Milestone

Nora and Milo's mattresses arrived yesterday, even though their beds have been through a mysteriously complicated process and probably won't arrive for several more weeks. (As an aside, I seem to be having bad internet-ordering mojo. I ordered an iPod docking radio for Jake's graduation, back in May, and it is currently slated to be delivered in November, after several delays. I ordered their beds almost 6 weeks ago. I guess some of these delays must be expected, statistically, given the amount of online shopping I do. In a small town like mine, most of my major purchases are online).

Anyway, we needed to get the kids out of their cribs and into separate rooms pronto since all of the laws of nature have been destroyed now that they can climb out. So last night we dragged their mattresses into their rooms and made up their new beds and for the first time in their lives, Nora and Milo went to sleep and woke up in separate bedrooms. On "big-kid" beds. They both slept brilliantly and woke up a half an hour later than normal this morning.

I had this other post all ready to go complaining about how I have to do everything myself, all the time, and this room switching / furniture moving / bedding purchasing / clothes organizing business is no exception. I've got to do a lot of that work this weekend, on my own while simultaneously watching the kids as Jake will be off partying at a wedding and family event. All of this is true, and it sucks and is massively lame and unfair, however, in the grand scheme of things it is not the important thing going on here.

The important thing is that the kids are now in separate rooms, and the cribs are going away, which feels like the last vestiges of babyhood. And I have very mixed feelings about that. All of their lives the kids have been together and moving very slowly apart. They spent 9 months squashed up against each other, and then after they were born they slept in the same crib, right next to each other, for 4 months, either in our room with us or eventually in their own room. And then until now they have been in the same room, waking up together every morning. They're slowly moving more and more apart, which I guess is a process that will continue as they get older, and it makes me feel bittersweet. They are becoming big kids, separate kids, with their own lives and toys and interests.

This morning the kids' teacher asked if they slept in the same room. She mentioned that when they go to sleep for their nap at school, they point at each other and tell each other goodnight.

They are growing up. But a part of me always remembers them together like this.

Snippets

Milo is in bed currently singing to himself, "Where is Thumbkin, where is Thumbkin, here I am, here I am..."

Tonight at dinner Nora noticed that her cup was the same color as the tank top I was wearing under my sweater. She said, "Hey, my cup matches your breast-thing!"

Noticing

The south in September is just lovely.

I am co-chairing a section for our big national conference this year and as part of that job I had to go to Houston to meet up with the other chairs to do the nitty-gritty work of arranging papers into sessions and so forth. Anyway, I noticed some interesting things on the trip.

-- I realized that I am totally the odd man out on this division, and yet never knew it before now. I've often submitted papers to this division instead of to our special interest group and they've always been accepted, but it turns out this group is actually really super cog-psych ish (which I am not). Not only that but they consider the work of a lot of my colleagues to not really "count" as research, and sort of see themselves as the protectors of those standards. It was a bizarre slow realization on my part what was really going on. Like, you show up just assuming people will agree with you and then you start to realize that actually they're all a bunch of Republicans or something, and you're the sole closeted Democrat. And maybe one or two of them are actually tea party members, starting to let the crazy out because they assume you're all on the same page.

That said, these colleagues were all quite lovely people regardless of their stance on research. It drove home what a big divide there can be between my field and ed psych, and in many ways I am lucky, so far, to generally not have to deal with the fighting that can occur across the groups. My mentor and I have a grant with an ed psych colleague at our institution and it has been a great experience to co-create a research project together and learn from one another's disciplines. Our ed psych colleague also happens to be a really smart, nice guy, which also helps.

-- When you are getting ready to go up for tenure, academics love to talk about that.

Both evenings turned into an ad-hoc counseling session about tenure, and believe me I was not in the mood for the conversation to go that way. I think that full professors like to dispense their wisdom, be helpful, proffer advice, and so forth. Part of this is probably related to my demeanor, because I tend to elicit that type of helpful stance from older men, but I think part of it is also this universal desire to bring out shared experiences. Everybody has gone through tenure, and they all want to talk about it, and give me advice in the guise of re-living their own past experiences.

In general I do not mind this phenomenon because I do enjoy the sense of camaraderie that emerges. People like to mostly give advice that borders on the self-help or spiritual realm at this stage in the game, things like, "you just have to take a Zen-like approach to it". One person asked me outright how many publications I have, which I found interesting in how unusual a question that is. Nobody has ever asked me that before. It kind of feels like somebody asking you how much money you make or how many sexual partners you've had.

-- Most people don't like humidity.

It was still warm and summer-like in Houston, and I was acutely aware of how it was going to be my last chance of the year to experience that warmth. I think the highs were in the upper 80s, and it was humid, but it definitely wasn't uncomfortable or oppressive. In fact, I loved it. We took a walk around the campus at night and it was just so perfect in every way. The warm, moist air, the crickets still chirping, the stillness that comes after a rainstorm, the art installations and statues silent in the darkness, it was incredibly nostalgic for me. I am not sure why this is the case because my town has humid summers, but there is a particular quality to southern humidity that is somehow different from what I experience in my northern state. It felt exactly the way it felt in St. Louis, where I went to college. And I just love that feeling. It is so comfortable, so gorgeous.

