A Decade in Review

2000 saw me ringing in the new year in Seattle. I was teaching at three different colleges, driving around constantly in terrible traffic, living in a funky little house in a beautiful city I kept thinking I should like, but couldn't bond with. I spent a lot of time trying to talk myself out of being miserable.

I was lost in a non-career, not sure where to go next or what I wanted to do. I wanted a family but my husband did not, and I mourned over that a lot. I kept trying to talk myself into the life I had, kept trying to convince myself that it was a good life, since all of the pieces seemed to be there. It looked like it was supposed to be a good life. But I didn't feel good about myself, and I didn't like who I was becoming. I was lost.

So that year, I applied to grad school, picked up and moved to San Diego, and started a new life on my own as Steve stayed back in Seattle for one more year.

San Diego was the kind of city I didn't expect to like, and I saw it as a temporary sacrifice in service of attending the right grad program. But I turned out to love it. It was beautiful and the weather was always perfect and there was plenty of hiking and running and beaches to be had.

I got divorced, grieved for a long time, and struggled with life while I was in grad school. I learned how to live alone for the first time in a decade. I cut all of my hair off. I also made wonderful friends, got published for the first time, got into shape, ran a half marathon, and eventually became truly happy.

My four years in San Diego gave me sunshine, excellent Mexican food, wonderful people, gorgeous beaches, and trips to Arizona, Utah, Alaska, New Orleans, St. Louis, Seattle, Chicago, and Hawaii. It also gave me a PhD.

I then once again picked up my entire life and started over again, moving from beautiful, sunny San Diego to a funky little town in the upper midwest which I love even more. I got a job. I became a professor. I bought a house.

I met Jake, the best thing that ever happened to me, 2 days after I moved to this town, and a year later we were married.

My time in this new town has given me my dream job, wonderful colleagues and friends, and trips to Aruba, San Diego, San Francisco, Houston, Denver, Virginia, Florida, Kansas City, Rhode Island, Michigan, Washington, Ohio, Kentucky, Oregon, Idaho, Minnesota, and DC. I got published some more, won some awards, got some grants, and came into my own as a professor. Jake left his business, shifted careers entirely, and returned to grad school. I have now lived here for 5 and a half years, which is longer than I've lived anywhere as an adult. It feels great to settle down and it is my greatest hope that we will be able to continue to live here for a long while.

After years of struggle, this decade also brought us the most precious gift of our lives, Nora and Milo.

And the rest, as they say, is history.

Epilogue: The decade taught me that life is too short to accept a life of quiet resignation. I had to give everything up before I could gain what I really wanted in life, and before I could become the person I wanted to be.

It was worth it.

I can't wait to see what the next decade brings!

We've had a nice, relaxing 4-day stretch here with the kids.

Hah ha ha ha ha! Just kidding. But it's been nice. On Thursday we took the kids to the small fancy mall so that they could run around and see Santa. Imagine my disappointment when Santa's appearance was cancelled due to poor weather conditions! Fortunately, the kids didn't care and were perfectly happy to watch the giant animatronic gingerbread men.

Christmas was a mostly enjoyable affair other than breakfast, in which Nora, who has decided that she dislikes all breakfast foods, threw her bowl of prunes onto the floor. But otherwise they enjoyed the day and it was lovely and festive. Nobody ended up in the ER, which was pretty much the benchmark I wanted to achieve. That night after they went to bed we watched the 6th Harry Potter movie (finally). It was awesome. There was a scene in which Dumbledore had to drink the evil water to get at the Horcrux, and Harry had to force it down poor suffering Dumbledoor's throat as he writhed in agony and begged Harry to stop. Jake said "Hey, it's just like feeding Nora!"

It rained on Christmas and on Saturday that turned to snow, so we had a day in the snow, shoveling and walking around and making snowballs and even doing a bit of sledding. The children are still highly suspicious of sledding activities. I bought the kids a book about going to the potty and this has become a quick favorite, although it hasn't translated to any actual success in the potty. Nora is, however, interested in helping her little toy figurines go to the potty. This evening she spent a fair amount of time playing with a tiny fireman and saying things like "Let's go to the potty, fireman. Can you do it? Can you pee in the potty, fireman? Now let me change your diaper."

