Picky Eaters

Yesterday I made some grilled vegetables with korma sauce, and rice, and Milo lapped it up. The kid ate potatoes, tomatoes, grilled peppers, onions, zucchini, and asked for more. There is something that is just so satisfying about being able to feed Milo the same food that we eat! It's like, I don't know, I only have to make one dinner instead of two!

Except, of course, for Nora.

So I'm kind of wondering about Nora and her refusal (absolute) to try any food that is not crackers or toast or cheese. I mean, seriously. She won't try anything. In fact she has started refusing to eat foods that she used to eat, like pancakes and meatballs. She won't eat any fruit. She won't eat any vegetables. She won't eat pasta. She won't eat rice. She won't eat mashed potatoes. She won't even eat, my God, ice cream, cake, or brownies. She won't even try it. Honestly, here is the non-baby food that Nora will eat: Toast (we can put peanut butter, honey, and cream cheese on it), french toast, cheese, and crackers. That's it. 4 things.

A person cannot live off of 4 things, especially as those things don't actually contain any fruits or vegetables, so we're still giving her pureed baby food. But I'm starting to wonder how long this is going to last. Today the twin whisperer said that she could imagine us sending Nora off to kindergarten with her pureed lunch. Is it going to come to that? The kid is remarkably stubborn. Every single meal, I offer stuff, she says no and turns her head so far away from the offending food that she looks like one of those owls who can rotate its head 360 degrees, and I say "okay" and drop it. I don't push the issue or try to make her eat stuff. I'm just wondering...how do you get a kid to try things? Is she doomed to a toast and cheese diet for the foreseeable future?

Hiding

The kids are like our cats -- they think that if they can't see us, then we can't see them. So they try to "hide" behind the flap on the front of the sofa. It reminds me of when our cat Sam will hide her massive bulk behind a tiny wrinkle in a rug. 

It's a Milostone!

I'm so proud. Today, for the first time ever, Milo at a full dinner of actual people food and no baby food at all.  He ate almost an entire meatball, 1/3 of a banana nut muffin, corn on the cob (well, sliced off the cobb by me), grilled red peppers with bits of quinoa stuck to them (and he asked for more and more red peppers and ate them until we ran out), 1/2 of a banana (off a fork), and a small bowl of ice cream.  Hooray!

(Out of all of that stuff, the only thing Nora would try was muffin, and she did eat 3 or 4 bites of muffin).

Even if I can just downsize to buying baby food for only 1 baby instead of 2, it'll be a nice change.  Milo is now to the point where he takes an interest in what we eat, hence the red peppers with quinoa and the corn on the cob, which is awesome. After dinner the kids ran around playing peek-a-boo with each other (Nora calls it "peek to you") and didn't even need us to play with them. Awesome. 

Manners

This evening I handed a piece of cheese to Milo and out of nowhere he said "Thank you, Mama!" Awwww!

Guy and Glasses

This morning we had the chimney people come to do some work, and at one point they had to get into our attic. So this guy came into the living room and Milo started crying a little bit. As I came down the stairs he ran up to me, pointed at the chimney dude, and said "Guy!" I didn't even know he knew that word, although lately Nora has been referring to a tiny police officer figurine as a "guy".

Both Milo and Nora have a weird fixation on glasses. They love glasses and want to point it out when anybody is wearing glasses. When the twin whisperer has her reading glasses on the top of her head, they'll say "Glasses on? Glasses on?" until she puts them on her face. When it's time to draw, Nora will ask me to draw a circle and then half the time she'll then say "Eyes and nose? Eyes and nose?" As soon as I make the circle into a face both kids will demand that I draw glasses. Then they are happy as a clam to look at the face with glasses.

Comparison

Today I was cleaning off my desk and came across doctor's records from my babyhood. The last one I have access to is at 18 months when I was 18 lbs 5 oz, and 31.5". At 18 months Nora was 18 lbs 11 oz and 30.5". So she weighed more than I did, and I was also skinnier when you look at the height to weight ratio. But I don't think anybody was worried about me back then, so it seems like Nora is just expressing her genetics.

