Another couple of years, another blog, this time, over at Wordpress. It's time I graduated anyways, now that I'm done with my Ph.D. Specifically, I want to blog more about science, so that's the main focus over at http://wedgewonderswhy.wordpress.com/ ... enjoy!

things

Things I am rocking on.
- science! I have craptons of data. I am slowly sifting through it all. I have been accepted for a poster presentation for the conference my lab always attends in June.
- ceramics! I am almost done with my second ceramics class, and have thus far created:
- set of small bowls (8) with pretty brown/white glaze
- set of serving bowl and platter with pretty brown/white glaze that I gave as a wedding gift
- set of white serving bowl and platter with light pink flowers
- 3 pairs of bowls with various colorings of the blue varieties
- set of medium bowls (8) with dark blue and brown coloring
- garlic jar with a yellow smiley face and black hat (lid)
- 2 double handled mugs for J
- large soup bowl with drippy green and brown coloring
- a set of 4 bowls with 'Mommy' 'Daddy' 'Brother' and 'Sister' on them for my college friends and their kids
- currently, I have an adorable teapot (my first) in the works, as well as a set of mugs for my labmates/friends who just moved to boston
- last but not least, Julian! My lord, he is a happy, affectionate, wonderful child. His latest feat of wonder is that he knows all the capital letters and numbers 1-10 already, and he's not even 21 months. I won't claim he is a genius, as he clearly doesn't know what they signify. But he shouts out letters and numbers when he sees them in his surroundings now.

Things I am working on
- car. Next month, we'll be entering a nannyshare arrangement with a family we met through daycare (J's bestest friend, actually... and we happen to get along well with the parents which is AWESOME). We'll be saving a bunch, so we can afford a 2nd car (which we'll need with this new arrangement). So we are on the hunt.
- friendships. I have gotten woefully out of touch with some of my friends. Facebook is helping a lot with getting back in touch with some of my high school friends. I need to start talking to my college friends more.

Things I am slacking on
- photography... I am only occasionally busting out the SLR.
- Julian's photos and website are months months months behind.

Committee meeting? Check. Whew. Lots of activity following it, on several fronts, so it's all encouraging.

Ceramics? SO MUCH FUN. It's humbling to be in the studio and see people throw huge pots that could encase an entire infant in it. It'll be a long time before I can do that, but one has to start somewhere. I've made:
- 2 mugs with double handles, specially for J.
- 2 pairs of small rice bowls, one set with ridges
- 1 larger bowl, maybe useful for cereal?
- 1 small plate with a spiral in the inside, green slip used.
- 1 LARGE serving bowl with flowers (a wedding gift)
- 2 LARGE square serving platters (both to be gifted)

I would like to make more small bowls and small dishes for my brother in law and his girlfriend, and more small bowls for us to use as well.

Sewing? slowly getting back into it. Made the base for 2 more hats, one will be a dino hat to put up on etsy, the other will be a croc head.

I've been getting a lot of spam on some of my old old posts about why one should go to Caltech, and how to get in. Which reminded me that a few random people have also commented on those posts, asking for advice. In case those people are still poking around, and for future potential commenters, if the answer to your question is contained in the post, I probably won't reply. And if you're asking if I think you can get in, I also probably won't reply... after all, I am not on the admissions committee, and I can't give you a good answer.

accomplished

I've had two practice committee meeting talks, thought a LOT about my projects, and have been neck deep in my powerpoint slides all weekend. I'm feeling pretty confident about this coming up Wednesday.

But the best thing of the weekend? Julian turned to me and said 'Mama' today. Unprompted. For the first time.

/pumps fist

derailed!

Amazing how getting the (possibly H1N1) flu can throw plans and good intentions up in the air and scatter them to the wind.

/cough hack cough

nothing to do but plow on through to my committee meeting. That's in a week and a half. We've got all kinds of plans for afterwards, including:

- Chinese New Year's Eve dinner with my brother, his girlfriend, and J's friend from school (and his parents)
- Robin's week off (scheduled work shut down)
- long weekend in Tahoe

and, of course, catching up on my sewing, and J pictures.

