Whassat? Whassat whassat?

Grace is talking more and more with each passing week and right now she is really into asking what things are called. She will point her little finger at something, demand to know what it is, usually with a bit of repetition in there, and then try to repeat whatever answer we’ve give her. In recent days, I have found myself trying to explain nonstick cooking spray and packing tape. Perhaps most frequently, she asks about something that she already knows the name of. “Whassat? Whassat whassat?” “That’s your slipper.” “Slippuh!” She also loves to play games where she identifies things she knows the name of. Whenever it starts to feel a bit tedious is a good time to review the chapters in my child development books about how toddlers are learning about cause and effect through repetition, need to see that things’ names stay the same, and so on and so forth. When I stop to think about it, though, this isn’t just a toddler characteristic. I think it is a pretty basic human quality to love the familiar, especially in verbal things like jokes and narratives. There is, of course, the comfortable pleasure of watching a favorite movie (how many times have Rob and I seen The Matrix?) or re-reading a favorite book (I am truly scared to think about how many times I have read Pride and Prejudice). And then if I want to get all Joseph Campbell on you, it’s possible that most of the stories we as human beings tell each other are really the same story with the same archetypal characters, themes, and patterns. Grace is obviously just very interested in the human condition and monomyth.

My clumsiness has been rearing its ungraceful head lately and caused me several injuries. I was near the beginning of a run along the main street close to our house and totally fell down, a dramatic flailing fall that caused people half a block in front of me to turn around and walk in my direction until they saw me get back up and begin running again. Sigh... My physical injuries were limited to scraping up my palms and knees, which is good, but my pride was also a bit bruised. It took me a few seconds to really commit to continue on my whole planned run with my palms all cut up, but I was certainly motivated to run in the immediate aftermath to get away from anyone who may have seen me. And then a few days after that, I was making Potage Parmentier a la Julia Child and cut my thumb with our big chef’s knife a la Dan Aykroyd impersonating Julia Child. I cook a lot and I am not normally prone to hurting myself with our knives, but this time I really did a number on myself. The book I’m reading right now has a lot of ancient Greek sword fighting in it and the memory of my self-inflicted injury has made me feel all squeamish every time someone in the book breaks out a sword.

In other news, it has been crazy cold around here lately, with low temperatures in the single digits and high temperatures that don’t get above 20 degrees. This seems excessive to my Texas-bred self, like taking this whole winter idea a bit too far. I do enjoy winters here in general, with the occasional snow and wearing wool coats and sweaters. And winter is the season that makes me love our house here the most; when it’s cold outside, our cozy house with its small, 1920s-sized rooms feels delightfully warm and snug. Rob is not a fan of winter, however. He starts to feel that winter has taken liberties with him when the temperature drops below 50 degrees. That’s what growing up in California will do to a person.

Ring in the New

I’ve purposely waited to post this until New Year’s Day just so I can say I did not blog in 2007. You know, because I’m contrary like that. Perhaps 2008 will be different. Perhaps it will be my most blogorrific year ever. That would be not too difficult, of course.

2008 will be different, of course. This year will see us move across the country, for starters. As Rob has said, he finishes up his residency here at Yale this summer and will start his allergy/immunology fellowship in Dallas. I’m looking forward to being back in Texas; there’s going to be a lot of positives about being there. Relationally, it will be great to be close to my family and friends from college, med school, church, and even all the way back to high school, for me, at least. And financially it will be a good thing. Rob will make about the same as a research fellow as he does as a resident but moving back to Texas will make it feel like a 25% raise, according to those online salary calculator thingies. This gives us a lot of flexibility about how much I will work, when to have another baby and take some time off, etc.

Part of me does have some mild regret for all the places we might have moved to. This has happened to me at almost every big transition in my life-- going to college, grad school, moving up here. I am always content with the path that I end up on, but I wonder about all the parallel universes where I made other, perhaps more glamorous choices and the alternate me had new and different experiences. I do have a strong streak of wanderlust which makes me a smidge ambivalent about moving back to Texas, a mere 30 miles from where I grew up, despite the comfort and support of family and friends and a steep decrease in financial stress.

Living here in the Northeast for several years has done a lot to make me value Texas on its own merits, however. I did not know if I would ever feel homesick for Texas, but although homesickness is too strong a word, listening to much of anything by Lyle Lovett will make me nostalgic for the prairie openness and sense of place in my home state. Or I will try to listen to the radio here, or go to the grocery store, and think longingly about Texas. And the Mexican food! Don’t get me started on the Mexican food. I think the best Mexican food we’ve had here has been something I or our fellow transplanted Texans have cooked at home. I haven’t spent our years here in Connecticut yearning to be anywhere else, but I’m pretty sure moving to Texas this year will feel like going home.