Yawn

Yesterday I took some time off work and Jake and I took the kids to the home improvement store after lunch. We had a 10% off coupon that we needed to use by the end of the weekend so we went ahead and bought all of our tile for the basement bathroom while both kids sat in the shopping carts and plaintively asked "Down please? Down please?" about 100 times a row. Home improvement stores aren't great places for running around -- they're full of hammers and saws and giant forklifts and things.

Today we decided to go to the zoo after lunch. I figured it would be a good day because it was cold and cloudy. (Seriously, like 65 degrees out. This has been the coldest summer ever!) But the zoo was so packed that we couldn't even get a parking spot and had to bail. Apparently in the recession the zoo's attendance has doubled. So instead we went to the arboretum, which was quite empty, and the kids had a blast running through prairie fields and gardens. They smelled flowers, watched some planes going by, ran on the grass, and got attacked by mosquitoes. 

I think Milo and I might be fighting off a cold or something. I wake up and feel like I have chronic fatigue syndrome, or maybe acute fatigue syndrome, because I'm just so tired and only want to sleep all the time. I've felt that way for about 2 years now, though, so maybe it's not a cold. Maybe it's just parenthood. Anyway, Milo's been feeling the same way and has been sleeping a ton over the past 2 days. 

Tonight at dinner Milo ate some sushi (the rice part). Both kids ate french fries which I actually deep fried in order to pack in the calories, and then pureed turkey with rice, and sweet potatoes. Nora's favorite thing right now is pureed sweet potatoes, which she will ask for by name incessantly. Then Milo was eating some left over toast with peanut butter from lunch, and Nora asked for some, so I gave her a piece. But it was stale and she gagged on it, and then she threw up her ENTIRE dinner. And then wouldn't eat or drink a thing.

I HATE sending her to bed on an empty stomach. Hate it. I went to the local frozen custard place and got a banana milkshake, hoping she might drink some and banking on the likelihood that it would be packed with calories and fat. Nora had a little, but not enough to make up for dinner. And so it goes. On the bright side she hasn't done any night vomiting since we resumed the "stay upright for at least half an hour after eating or drinking" rule. 

Today we've been dreaming about our future kitchen remodel that is on our "someday when Amy gets tenure and Jake graduates and gets a job" list (also inludes: iPhone, back patio remodel/landscaping, new sofas). My dream remodel includes getting rid of the chimney that runs through our kitchen, eliminating the bar, and turning it into an island. But even just getting rid of the yellow linoleum and tiles would be a nice improvement. The more we put into this house, the less I see us ever leaving. It is an imperfect house but really, what is perfect anyway?  Its location is 100% perfect, and that's a thing you can't improve in a remodel.

Jake taught Milo to say awesome. Now the kids have this conversation:

Nora: Totally radical!

Milo: Awesome.

Done

Uploaded and submitted this morning!

-- Project description, 15 pages
-- Project summary, 1 page
-- Project references, 5 pages
-- Cover sheets and certifications, 5 pages
-- PI biosketch, 2 pages
-- PI current and pending support
-- Project budget (big, but not as big as I originally wanted it to be)
-- Project budget justification
-- Department chair's letter of support
-- School district's letter of support
-- External evaluator's letter of support
-- 5 advisory panel members letters of support

All in all, 50 pages, all done and accounted for. I have no intentions of submitting any more grants in the next couple of years, other than a re-tooled version of this grant next year if I don't get it the first time around. Submitting NSF grants is a bit of a pain and I'm glad to put it behind me for a little while!

Over the last 5 years I have submitted 8 national grants (NSF or IES), one independent consortium grant, and 2 small internal grants. Out of those 11 grants 6 have been funded, 2 are pending (don't know yet), and 3 have been rejected (actually it was the same grant 3 times in a row, and then we finally gave up). Preparing national grant proposals is a lot of work, work that is time down the drain if it doesn't get funded, but having grants get funded is really nice! It definitely changes the tenor of my work in positive ways. Fingers crossed for this one: I'll probably know by Jan or Feb.