All after my meeting. Starting to get nervous now.

mental prep for the week

Today, Robin ran some errands while I stayed home with the napping baby. And, bless his heart, not only was he willing to go into Joanne's to look through the scrap bin for me, but he even argued with the cashier because she was an idiot and ringing it up wrong. That is even more heroic than pawing through Victoria's Secret Semi-Annual Sale underwear bins.

Dressmaking got stalled a bit, but I do finally have more thread of the right color. By the end of the week, I hope to have finished the blue pinafore, altered the pattern, and at least cut out the pieces for Rae's dress. I also plan to cut out the pieces for another dino hat, that perhaps I shall list on my new etsy page. (Link coming up when it's actually got stuff there.)

Turns out throwing pots IS a bit like riding a bike; a certain amount does come back to you. I managed to throw two cups on my first time back at the wheel last week. I'll probably cut one in half to look at the profile, and then add 2 handles to the other to make J his first hand made mug. I'll start in on bowl making this week.

J's page continues to be woefully neglected. I uploaded new videos tonight, and will have to link them over the next few days to the blog.

My initial pilot experiments at work have done well, so the goal for this week is to shift gears a bit, do some reading on B cell subsets, and hoe in on a separate line of experiments.

various items

Over lunch, I attended a seminar on love and logic parenting. It was not an unfamiliar concept; I'd read some very similar strategies in the happiest toddler on the block. The basic concept is to get on the kid's side by immediately empathizing with him when he makes a mistake or misbehaves, and helping him to own his choices and mistakes without any anger on the parent's part. What really strikes me is how applicable the strategy is in dealing with anyone, really, no matter the age, no matter the context.

After lunch, I attended a safety training so that I could become a member of the Stanford Ceramics Studio. I now have a key to the studio, a designated shelf space, and will be taking evening class there twice a week. I am SO SO SO excited about this. I learned how to throw pots in college, and did 2 semesters worth of ceramics at MIT as well. My goals for the quarter are:

- remember how to throw a pot. I imagine I'll end up with lots of funny looking mugs that I'll give away as gifts.
- make a set of rice bowls for home
- make a set of bowls and maybe plates for my brother in law and his girlfriend
- make a teapot and teacups
- make something for a wedding present (another teapot? sushi plates? vase? a pretty serving bowl? a pitcher? I dunno. Maybe I'll ask the couple what they would like most.)

progress

School:
- a major chunk of my data from the past 2 years is now in presentable form.
- need to incorporate the fall's ICC data into my summary as well, but that's less formidable of a task.
- there will likely be movement on three different interesting fronts, so it's looking good for having preliminary data for new projects for my February committee meeting.

so school = good.

hobbies:
- First attempt at pinafore is almost complete: I ran out of one color thread, went to the store and procured it, then promptly ran out of the other color thread and stuff got busy with lab data crunch... so there are 5 more inches of hemming to do and it's done.
- to keep myself from sinking tons of money into this sewing thing, I am only getting fabric scraps (which are a small fraction of the original cost). So most of my projects are pending until I get the requisite colors.
- got into the ceramics class with one of my friends, and that starts Monday. So. Excited.
- updated J's photos up to November. God I am so behind on that.

so hobbies = potentially good, but stalled. Gee, sleep and school are taking priority? I would never have guessed.

a few short term goals

a) start on the dress that I've been meaning to make for Rae.
a.2) stop by Joanne's this weekend to look for cute fabric scraps om sale to snag for various sewing projects

b) start drawing out ideas for other kid's stuff. these include
- crocodile hat
- thor, batman, the flash hats
- appliques for girl dresses
- the snap on bib thing (a la bibsandmatch.) Gotta figure out what material to make the bibs out of, though.

c) update Julian's Blog. I am months behind on photos, and I have more videos stashed on Youtube to post on there.

d) figure out a good etsy shop name. Maybe if I actually do this, and I could justify re-subscribing to WoW if I actually sell stuff.

e) finish reanalyzing all my ELISA control data and put it in presentable form for my February thesis committe meeting. Yikes!

Some Resolutions

I've neglected this blog for quite awhile, and I think I will start it up again, with the intent of keeping track of a few resolutions.