Baby-Tested, Mother-Approved

It is that season of life for us where many of our friends are having babies. It is amazing to see all these new individuals coming into the world, and to see our friends growing into new roles as parents. Having a baby does come with an overwhelming number of decisions, though, many of which involve baby gear. I’ve been asked a couple of times about what we registered for, what we actually used, what we liked, etc. so I thought I would collect all that info here. These are just our experiences, and although I certainly hope they would work as well for others as they did for us, your mileage may vary. I am not affiliated with any of the following companies or products, but I wouldn’t mind becoming a spokesmama for some of them. Maybe there is a lucrative endorsement deal in this somewhere for me!

Pregnancy Piercings- I am part of the huge percentage of women my age with a navel ring, and it started to get uncomfortable at about the 25-week mark. I replaced my normal surgical steel ring with this flexible barbell about then and kept it in until I was about 4 weeks postpartum. It didn’t bother my skin (which is pretty finicky) and I am sure my piercing would have closed up if I had left it empty.

Belli Elasticity Belly Oil- Yes, I know this is kind of expensive, but I really do think it works. I used it on my belly and I have zero stretch marks there, even though I got huge. I did get some on (ahem) other areas that I did not anoint with this precious stuff. Not scientific proof, perhaps, but convincing to me!

Arms Reach Mini Co-Sleeper- The AAP recommends that your baby sleep in your room with you to reduce the risk of SIDS, as do parents who like to get more sleep. No, seriously, having Grace in our room for the first months of her life drastically increased the amount of sleep we all got and this little bedside bassinet helped. I could nurse her in the middle of the night without actually getting out of bed, then pop her back into the bassinet. You can’t get much better than that! Also, the “Mini” version of this thing fits in our small, 1920’s-era bedroom and can use king-size pillowcases as the sheets. (The official sheets kind of suck, FYI.)

Bundle Me- This is like a tiny sleeping bag that you put in the car seat or stroller to keep your baby warm. I’d never seen one in Texas but lots of babies have them here, and they are genius for cold weather babies, especially newborns. You use it instead of outerwear, perhaps with just a hat. I remember trying to wrangle floppy, no-head-control Grace into a bunting and then into the carseat-- sheesh... This is a much better idea, and taking Grace out into the world got much easier after I acquired one.

Boppy- Yes, it has a silly name. This pillow is a great idea, though, and it does make nursing so much more comfortable and convenient. With Grace at 10 months old, I still use ours multiple times a day.

Fuzzi Bunz- I didn’t really consider cloth diapering as a possibility until during my pregnancy Rob made some comments about the environmental issues surrounding diapers. I had the image in my head of complicated folding and pins and those yucky plastic pants. When I looked into the current status of the cloth diapering world, though, I was pleasantly surprised to see there are a ton of options out there, some of which seemed quite doable to me. We chose to try out Fuzzi Bunz, and we really like them. We started using them when Grace was about 4 weeks old (we waited that long just because having a newborn was overwhelming and we didn’t feel ready to add another new thing into the mix until then) and at 10 months Grace is currently in the medium size. Our initial motivation was the environmental impact, but it turns out to save quite a chunk of change to cloth diaper as well. Also, I really can tell a difference in the state of Grace’s skin. And being perfectly frank, it does not add that much work to our everyday lives-- just one load of laundry every other day. It is awfully nice to have Grace’s behind soft and fabric-y instead of crunchy and plastic-y.

Baby slings- These are my number-one, can’t-live-without baby item. I don’t think any other physical item has made my life as a new mama easier than the baby slings I have. When Grace was tiny, there were days when she wanted to be held ALL FRACKING DAY, and one of these allowed me to do this and still be active, do stuff around the house, go for walks, etc. I use them to go grocery shopping, to walk the dog, to vacuum, to walk Grace to sleep for a nap, etc. You can’t use them to cook because things like stoves and knives are not safe for babies, but other than that, there is not much you can’t do. I think most babies like being in the slings because they are close to mom or dad, just part of your everyday life, able to see what is going on, and sort of swaddled. There was a learning curve in using one, but after about the first 10 times I put her in it, I felt comfortable with it. It only got easier when she gained head control. I wouldn’t recommend the brands that they carry in the baby stores because they all have weird padding and straps and things. A simple unpadded ring sling is probably the best kind to start out with. I made mine using these directions, but if you don’t sew there are a ton of places to buy them online, including the best-known and reasonably priced Maya Wrap. I also really like pouch slings and have a Hotslings one that is ubercute. Hooray for babywearing!

Take this job and...

So any of you who have been in much contact with me know that this autumn saw another big transition in my life. I just thought there haven’t been enough significant changes in my life lately, you know, so I needed to spice things up a little. Anyway, as summer ended and autumn began, I left my research job at Yale and started adjunct teaching gigs at two non-Ivy-League universities in town.