Now onto AERA proposal, signature paper #1, signature paper #2, and collaborative paper! I hope to get 2 of those 4 tasks done by the end of the summer, in between all of my committee meetings, student advising meetings, thesis defenses, etc. going on in the next couple of months.

Our Town

As the dusk turned into darkness this evening I listened to a bunch of kids running around outside playing hide and seek and other summer kid games. They gathered under a tree in the park and some of them were chanting "One o'clock, two o'clock, three o'clock rock! Four o'clock, five o'clock, six o'clock rock!" as other scattered. I'm so glad I live in a neighborhood where kids still roam free on summer nights. So, so glad.

19 Months

I didn't realize until this morning that today the kids are 19 months old. Last night was another sleepless night, which is so boring and endless and whiny and dramatic that I'm boring myself with it. The sleep thing is currently as bad as it was last summer, which is kind of unfathomable to me. I know we'll get through it, it's just hard right now. Hard hard hard hard hard. Wait...was it ever not hard? Let me look back a year to see what I said when they were 7 months old...

Huh. I was describing the kids as mellow and able to roll with the punches. Wow. What a change. So it hasn't always been like this. And that tells me that it probably won't always be like this, either. What I mean to say is that there will be some point in the future when spending time in the house with the kids will not involve near-constant protestations of unbearable agony over the fact that the cat walked away from me!

This time last year I was describing Nora as having more energy and moving around more, and I talked about how Milo was content to just sit there and not move around much. Now Milo is always on the go. He runs to and fro, to and fro. He throws things and cackles and is a constant blur. Milo is capable of sitting down and playing with something for extended periods of time, so I think his high-energy ways are completely normal. This past weekend up at the lake Milo was in disposables because it's hard to use cloth when traveling, and so the diaper was so slim that his pants weren't really staying up. At some point his pants started riding lower and lower, and then as he was running across the room we could all see a plumber's crack as his diaper started slipping too. But Milo just kept running, and the next thing we knew his diaper and his pants had fallen completely down around his ankles, exposing us to the Full Milo, if you will. Amidst everybody's hysterical laughter Milo just kept running, even though it's hard to run with your pants around your ankles.

Milo's favorite book right this minute is one called baby colors, and he can name almost all of the pictures in there, including dolphin, chocolate, eggplant, and grapes. His favorite is the dolphin and he'll ask over and over again "where'd dolphin go? Where'd dolphin go?" as he flips through the pages. Then he'll find it and say "there it is!"

Milo continues to wake at night. Sometimes it seems clear that it is his teeth. Other times it seems like he gets spooked or scared. When Jake comforts him, Milo will sometimes cry once Jake prepares to leave the room. Then I go in and comfort him and he'll ask me "where's daddy?". Once I tell him that daddy is sleeping, he seems to accept that and he'll lie down and go to sleep himself.

Milo is getting a lot more hair on his head, although he still looks generally bald because his hair is so white blond. He is also getting big enough so that he can crawl up on things, like the futon and the rocking chair. The other day I walked into the bathroom and found him standing in the (empty) bathtub. Milo can almost climb up on the sofa, but not quite unless he's got something to grab onto as he yanks himself up, like the cat. He loves getting up on the sofa so he'll ask me "up, please?" breaking out the please because it's something he really wants.

Milo got spoiled up at the lake with lots of grandparent junk food, so much so that last night at dinner he eschewed the meatball I was trying to get him to eat and said "ice cream?" Like he thinks he can order up what he wants! Then he asked for berries and crackers. The good news is that he's eating more and more people food: broccoli, red peppers, cold chicken, several different kinds of fruit, and the occasional piece of pasta. He also likes his sweets, which he discovered with glee at the grandparents' house, like ice cream and brownies. My goal is to have these kids on 100% people food by the age of 2 and feeding themselves entirely. This seems like a reasonable goal for Milo, at least. (Nora won't eat a single thing on the above list. Not even ice cream.)

Tonight Milo said a 4-word sentence. I cannot, however, remember what it was. This is probably the result of ongoing sleep deprivation, the likes of which are truly unfair to inflict upon a geriatric 38-year old such as myself. It was a good one, though. The kids are smart and funny and especially fun to hang around with directly after meals, when they're all energized and cheerful.