Sunday we went to the Capitol building and looked at the giant Christmas tree there. It is 2 stories tall and there is a train set running around it. The kids liked the train and Milo was particularly captivated by the elevator. He went up and down the elevator a number of times. Later we read Frosty the Snowman over and over again, and Milo has now reached the point at which he pretty much knows all of the words to the song. That kid loves songs, and singing. When we read the book he'll say "Mommy don't read it, Mommy sing it! Sing it!" So then I'll start singing and then Nora will say "Mommy don't sing! Don't like it!" (Bite me, kid.)

By the way, it is a bizarre and annoying habit the kids have developed in which they argue over who gets to do something that they could both be doing simultaneously. Like singing. We're in the car, and Milo will start singing a song, and then Nora will cry out "NORA'S singing right now!", and she'll start singing, and then Milo will yell "It's MILO'S turn to sing right now!" and Jake and I are helplessly saying "You can both sing at the same time" to no avail, as they get into a more and more heated argument about whose turn it is to sing. It's not just singing they do this with, too, it's other things that make equally little sense, like, I don't know, jumping, or putting their hands in their pockets, or whatever. It's as if any action either child does is not an action that the other child is allowed to do at the same time.

This weekend I did a lot of grocery shopping because the in-laws are coming soon. This stresses me out because they eat a ton of food (a solid 3 cooked meals a day plus at least 1 snack, plus cocktail hour), and I feel ill equipped to properly procure, plan for, and store all of this food. I've already thought of a couple of additional things I'll need to get, and I think no matter how much I get/prepare it won't be enough, but I'm giving it my best shot. Jake and I tend to be more of the cook dinner and take-care-of-yourselves for breakfast and lunch kind of people (usually eating leftovers for lunch), so the concept of cooking 3 fresh meals every day is overwhelming to us. Even when we visit at their house, the sheer amount of food is overwhelming, often resulting in stomach aches. I have been reading books about remodeling not-so-big houses, and thinking about all of the ways we would like to change our house and especially our kitchen, when the day comes. In our remodeled kitchen fantasies, we will have enough room to store food for when in-laws come to stay!

I didn't do much work over this extended weekend, and it's been pretty nice. Relaxing, sort of. The only problem is that if I go a few days without working, I start waking up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat, with anxieties of tenure racing through my fevered mind. So, it's probably time to get back to work.

Conversations

Me: Is it time for dinner? (Semi-talking to myself). What should we have? What shall we start with?

Nora: Nora starts with N!

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(At Breakfast)

Milo: Nora, eat your french toast! Eat your french toast, Nora! Nora, eat it! Nora, eat your french toast! Eat it, Nora! Eat your french toast, Nora! (This went on for a long time until she finally got fed up).

Nora: NO! I'm angry!

Christmas Time is Here

Two years ago I have no idea what we did for Christmas. I have little memory of the day. There are photos showing that we dressed the babies up in holiday outfits and put them under the tree:

I think we might have opened some presents at some point. It seemed like it was late at night by the time we got around to that, but I'm not sure. The whole thing is a blur. An exhausting, sleep deprived blur.

One year ago we spent Christmas morning packing up the car, and we spent Christmas day driving to Jake's brother's house, eating lunch at a truck stop Burger King. We spent Christmas night alone in Jake's brother's house because his entire family went over to somebody else's house for dinner, so we ate my leftover tuna casserole from the car ride and spent the evening watching old Star Trek re-runs.

But this year...

This year, it's Christmas. Santa came tonight once the kids went to sleep. They know that tomorrow is Christmas but have no idea what's in store for them. Tonight we lit candles and drank wine and listened to Christmas music, and we both can't wait for tomorrow. It really feels like Christmas tonight, and I couldn't be more excited.

We have the best Christmas presents ever:

Merry Christmas, from us and ours to you and yours.