- never leave data uncrunched longer than a week. From here on out, Friday is reserved solely for crunching numbers from my week's experiments. ALL OF IT MUST BE DONE BEFORE THE WEEKEND.

- Go with my gut feeling. This applies to Everything. I think a large number of my problems this year can be traced back to me not following my gut, and refusing to ...

- Speak Up.

- Pick up and put away at least one thing every day before leaving a room. This applies to my desk and labspace as well. I've been resolving to do this every year for, oh, half a decade. Let's see if this one sticks.

- Listen. Especially to Julian. Now that he is learning to talk, and is so much more communicative, I don't want to tune him out. There's a reason that people (toddlers) get irritated and cranky; they need to be listened and validated. Myself included.

- Talk. Cultivate those friendships that have been neglected the past 2 years.

- Enjoy. Specifically:
- get cracking on the photography
- make a set of bowls in ceramics class for us, for the brother-in-law, make a teapot
- explore that sewing kick I've been on the past few weeks, and think about starting an etsy shop.

Today, Julian is 5 months old. Every day, he looks more and more like his father. Apparently, his behavior and development are a lot like his father too.... in that he has a voracious appetite, is an early teether (both bottom teeth had appeared by 21 weeks, and I suspect he is working on the upper two now), and is already showing signs of trying to figure out how to crawl. Thankfully, his crazy quick weight gain has slowed down (by our bathroom scale, today he is 19lb 9oz) or else we'd have gargantuan baby in a few weeks time.

These days, Julian is an absolute delight to hang out with; he grins, he coos, he laughs up a storm. I have absolutely no regrets about deciding to have a baby while in grad school. However, our finances are not exactly so happy. While I was applying to grad school and pondering the question of why there are so few women in academics past the ph.d., I think I was accurate in pinpointing the whole baby question as a huge culprit. What I did not consider, however, is the immense financial strain a kid is in a metropolitan area. Infant daycare in the bay area is just insane. What we are paying for 5 full days a week of daycare is more than the rent on our first 1 bedroom apartment in Palo Alto, well over half my grad student stipend. When you consider that most grad students who are coupled off are with other grad students, I don't know how anyone has kids while they are students. The only way it can be afforded is if grandparents are in the immediate neighborhood (free daycare) or one is independently wealthy. Robin has a good job, and we're just barely staying in the black.

I guess I answered my own question there. My schedule is flexible enough that I can be home for Julian when I need to be, but Robin and I will be packing our lunches and not eating out much until he gets a decent raise.... and in this financial environment, that won't be for awhile.

things I have learned about baby care in the first 3 months

I was writing a card to a friend who is expecting a baby in a couple months, and realized that some of the advice I was giving was worth putting down here as well.


- Even if you aren't going to cloth diaper, get a pile of prefolds. Those things soak up liquid like no one's business! Use them for burping, and for covering every surface the baby lies on, cause babies leak from practically every orifice. And keep them handy for diaper changes, cause YES, he WILL pee as soon as the diaper comes off. Speaking of which....
- Peepee Teepees don't work. I don't speak from specific experience, but lemme tell you, there is serious force behind baby piss. I laid a baby wipe on top of my son, and he peed... and the stream went THROUGH the wipe, and up a full inch above it. A Peepee Teepee would go flying.
- Humidifiers are useful both for moisture, and as a source of white noise to lull baby to sleep.
- Slings = insta-nap. I like the Maya wrap, or any other ring sling for newborns. Now that Julian's quite a bit bigger, we've moved on to a Kangaroo Korner pouch.
- Take advantage of baby's suck reflex - there's a reason pacifiers exist. It's like baby opium, totally calms them down. If you are convinced that pacifiers are evil, then you could also use a finger if desperate.
- Babies are adept at picking up your mood. Try to be cool and collected even if he is FREAKING OUT. If you are freaking out yourself, and just need to cry for a bit (totally ok!) give the baby to someone else to hold for a bit.
- Turn your cell phones off after 8pm to guarantee you and your partner a less interrupted night.
- Put a size reference in photos of your baby. I saw a series of photos of someone's baby next to a loaf of bread, and really wish I had done that.