Today Jake taught Nora to count to 5. She's been walking around saying "One two three four five! One two three four five!" Obviously cardinality and ordinality are beyond her, but Nora does know when she has two of something rather than one. Nora can also now recognize the letters N, R, and A, which unfortunately brings to mind the NRA, but O is tricky because it looks like a circle. I can draw a circle, triangle, square, and rectangle and Nora will name them all. Today we played with a wooden puzzle that their grandmother picked up at a yard sale. It has lots of shapes and Nora learned some more shape words like "trapezoid" and "hexagon". It's almost as funny to hear her say "trapezoid" as it is to hear her say "totally radical".

The separation anxiety thing is getting worse rather than better. Today Nora broke down and sobbed and cried "Mama, Mama" several different times even though Jake was right there. She's also doing that at night. Developmentally, I imagine this is the peak time for this sort of thing, and in time it'll lessen. I do feel terrible for her, and of course leaving the house is a difficult endeavor. Nora also cries sometimes now when the twin whisperer leaves, saying her name in a tearful, pitiful voice. Honestly Nora's ability to use her little voice to the utmost sympathy-eliciting power is truly stunning. The other morning I took her out of her pack and play and we dropped the pacifier into it (they're only allowed to have pacifiers during sleep times). Nora then wanted it back and started saying "Pafier? Pafier? PAFIER?" with her voice literally quivering, on the verge of tears, her face contorting in pain and agony. It was so endearingly dramatic I wanted to give her an award.

I've noticed that we've really lightened up on the eating thing. Milo looks noticeably skinny to me, especially with his shirt off. Nora doesn't look quite so bad. Part of me has been thinking, eh, they don't have to go back to the doctor until December so that's tons of time to fatten them up. Also, I think I have decided that since the kids seem to be cognitively normal, physically healthy, and growing (albeit slowly), then it's time to stop torturing us all over the eating thing and just let them decide how much they want to eat. I offer all the time, and then they choose what to accept. Nora won't try a darn thing. Just in the past week she's refused to even taste chicken, bananas, strawberries, nectarines, meatballs, pasta, broccoli, red peppers, roasted potatoes, macaroni and cheese, ice cream, and brownies. I mean, honestly. Nora's still strictly a toast and purees kind of girl. Oh, actually I take it back -- Nora did taste a strawberry, actually several times. She would take it into her mouth, sort of, lick it a little bit, and then push it out of her mouth. She'd say "I like it" but she couldn't bring herself to actually chew it. I was proud of her for giving it a try.

Nora's umbilical hernia is noticeably decreasing now. I can tell it's going to close up on its own. This isn't exactly interesting information but it's the kind of detail that maybe I would want to remember for myself 30 years down the road. In other physical developments, Nora's hair is curly and wavy, and is kind of growing in in weird ways so I'm not exactly sure what I should do, if I should cut it, or let it all grow in on the top and just start cutting the bottom until it all reaches the same length, or what. Or maybe put it up in some little pig tails? Right now her hair is kind of in a boy hairstyle.

Nora's a weird nut to crack as she's simultaneously very social and shy. Whenever we see anybody new she clings to me like a monkey and buries her head. But she loves to talk, and when she's around people she knows Nora will carry on nonstop conversations with herself. On the car trip home the other day Nora did this for 3.5 hours in a row. She just talked and talked and talked. It's kind of cool because it's like a window into her mind. Nora is also the one who loves to imitate, so I hear my words coming back when we're at dinner and Nora suddenly says "no throwing!"

The sleep thing is messing everything up so much right now that I'm just trying to get from one day to the next. I'm kind of mad that this is still happening at this age, which seems outrageous, but I'm also sort of accepting of it, in a sad, defeated way. One thing I've realized lately is that good parenting is not just a matter of knowing what to do, it also requires having enough energy to actually go ahead and do it. Sometimes, these days, I don't have that energy. Oh, you want to play with those firecrackers, sticks of dynamite, and giant anvils? Eh...looks safe enough to me. It's not like there are any matches around. Just play quietly for a few minutes while Mama rests here on the sofa.