Names

Oh no, we tried not to but ended up picking a super trendy name! This article describes "Milo" this way:

"There’s something contagiously cheery about names that, like ‘hello’ and ‘cheerio,’ end in the vowel ‘o,’ and Milo—which bears a resemblance to the happy word ‘smile’ and the celebrity-inspired hottie Miley—is definitely the one heading up. After first appearing on the Social Security list in 2001, it’s been climbing ever since, showing a 297 percent increase and a slope of 67."

At least Nora isn't on the list. I guess it might not be a bad thing for Milo to become a popular name because right now we do sometimes get remarks (mostly from Jake's uber-midwestern family and friends) about how they've never heard the name "Milo" before, and is it Italian?

Conversations and Fights

Nora: (Pretending with a tiny tea cup) I'm eating tea!
Twin whisperer: You're eating tea? Usually we drink tea, but today you're eating it. What does the tea taste like?
Nora: ...Peanut butter!

This morning Nora was pretending to drink tea again, and I asked her what kind of tea it was. She said "sweet potato tea!" I'm pretty sure this gives insight into Nora's favorite foods: peanut butter and sweet potatoes.

Last night Milo and Nora starting playing in a black shoe box of Jake's. They were taking turns getting into the shoe box and pretending to drive it like a car. Lacking a word for the shoe box, I guess, they started calling it a "dindle". Later I could hear them fighting over the dindle. "It's my turn to get in the dindle right now!" "It's Nora's turn right now!" "Milo's turn with the dindle right now!"

I swear, you get a single scrap of paper, a used tissue, anything, and they will fight over that one lame thing in the midst of dozens of toys.

The Future is Bright and Shiny

I've been thinking about my methods students. They are seniors in college who are student teaching part time, and next semester they will be student teaching full time. Today they presented some of their work on their electronic portfolios, and I am blown away by how awesome they are. Seriously, these people are coming up with incredible lessons and assessments that frankly I never thought about back when I was teaching. Their thinking at this stage, at the very beginning of their career, strikes me as way more sophisticated than mine was at almost any point of my secondary teaching career.

I am truly amazed at not only the creativity they display in coming up with outstanding lessons -- ones that have little to no relationship to the teacher's edition of their texts, since those pre-planned lessons are almost uniformly lousy -- but also at how reflective they are about the whole process. Some of them have even started up teaching journals in which they reflect at least once a week on how their teaching is going, on a particularly good or bad class, so that they can learn from their experiences and chart their growth over time. They also create their own assessments that move far beyond a standard book quiz or test to actually assess a student's understanding instead of just his or her procedural competency. The students are collaborating with each other to develop a bank of really good lessons that they've already tried out in class, complete with modifications based on how it went after their trial run, and today we talked about starting up a collaborative website to house these lessons.

If all new teachers came out of their teacher ed program as thoughtful and as well prepared as this batch, I would be ecstatic about the future of education. I would love to have my kids end up with any one of these methods students at some point in the future. I can already tell they're going to be amazing teachers.

Today

When I arrived here I made friends with a number of other brand new professors in my "cohort" -- people who all came in the same year I did. My best friend from this group got tenure today. She totally deserves it, she's an awesome scholar with a great record. The amount of work, thought, sweat, and tears she put into her tenure case over the past 6 months or so is mind boggling.

It's weird to think that in an alternate universe, it would have also been me getting the news today.

Fingers Crossed

So regarding this grant proposal, an NSF program officer let me know that I won't know anything official for quite a while -- it could be a couple of months.

But...

Here is the way the process works. First, the proposal goes through an external review. Academics and other experts from around the country are flown into DC and they form an external panel, and that panel reviews a batch of grants. Individual members of the panel who are the primary reviewers for each particular grant write up detailed reviews, and the panel discusses the grant as a group and rates it in terms of its competitiveness.

The most competitively-rated grants make it to the next level of review. This is the cross-divisional NSF review, and this process is mysterious to me, but I imagine they go through a similar procedure. If it makes it through that level of review, it then goes to the program officers for a particular division, and the program officers have to review it to see if they want to fund it and have the money to fund it.