It has been a really positive change for me. I spent just over a year as a postdoc in the physics department at Yale, and I found that the somewhat narrow life of pure research just wasn’t a good match for me. It came as a bit of a surprise to me that this job wasn’t all I had hoped and dreamed. I loved grad school so much and according to the groupthink of academia, becoming a postdoc was the expected next step in my path to fame and fortune as an astrophysicist. I missed aspects of my life in grad school, though; I missed being involved in teaching, I missed interacting with human beings regularly, and I missed having more variety in my everyday professional life. Moving on to teaching has provided all that for me. It is so fun to be in the classroom again after a year away, and I like the variety of going to two different campuses each week. I’m about halfway into this first semester of my new routine (sorry, Internet, for the tardy update...) and most days I find myself feeling enthusiastic and energized about my professional life, a welcome change from those feelings of floundering and purposelessness.

Despite the vast improvement in my attitude and general happiness level, I do feel conflicted about my flight from the research world. I am still working to shed a modicum of guilt. Am I letting people (at Yale, back at the University of Texas) down? Am I taking the easy way out? Am I contributing to the pitiful representation of women in science by opting out of that path? Am I somehow betraying my boss at Yale, my wonderful PhD advisor, or the field of astrophysics as a whole by leaving the big-time research world for an education-oriented career? This may sound insane to people outside academia; the system really does produce people (like me!) with an intense sense of career identity and what the perfect career arc should look like.

I know that measuring my life by a standard of success manufactured by cloistered, practically monastic professors is a bankrupt exercise. And I’ve known all along that I wasn’t totally committed to wrangling a place for myself in the Ivory Tower. However, actually acting on those thoughts and beliefs does make me wistful for the might-have-been.

Not that I wouldn’t kick and scream if you tried to drag me back to the reality of life as a postdoc.

You said it, Jane Austen

What dreadful hot weather we have! It keeps one in a continual state of inelegance.

-Jane Austen, in a letter from 1796

Boy, that Jane Austen knew what she was talking about. I’m not sure how the July weather in Connecticut compares to the English summers she experienced, but we certainly share this sentiment. It is pretty hot here these days. The heat doesn’t compare in objective terms to the Texas summers I’ve lived with up until last year, but it seems to affect life more because so few places have air conditioning. Both our house and my office have less-than-ideal cooling systems. The physics building on the Yale campus has some old-timey pumped air system that does take the edge off but does not give the Arctic blast that central AC can muster. Our house has nothing but the two window units that we have acquired-- one in our bedroom, one in our little study. I will admit to having dawdled recently running errands at the grocery store or Target in their blissful icy air.

Like Jane Austen, I find all this heat to have a negative effect on my appearance. My hair is a bit challenging these days since I absolutely cannot bear to turn on the hair dryer. The challenge is increased since I swear 25% of my hair has fallen out since the last time I blogged. Postpartum hair loss, anyone? I have an appointment for a haircut next week that should improve the situation. And don’t get me started on my skin... Inelegance would be putting it kindly.

We’ve gotten creative with cooking in the hot weather since the usual cooking appliances (stove, oven) exacerbate the problem. A lot of grilling has taken place; Robert is becoming quite skillful at the manly art of grilling meat. The other cooking appliances I am currently employing are the slow cooker, the microwave, the rice cooker, and the bread machine. They don’t put out nearly as much heat as the stove or oven. I think Rob is getting tired of the limited cooking mechanisms, but I find myself not caring too much. Me, who normally loves to plan meals and cook and eat. It’s too hot to really eat much. I think this is contributing to an acceleration in my pregnancy weight loss (which is going well, thank you) but is probably tempered by the fact that a large component of my diet right now would fall under the heading of “Frozen Desserts”. Ice cream, popsicles, sorbet, etc. So much colder and more refreshing than actual food, don’t you think? Maybe we should get an ice cream maker to add to our funny collection of countertop appliances.

Grace doesn’t seem too affected by the heat, which is good. She does get cranky if she gets too hot. She then wants to be held, which makes her hotter, which increases the cranky factor. A tactical retreat to the air conditioned bedroom is then called for. Nursing in the side-lying position under the blast of the AC unit is not a bad way to beat the heat. I recently packed up some of her tiny newborn clothes and it was weird to realize how cold it was back in February. We would dress her in a onesie and a warm zippered sleeper outfit and socks. So many layers! It is fun to have more of her delightful baby self out for us to enjoy now. Her toes are much easier to nibble now that it is summer and she is largely sockless. Delicious baby toes!

I try to regularly remind myself that I don’t have to live through too much summer, unpleasant though it be. We really had quite a mild beginning to summer and it has been out-and-out hot for just a number of weeks. And most likely there are only about 6 more weeks until it turns comfortable again for our air-conditioning-free life. That’s not so bad, right? Six weeks is nothing, right? I won’t melt away into a pool of sweaty organic matter before then, right?

Right?