Toddlers are tiring but they're loads of fun. I love seeing how Nora and Milo think, and learning new things about them every day. We can talk now, and play games together, and the kids can also play games with each other, and in those respects I'm loving every minute of it and wouldn't trade 19 months for 7 months, no matter how mellow they were back then.

Core Dump

So for the first time, really, I was actually embarrassed today as a parent because my kids were being so horrible. 

To back up, Nora & Milo liked all of the excitement of going up to the lake at Grandma & Grandpa's, but it was also really hard for them. G & G have a big dog and Milo and Nora were scared of the dog the whole time. So any time the poor dog (who was actually quite well behaved) even so much as looked at them, the kids would cry. Nora freaked out any time she walked 3 feet away from me and lost track of where I was. Nobody wanted to eat all weekend long, although to Milo's credit he did discover a true love of nectarines and strawberries. 

On the second night, Nora woke up over and over again. We were all 4 in the same room and once she clued in that I was in there, Nora couldn't sleep. She wanted me to hold her, but of course when I held her, or took her into bed, she also couldn't sleep. So she was up and down, up and down, and up pretty much for good by 4 a.m. That disturbed Milo, so he got up too, and we tried to get them to sleep in bed with us, since nobody wanted to be left out from Mama and Daddy cuddle time. But of course that didn't work, because Milo and Nora just kept cracking each other up, and jumping around, and making tons of noise, and I think it was around 5 or 5:30 when Jake remarked that it felt like we were in bed with a sack of crazed weasels. They finally fell asleep at around 6:30 for about an hour and a half.

(If somebody is thinking "just let them cry", we've tried, and Milo will cry for 2 or 3 minutes and fall asleep. But Nora is the opposite. She doesn't release tension by crying, she builds tension. So she'll just cry harder and harder and harder for longer and longer, and it makes the situation worse instead of better.)

As a result of the sleepless night and all the stimulation Milo and Nora were extremely cranky today. They whined constantly. They cried, they didn't want to eat, they freaked out if the dog looked at them, they demanded to get out of their high chairs, it was horrible. We were there with some childless friends of ours and I can just imagine how I would have felt about that whole scene before I had kids. I felt like apologizing over and over again for making them eat lunch while listening to whining, crying children. At one point Nora wanted to sit on my chair with me, but then she wanted me to get off so she could have the chair to herself (to stand up in no doubt), and I had had it with her and told her tersely that no, she can't play on the chair, it's dangerous and I'm going to sit down and eat my lunch, damn it. Then Nora cried for like the 5 thousandth time and her Grandma was all "oh, poor Nora, you can come sit here with Grandma, I'll rock with you on the chair", like I'm evil, and I notice my friend seems kind of cold towards me, and I'm all, that's great, not only are our kids driving everybody nuts but now I can tell that my parenting is being judged too, and give me a break you would get terse too if you'd just listened to non-stop whining for the past 6 hours after a night of not sleeping!

Jake's parents -- well no, scratch that, Jake's mother -- keeps offering to take the kids on her own for a weekend or a week so that we can take a vacation or something. But I just think, am I crazy to think that's a crazy idea? Because Nora is not cool with her Grandma holding her when Mama goes to the bathroom. She still cries the whole time if I step out of the room. She wakes at night and says "Mama" over and over again, and whenever anything freaks her out in a new environment she demands to be held so that she can bury her face in my shoulder. It's not all that different with Milo -- just substitute Jake for me. Am I being overprotective in thinking that just dropping the kids off at the lake with the giant scary dog and the two Grandparents and not even daddy seems a little extreme during this separation anxiety phase of life? 

Jake and I haven't had a night to ourselves since the kids were born. I would of course love to have something like that, but the proposed scenario just doesn't seem feasible to me.  It seems...mean, like we'd be ignoring what the kids need at this time in their lives. But I know other parents do this, so maybe I am being overprotective. I don't know. When my mom is here or when the twin whisperer is here helping out Jake, the kids are okay with me taking trips. 