Hope

Julian -

You turned 8 weeks old on quite a momentous day - Election Day 2008. Your father and I voted, as we have in the past two elections, but this one was different. It wasn't just that the guy who won happens to be half black, or that he is a Democrat, or even that his election triggered massive celebrations in the streets all over the country, and even the globe.

It was that we voted with your future foremost in our minds.

I was brought to tears as we watched the news coverage of the crowds cheering in Times Square and Grant Park, but mostly because I was hugging your father, with you in snug in a sling in between us.


Hope is a much stronger word, now that you're here with us, little one.

Discovering/remembering muscle movements

Julian is learning to smile; he is most likely to start grinning first thing in the morning, and in general, after he eats. It's very different from his little gas smiles from previous weeks; these grins open up his mouth, and crunch up his eyes. The first couple of times he smiled like this, we startled him by cheering and shouting at him. Now, he grins at us all the time, and it's SO CUTE.

In the meantime, I am officially allowed to exercise again, and tried to ride my bike the 10 minutes to the Caltrain. It took 15 minutes, and I was nearly dead by the time I got there. I shouldn't have been so surprised... I hadn't even broken into a jog/run since, oh, sometime late July. Of course I am horribly out of shape!

milk issues

First, a hilarious photo of the men in my life. I wonder if Julian will decide to imitate Robin's scorn towards cameras once he has conscious control of his facial expressions.

I am both allergic to milk and lactose intolerant. Thankfully, these conditions are on the mild end; I can still eat cheese and yogurt and ice cream without much consequence. I just can't drink milk straight. As such, I'm not used to the taste of plain milk; I have never liked lactaid, or goat's milk. So when Julian was born, it was very weird to suddenly be a milk spout. I know I know, cow's milk does not equal human breast milk, but it sure looks similar.

Unfortunately, it seems that Julian is sensitive to my breastmilk when I eat dairy products. So I am now abstaining from my daily cheese/yogurt intake. This is not too huge of a deal. However, since becoming pregnant, I have a newfound appreciation for ice cream. The idea of not being able to eat ice cream filled me with angst.

So I decided to take a hint from PETA. I already had plenty of expressed breastmilk in the freezer and fridge, including a bag of milk that was expressed before I stopped eating cheese, and couldn't give to Julian anyways. If this stuff is good for my baby to eat, why can't I eat it? So we made a batch of vanilla ice cream. And it is delicious.

adjusting

Julian is 3 weeks and 2 days old, and we're all still adjusting. Every few days, as Julian grows, the game keeps changing. I like to think that his extreme activity in utero prepared me for interrupted sleep, but every once in awhile, we have a rough and weird night. The first or second night we were home from the hospital, Robin woke me to feed Julian and I did not even recognize him as my own baby; I groggily asked "why are you giving me Joe Biden?" (I was clearly listening to too much NPR.) Last night, Julian was waking to feed every 1.5-2 hours instead of every 3 hours, as I had gotten used to over the past week, and my body did not like it. At one point, I woke to his crying, and it took me 2 minutes to remember that he needed to be fed. (At least I recognized him as my own son!)

The most interesting side effect of me nesting with Julian is watching the big things happen in the world on as Robin, Julian, and I deal with dirty diapers and midnight feedings. It reminds me of college all over again; what a bubble we are in! Hurricanes, financial meltdowns, political machinations.... There are big adjustments going on in the world, in parallel with the smaller ones affecting my new little family. I hope that it will be a better world for Julian, in the end.

and then there were three

It had been a running joke amongst Robin's family that Julian would be born on 9/9; after all, Robin's grandpa was born on 1/1, Robin's dad on 8/8, Robin on 10/10... and sure enough, Robin's son waited 4 days past due date, to be born on 9/9 (in labor and delivery room 9, no less). My parents were thrilled with the date as well, as 9/9/08 are good numbers in the Chinese language; 9 sounfd like forever, 8 sounds like prosper. Interestingly, the Chinese name we chose for him, Wing-Kei, means "forever, rare jade".