If the grant makes it this far and the program officers review it positively and decide that they want to fund it, then they develop a set of questions for the PI (that's me, the person applying for the award) to answer. Receiving questions is a very, very, very good sign -- it means the grant reviewed well and the NSF wants to fund it. It's not a guarantee of anything, because after the PI answers the questions, the program officer has to write up a report, a number of different people have to sign off on it, and ultimately the division director has to approve the funding of the grant. So, it's not a guarantee of anything, and it's premature to advertise the news or celebrate or anything like that. Everything still has to progress through the official channels. That said, I've never heard of somebody getting to the questions stage and not getting funded. (Not saying it doesn't happen, though. It might.)

So at the risk of jinxing everything, I am going to share here in whispered tones that I got questions last week. I then had a very encouraging phone call with my program officer. Let's just say, I'm not opening the bottle of champagne yet, and I'm not sharing the news with my colleagues yet, but I'm secretly doing a little happy dance. Today I finally turned in my responses to the questions, and now I get to sit and wait with bated breath. Fingers are crossed...

So How Was Your Day?

Just a quickie: I just love how Milo is starting to tell me stuff about his day now. It's like he's a real person and everything, and we can actually have a conversation about something that happened to him. It's amazing. Last night at dinner:

Me: So, Milo, what'd you do today?
Milo: (Pause) I made snow angels!
Me: Wow...really? Wow, you made snow angels? That's new.
Milo: I layed down in the snow!
Me: Did Nora make snow angels too?
Milo: Yup.
Nora: I don't like the snow. (Nora did not in fact make snow angels, as it turns out)
Me: So what else did you do today?
Milo: I have a little bump on the head! I got the staples taken out!

Okay, those things happened days ago, but still...

Weekend

Christmas lights on the house: Check.
Basement cleaned up: Check.
8 bazillion loads of laundry done, folded, and put away: Check.
Sheets changed and beds made: Check.
Shopping: Check.
Grocery Shopping: Check.
Snow suits procured: Check.
Child-friendly butternut squash soup made: Check.
Children completely rejecting soup: Check.
Taking kids out to play in the oh so fun snow! Check.
Nora refusing to touch the snow: Check.

I got almost everything done, other than hang the wreath, because I can't find it, because it is not hanging in the storage location where it belongs, which means somebody put it away last year and it wasn't me, which means it is who knows where, but other than that, everything got done. Almost. What am I forgetting? Oh, rest. I forgot rest. But there will be time enough for that when the kids go off to college.

Traditions

This week we went to a Tudor Dinner, which is an annual tradition at my university with a 76-year history. It is sponsored by the philharmonic chorus and is quite elaborate, involving bowls of wassail, the presentation of a (fake) boar's head, lots of caroling, a full dinner, and flaming figgy pudding at the end.

The dinner is held in the great hall of our student union (which is nicer than it sounds -- the union is on a lake, and the great halls are quite elaborate and fancy). After appetizers and wassail, the choir sings some songs and then we all sing carols together before dinner. After dinner we also have group carols, and this is absolutely awesome. It sounds cheesy, but actually the sound of 350 people singing "Silent Night" together in a giant hall is a beautiful thing.

On the night of the dinner it snowed for the first time, which really added to the festive atmosphere. It was so pretty to see the snow falling on the lake while singing carols in the great hall against the backdrop of a crackling fire.

(Figgy pudding, as it turn out though, is not my favorite!)

On the 23rd there is a community Christmas Carol singalong at our local performance hall with the great organ. Everybody comes together to sing and the event is something that kids enjoy. It starts at 7, which is Nora & Milo's bedtime, but once they get a little older I think it would be a great Christmas tradition.

In addition, our neighborhood starts up a caroling group every year, and they go around caroling right before Christmas. I haven't had enough free time to join this group yet, but I enjoy hearing them when they go around the neighborhood.

I want to build traditions for M&N that go beyond presents and include special things we get to do at Christmas, like baking special things, putting up lights, and singing certain songs. Song strikes me as a great way to celebrate the season.