There were, of course, good things about our trip: the kids loved the lake and riding in a boat. They even tolerated their life jackets. They loved being outside. Milo discovered nectarines and cold chicken. Oh, and Nora did something I found quite clever. She wanted to tell me that she did not like whatever it was I was trying to get her to eat, so she said "No I like it". Also, in the car both kids enjoyed reading book after book and telling little stories to themselves as they looked through the books, which was adorable.

Miscellany

Eating: Milo recently ate a bunch of raw bell peppers and loved them, asking for more over and over again! Go Milo! He also ate two pieces of broccoli last night. And one kidney bean! Hooray! Predictably Nora wouldn't try any of that stuff. I still can't get her to even taste any fruit.

Talking: Yesterday Nora said her first four-word sentence. She said "Milo's eating Nanny's apple!" This story came from the twin whisperer, who appears to think that the kids are mini Einsteins, so I'm taking it with a grain of salt.

Behavior: At some point I'm going to have to figure out when and how to start disciplining these kids. Is it too early for consequences like time outs? I need to learn more about where they are right now developmentally, whether they are old enough to have any impulse control, whether they can understand the concept of a consequence, etc. Milo's current thing is to push Nora. He just gets excited and he's so physical with everything and everybody. Nora isn't exactly bothered by it, but I don't want them to think it's okay to run around pushing people. I keep telling him not to push her and instead I'm trying to give Milo an activity he CAN do as an alternative. So I've come up with waving, as in, you can WAVE at Nora! Wave at Nora, don't push her! But it's not really working. 

Child care: I have convinced the twin whisperer to stay with the kids until January. At that point they'll be two. I have a feeling that it might even be possible to then get her to stay until May or September, but today we got a call from one of the university child care centers that they might have a spot for the kids in January. They're going to call us in early December to let us know. So that could work out. We've been on a waiting list since May '07.

Sometimes I think that maybe I should be exposing the kids to more variety and action, that maybe being at home all day (granted with trips outside to the park and whatnot) isn't providing enough stimulation for them. They can't attend any of the toddler storytime/music/gymboree/whatever classes yet because they still nap in the morning, and all of those classes take place during nap time. I can tell when they kind of get bored after too much of the same. So maybe going to child care once they're two will be good for them. Or maybe Nora won't be ready and she'll totally freak out, much like she does when I try to, say, go to the bathroom. We'll see.

This weekend we're heading up north to Jake's parents' house on the lake, along with some friends. My main goal is to remember the monitor. And sleep sacks, since it'll be cold up there at night. Hopefully they won't fall in the lake, fall off the 2nd-story deck, fall down the steep spiral staircase (with an open banister and no gate), run into the fire pit, or get bitten by the dog. Fingers crossed.

Then and Now

My how quickly things change.

Today I visited a friend and held her week-old baby and he was so tiny. I couldn't believe Nora and Milo had ever been that small. The crazy thing is that this baby was 9 lbs 2 oz at birth which made him exactly twice as big as Nora was at birth. The fact that Nora was actually half as heavy as this baby just blew my mind.

Milo is starting to eat all kinds of people food, which is just fantastic. Today he actually ate some of the pasta from my pasta primavera dish! He also loves strawberries and watermelon. And cake. Nora won't let any of these foods come anywhere near her mouth. I know that if she tried them, she'd like them, but I can't get her to try them. It was music to my ears to hear Milo saying "More pasta? More pasta?" 

Nora's current phrase that cracks us up is "totally radical!" It's only a small step from there to big shoulder pads, pegged jeans, and Wham.

Paradox

Why is it that after a week of healthy eating and lots of exercising I will only lose, at most, half a pound, but after a week of lounging around and eating restaurant food and birthday cake I will gain THREE pounds? It doesn't seem fair that it will take me 6 weeks of healthy living to recover from a mere one week of gluttony. Ugh.

Signs of the Times

Our state legislators have decided that every state employee must take a number of furlough days over the next two years. This applies to me as a professor, but there are some complications. The first is that our job descriptions and responsibilities aren't changing. There is no reduction in teaching responsibilities, no reduction in service responsibilities, and no reduction in the research requirements to get tenure. We can't take furlough on instructional days. So the furlough isn't actually a furlough, because I won't work any less than I would otherwise. It's just a pay cut.