Labor was maybe 20 hours, with an epidural about 12 hours in; that almost seemed like cheating, as it turned labor into a simple waiting game, but I'm so glad I got it. The Lucille Packard hospital staff was absolutely wonderful; every doctor and nurse with whom we interacted with was so patient, so nice, and it made our hospital stay a really positive experience.

Robin has been, of course, a great partner and father. The first day after birth, while I was really
out of it, he completely took over taking care of Julian. To this day, over a week later, he still changes almost every diaper (and boy are there a ton of diapers... glad we are doing cloth, I shudder to think about the sheer volume of disposable diapers one child would contribute to a landfill). Robin has one more week off work, then 2 weeks on half time; I will really miss him when he's back to work full time.

As for me, recovery has been, as I anticipated, harder than labor (the lack of sleep doesn't help) but is going smoothly. Julian eats like a champ, so the wacky schedule is worth it. It's really nice to be able to roll over in bed again. And I wish I'd had these sized breasts 10 years ago!

I head back to school when Julian is 6 weeks old, and my mother will take care of him till he is 10 weeks old, at which point he heads to daycare. While I am absolutely loving this new little man in my life, I am also looking forward to getting back into a (likely scaled back till New Year's) routine in lab. In the weeks immediately prior to Julian's birth, I was slightly worried that I might want to quit my ph.d. pursuit after he arrived, which would be a shame, given how much effort I and my thesis advisors have already put into it. But, a week post partum, I can definitely detect that I miss science, and I am sure that I will not lack the motivation to work on my thesis. In a way, I am really thankful that the desire to work is still there. My life is obviously changed, and I fully embrace motherhood. But the other aspects of who I am are still there, I'm still Wedge. Which is great; I rather like who I was and what life was like before I was pregnant, and Julian's arrival is only making it better.

5 weeks to go, 5 year anniversary

I've known Robin for almost 11 years now. Tomorrow, we will have been married for 5 of those years. /boggles

What a crazy, wonderful 5 years it's been! While we've always known we wanted kids, I'm grateful that I've had these 5 years to enjoy just being with him. We haven't traveled extensively or anything, but I do feel like we've really lived these past 5 years. Of course, I'll probably think, after the mouse is born, that "how could we have lived before this baby came?"

Robin's been especially supportive and amazing these past 2 weeks, as I've grown increasingly bigger, more uncomfortable, and emotional. He's moved his schedule around so that he can drop me off at the train in the morning, and pick me up in the afternoon. As I've become less and less mobile (I am apparently one of the lucky women with especially bad pelvic pain), he has, without a word of complaint, picked up most of the housework, retrieved dropped items (a common occurrence as I get more and more clumsy)... he even helps me roll over and get out of bed. But most importantly, he makes me feel so much better on the days I get discouraged and upset at the line of random people who, upon seeing me, ask if I'm due next week. (I have 5 more weeks to go!) I might come home feeling huge, uncomfortable, and irritated, but by the time I go to bed, he always makes me feel beautiful and happy.

I hope the mouse grows up knowing what a lucky guy he is, to have Robin for a dad.

about 2 months to go....

After 10 years of maintaining almost the exact same figure and weight (I still have some high school clothes that I fit into as of last fall), it's very bizarre to have gained 30% of my original body weight in the space of 7 months. Only about 4 lbs of that is baby! Many people have told me that I don't look like I've gained anywhere but my belly, and I wonder if they are all lying or if the belly just blinds everyone else to other parts of my body. My parents, upon seeing pictures of me, say I look healthier than ever as my face is actually filled out, which cracks me up. Robin just calls me fat before kissing me and my belly. At least he's honest.

The mouse has continued his daily and nightly acrobatics, leading me to suspect he's going to be an extremely active kid. He spends most of the day attempting to jam his feet straight up into my ribs, and most of the night flinging his arms and legs outwards simultaneously, pushing out at the sides of my belly. The only thing that seems to calm him down at night are voices; mine, Robin pressed up against my belly, or our clock radio next to my stomach with NPR turned on. The latter is most useful when I'm trying to get to sleep. I'm looking forward to him waking Robin up and not just me.