A Toast

Once upon a time when I was a beginning graduate student, my advisor and I wrote a paper together. We submitted the paper and then eventually got the reviews back. One of the reviews was a really nasty review. I particularly remember the phrase "this paper reads like it was poorly translated from German." The review was unhelpful and mean, and as a green researcher, it stung. I didn't realize reviews could be like that.

The second review was not memorable, but then I read the third. It was long, several pages, and it was critical, but extremely helpful. The critique was fair and appropriate, and the reviewer outlined a number of specific changes we could make to fix the paper. He also signed his review (reviews are almost always anonymous), so we knew who he was. This reviewer (I'll call him J) really put a great deal of time into thinking about our paper, and ultimately we made the changes he suggested which turned it into a much better paper.

I remember thinking about the contrast between the three reviews and deciding right then and there that I wanted to follow J's model of reviewing. J was a very prominent figure in our field, but he was so generous with his time and ideas, and that generosity ended up being extremely helpful to us. I decided that I wanted to be a scholar like J.

Later he came to our university to give a talk, which I found really interesting, and then we took him out to dinner and stayed out late drinking wine and talking about ideas. One of my fondest memories of J is from a conference in Hawaii. On the last day of the conference we had a luau, and I remember him sashaying across the dance floor, a lei on his head, another around his neck, and a drink in each hand. "Amy," he said, "it's nice to see you let your hair down, both figuratively and literally!"

Three years ago in May J retired, and then that July he was out for his daily run, and he was hit by a truck and killed.

This week I was part of an advisory panel meeting for somebody's grant, and most of the members of the panel knew J well -- they had known him for decades. The last time J visited our town, he gave a very nice bottle of wine to one of our panel members, T. T kept the bottle of wine, waiting for an appropriate time to open it and drink it. This week, when all of us were gathered together, he brought the bottle to our meeting and at the end of the day, he opened it so that he could share it with the people who had known and worked with J. We raised a toast to J and then drank the excellent wine, sharing our favorite stories of him and fondly remembering all that he had done. He was an extraordinary person. It was a great way to end the day.

Milestone

Nora's budding art talents continue, and today she created her first actual picture. I sat there watching her as she drew a circle and then said "and here are the eyes, and the mouth, and the hair," drawing each in turn. First ever picture!

Now I was going to upload my adobe acrobat version in which I label these things so you can tell where they are, but the file got huge and blogger freaked out, so I will have to describe it instead. The face is tilted 45 degrees to the left. The eyes are the two dots at the top flat part of the face, and the mouth is the sole dot (or scrawl, I guess) below. The hair is that clump on the right hand side of the face, extending out quite a bit.

In the second picture Nora drew a "B" and said "B for Milo", and I was all, huh? The Twin Whisperer said "Oh that's because I always say 'B for brother Milo'." Okay. I have pointed out the "B" in this picture by adding a red arrow and a circle around it.

Now Nora is super into trying to make letters. She tries, but can't really, so she'll create some sort of scrawl and then hope that it's made a letter. If so, she'll say what she thinks it is, and if not, she'll ask "What letter did Nora make?"

Milo is not currently interested in drawing or writing. He is more into books right now. All he ever wants to do is have us read books to him. Milo's other current interest is to take empty boxes and put them over his head and then wander around the house laughing. This sort of thing is why Milo always has a bruise or a cut somewhere. The kid is so active, always on the go.

Milo and Nora seem to have created nicknames for each other. Milo is perfectly capable of saying "Nora" but half the time he prefers to call her "Noon-ah". Nora likes to call Milo "Milot". Sometimes she likes to call herself "Norup".

Conversations

I love it that the kids are actually starting to have little conversations with each other now. This morning I heard over the monitor:

Nora: Where'd Daddy go, Milo?

Milo: (Unintelligible -- I think he was just waking up)

Nora: Where'd Mama go, Milo?

Milo: She went to work!

Nora: She went downstairs! Mommy's downstairs!

Then tonight at dinner:

Nora: I don't like that moth on the ceiling.

Milo: It won't hurt you.