soo tired).

Charlie was eating lunch when the nurse called him back. She weighed him (19 pounds) and measured him (26 inches) and he was such a good boy this time because they let him keep his clothes on on the scale. Dr. Z came in the little room and asked what symptoms he was having and I told her "nasal congestion, coughing, and fussiness (and he's just not himself, I mean he only slept eleven hours last night, it was ROUGH.)" She looked in his ears and listened to him breathe and said "You have a cold, buddy!" in a tone that made me think she thought I was a little dumb for bringing him in. Then she looked at me and said "humidifier at night, saline drops in the nose, let him rest, keep him warm, lalala you are silly he has a cold we can't help him you should have kept him home lalala give me your copay." I stammered "Oh, um, I brought him in because it's been more than a week (and you told me to bring him in if it was more than a week! See! Following directions! Not overreacting.)" She said "I wish I could just wave a magic wand and make it go away" as she walked out of the room and that was that.

I brought Charlie home where he had a wonderful day of sleeping and "developmental play" including rattle grabbing and tummy time and didn't act sick at all. It was one of my favorite days with him so far.

Charlie is in his crib, having what I like to call "mobile time", during which I take advantage of the fact that he is totally entranced by his mobile (which is like baby's first acid trip; not only does it spin around, it also plays music and projects a celestial pattern onto a white shade that rotates opposite the direction of the toys) so I can do something important like go to the bathroom, get dinner in the oven, or update my blog (HA like I do that on a regular basis anymore!). I think mobile time will be a standout on my parent-of-the-year application, right after "accidentally let baby watch fight scene on HBO's hit polygamy drama 'Big Love'."

Yesterday Ryan and I went to Target to buy onezies and pacifiers with a handy-dandy coupon Target mailed us. Looking back I should have realized that those coupons were designed to lure us into what I like to call "The Den of Temptation". And I should not have been surprised when I got to the checkout stand with my handy coupons and twenty-dollar gift card and the total was $68.73. Somehow pacifiers and onezies had turned into bottle brush, nursing pads, milk storage bags, pink burp cloths for upcoming girl-baby shower, tin foil, frozen pizzas (2), new dish scrubbing thingy (as referenced in a previous post), Comet soap scum stuff, and yes, pacifiers and onezies. We got the twelve-month old onezies as a last act of coherent decision making before the retail free-for-all began.

Target could be its own drinking game. Every time someone says "Hey, you know what? I've been wanting to pick up one of those!" you have to take a drink (you could totally do that in Baton Rouge where Target sells its own brand of wine by the way).

Ryan and I felt so dirty when we got home after being so mishandled by the Target marketing machine that we loaded Charlie into the Snuggli and cleaned the house. I tackled the bathtub in the master bathroom. And, happily, our bathroom no longer resembles that of a truck stop. Ryan and Charlie vaccuumed and took out all the trash and washed dishes. I changed the sheets (yipee! no more breastmilk smell), mopped the kitchen floor, and washed diapers. Then all of us went to bed at seven-thirty and slept for thirteen hours.

Here are some pictures of our accomplishments:

Clean Diapers! Yay! Cloth diapers make me happy because I? Am a freak.

Valentine's cookies that we helped Charlie make for his teachers

More cookies that we helped Charlie make for his teachers. For Valentine's day but mostly because we wanted to eat the dough.

Charlie has been helping me with my dissertation:



I'm starting him out with some simple data entry but it's been going well so I think we'll move him up to some low-level analysis tasks by the end of the month. He's really a huge help.

That's my post for today. I didn't get enough sleep last night because my back was all screwed up. And I think the big progress I made yesterday is wrong. And it snowed again. Whatever.

Dear little house gnomes,

The next time you see something in our trash that you think might still be useful, like for example a nasty-ass dish scrubbing brush from circa 1985, and you want to keep it, please take it to your little gnome nest and do not put it back INTO MY SINK. Doing so will protect the family from contracting botulism from whatever that brush might have touched during its (too) brief stay in the trash can.

It would also be helpful if you would return all the pacifiers you are hiding.

Thanks so much!

Becca

On the news last night in MyTown was part two of a hard hitting multi-part report on the length of time traffic signals in the city are yellow (although MyTown has the highest teenage STD rate and highest teen pregnancy rate in the country and we are about to run out of water for good, we smile and talk about traffic signals on the evening news). According to a complex national standard, the traffic signal should stay yellow for one second for every ten miles per hour of posted speed limit.

For example, if the speed limit was 40 mph, the light should be yellow for? 4 seconds! Good.

(Not that any of this matters by the way because people around here only take traffic signals seriously if they've been red for a few seconds. And then only start moving again once it's been through green and has turned yellow again (or when they can hear me screaming unintelligably from my car behind them).

But anyway, the news report. The reporter was talking about an intersection near my house where the posted speed limit is fifty-five miles per hour. "With a speed limit of fifty-five miles per hour," she said "the light should remain yellow for five-point-five seconds." So far so good. Then the clincher! She said "We timed the yellow light and found that it is only yellow for four-point-four seconds. NEARLY A FULL SECOND less than the national standard." Oh to have Tivo.

Then! Then! (yes it gets better!) She interviewed some city guy in charge of traffic signals. She said "At such and such intersection the posted speed limit is thirty-five miles per hour, so the signal should stay yellow for three-point-five seconds." He CORRECTED HER "Well, we would want that light to stay yellow for three and a half seconds."

Oh my HELL no wonder it takes half an hour to drive eight miles in this town.

A conversation about the next step:

Ryan: So where do you want to live after we graduate?
Me: Oh just apply anywhere you want, we'll make the best of it.
Ryan: Even California?
Me: NOT California!
Ryan: Anything else?
Me: Not Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, Nevada... or pretty much any state explored by Louis and Clark. Or that ends in "-ota"
Ryan: What about Illinois?
Me: GOD no!
Ryan: You said you wanted to live in Chicago!
Me: Oh right. Sure.
Ryan: What about New England?
Me: Boston? Yeah!!
Ryan: No, like Vermont or New Hampshire.
Me: Fine whatever, but I'm not wearing motif sweaters at Christmastime.
Ryan: Dallas?
Me: Traffic.
Ryan: Houston?
Me: Humidity
Ryan: New Orleans?
Me: Cataclysmic flooding.
Ryan: We could just stay here, I bet I could get a postdoc.
Me: [unblinking glare]
Ryan: [long frustrated sigh, leaves the room]