This isn't all that unexpected but the weird part is that I will have to take extra furlough days in comparison to some of my colleagues because I work in the summer. We are paid on a 9-month salary, so the number of furlough days we will have to take are 3/4 of what full-year salaried state employees take. They will take 8 days each year, we will take 6 days each year. Unless we work in the summer, which I do, so I will have to take 2 extra furlough days and give up some of my summer salary. So just like the year-round employees, I will have to take 8 furlough days each year for the next 2 years.

The reason this is dumb is that my summer salary is not paid by the state. It is paid by the NSF entirely, so my summer salary comes from out-of-state funds. So the state legislators, in an effort to balance the state budget, are requiring me to take a paycut from a salary source that does not come from the state. There are some university employees whose entire salary comes from out-of-state funds, and yet they still have to take the same furlough days as everybody else. Not only does that not make sense, but the state is actually going to lose money from this move. They will lose the state income taxes that I and others like me would be paying on that money, and they will lose the sales taxes and other revenue generated from people spending that money...the money we will no longer be making, because we have to take furlough days. Efforts were made to rectify this part of the budget, since this rule will actually cost the state money rather than save money. Those efforts failed for reasons I don't really understand. I know somebody said something about solidarity and making everything the same for all state workers regardless of income source, but -- huh?  It just doesn't make sense.

What a messed up state. At least we're not California.

Career angst

I am in the near-final stages of working on my grant proposal, making revisions based on internal reviewers' comments. I still need to do final work on the budget and the budget justification, but I've got my narrative, summary, advisory panel letters, external evaluator letters, 2-page bio, and chair's letter ready to go.

I have never experienced the kind of writer's block and anxiety that I'm having with this grant proposal. Part of it is because I am applying for an NSF early career award, which means a number of things, one of which is that I can be the only PI on the grant. So it is my baby, all the way, and I feel very attached to it. Part of it is because I have just learned that one of my colleagues in my department, who is a total superstar, is also applying for this very same grant. In fact, this is her second go around because she applied last year and didn't get it. They're much more likely to award a second try than a first try, so I have a feeling that her proposal will be funded. (Also, my colleague is brilliant. She does incredible, innovative work that regularly makes it into the popular press. She's the kind of researcher who constantly travels around the world to give keynote speeches. That is not me.) The chances of NSF giving two career awards out to the very same department in the very same year seem low, so at this point I kind of feel like my own proposal is doomed. My colleague will get it, not me, and what I'm submitting now should just be considered practice for the next time.

I'm having a hard time with this because for some reason I really, really want this. I feel deeply invested in it. I don't want to not get it the first time around. I feel ready to do this study. What I have written is a 5-year study that I couldn't have written a couple of years ago. I wasn't ready for it then. I feel like what I have produced is the culmination of what I've learned over the past 5 years as a professor. It is much more sophisticated than what I would have written a few years ago. I think it would be an awesome study and it's something I really want to do. I can just tell, as I'm crafting it, that this is the study that will launch the next phase of my career. It is exactly what I want to be doing and I am excited about the work. And, of course, having a grant like this has personal meaning too. It means course releases and summer salary, and the latter is a really big deal for our family's finances. (A huge deal).

So I am simultaneously excited about this and yet doomed, too, because now that I know about my colleague's proposal, I am afraid that mine won't get funded. I've decided I just can't really do anything with that information. I have to forget it and move on and honor the work I am doing. Last year, I sat in on a review panel for this particular award. Out of all of the grants I reviewed (I think I personally did 18), there were only 2 that I rated as "excellent". This summer, I went and checked to see what actually got funded from our batch. The two that I rated as excellent were the only two that got funded (from our group of 30 or 40). So that tells me that my instincts are good. My instincts tell me that my proposal is solid. But it still feels doomed. Argh.

Potty related note -- tonight Nora wanted to sit on the toilet again, so I took her diaper off first before sitting her down. And lo and behold, she peed on the potty! I couldn't believe it! She seemed pretty psyched about the whole thing. We clapped and cheered. Maybe this will be something she enjoys doing before bed, who knows.