I've noticed most people don't agree, though, and find humidity to be oppressive. I didn't find the weather in Houston to be hot at all but my colleagues complained a lot about how uncomfortable it was.

And now I prepare to return to my northern state where autumn has arrived -- in fact, it arrived quite definitively on Friday. Thursday was actually a warm, humid day there, but that night the winds were up, and they blew in autumn so that we woke up on Friday to a crisp, cool morning. The leaves are turning and starting to swirl around in the streets, and there is that particular autumn scent in the air. I do love fall and am ready for knee-high boots and sweaters, so it's okay, but this weekend has been a treat, a joy, one last indulgence in summer before returning to autumn, to students and meetings and harried drop-offs, to real life.

Transitions

Nora cried today when I had to leave her at school. She didn't want me to go to work. Sometimes she cries like such an adult, tears welling up but she tries not to let it out. I felt sad for her. Her sweet teacher held her and hugged her as I left.

I went to the office to pay my bill, and then after 5 or 10 minutes I returned to the hall outside the classroom to look in the little window in the door. I saw Nora at the table, drawing on a piece of paper with another little girl. Her teacher saw me and gave me the thumbs up. She seemed fine. I slipped away without them knowing I had returned to take a quick peek.

The kids are going through so many changes right now. They lost their nanny (but they haven't even mentioned her once, in all this time), they are now going to a new school, they are transitioning to separate rooms and big-kid beds (if those beds ever arrive), their grandparents were here for a week and just left, their other grandparents are coming for the weekend, and Mommy is going away on yet another trip. It's a lot for any two-year old.

Suck at Work, or at Home? My Choice

When Jake would stay home with the kids, he'd stay home with the kids. When I stay home with the kids, that's my time to get crap done, because I have to work at least part of the weekend. So today we went to the grocery store, played in the park, and had a bath. I made three meals, two snacks, packed two lunches for tomorrow, and did dishes 5 times. I vacuumed the floor, did 3 loads of laundry, swapped out the tablecloth, and met with an advisee while the kids napped. I checked on the order status of the kids' beds and mattresses, responded to emails, packed the kids' nap bags for tomorrow, and got their clothes ready. Nobody else is going to take care of this stuff.

What I didn't do: grade papers, finish my book writing, or do any damn writing on my article (this is why I'm not going to get tenure - no fucking time). It's 8:15, I should now do those things...but damn am I tired...

1st Day of School

Getting ready to go to school:

Doing some art:

Working with scissors:

The kids had their first day of school today. It was a half day, and then on Thursday we'll have the first full day. The classroom is set up so that the kids can just do whatever they are interested in. All of the art supplies and other things are accessible so the children can decide to do what they want. They also have activities, for instance, today they had music class, but there is a lot of room for free play as well.

Drop off went well, no tears, and the kids were excited by all of the new things to see and do. Nora got a little sad during the middle of the day because she wanted me, but her teacher comforted her and she got over it fairly easily. I can only hope every morning goes as smoothly.

Both kids ate a large morning snack (this morning Chef Tom made fried rice), which meant that they didn't eat very much of their lunch. Milo used the potty 3 times. Nora seemed to enjoy the music; she told me she played the bells, and Milo played the drums.

I should have something poignant and profound to say about shifting to school, perhaps I should hum a few bars of Sunrise, Sunset, but I don't have anything in me right now. I'm still getting over the drama and stress of last week and preparing to travel again on Friday.

Hanging on

OMG, did you know that if you fire your nanny she can file for unemployment and then you actually have to pay that? Well, in our state, you do.

Something like 99% of the families around here pay their nannies under the table. We just had to be that one asshole family that does everything above board, and then gets socked with an unemployment claim.

Whatever! Friday the kids visited their new "school" for a while and had a good time. Friday afternoon I had a much-needed meet-up with my glamorous academic mom friend who is better than me in every way, shape, and form (and yet I still like her, go figure), and she told me to get a C in some areas of life. Because trying to get A+ in everything is killing us.

The funny thing is that I think I am getting a D- in a number of areas right now. We are kinda barely hanging on, here.

But it won't always be like this. If I get tenure, then when the kids go into kindergarten, I'll be on sabbatical. Imagine that...home all year. Kids in school (free!) all day. Hanging out with 5-year olds in the afternoon. It is something to hang on to.

Childcare

So, we went through an experience in which I decided that I had to fire my nanny. The details aren't important, but she used some judgment that I didn't agree with and it affected the safety of one of the kids. I just couldn't get past that, and so after a lot of agonizing and soul searching, I fired her. Which was, of course, horrible.

So the problem became, what next? I needed to find a new solution quickly. I immediately started looking for other nannies or caregivers, all the time getting eaten up with stress over what this might be doing to the kids. To have a sudden transition now? The one back in January was so hard on them. They cried for a month or more every time Buddy came through the door. To put them through that again? Ugh. I was eaten up with worry over the whole thing, not sleeping, not able to eat, crying at inappropriate times.

I talked to several possibilities over the phone, but wasn't finding a good fit, and we visited one very lovely man who has a neighborhood group care situation, and I could tell he was awesome with the kids but I wasn't super thrilled with his house. And then a friend told me that she thought there were still openings in the 2-year old room at this local preschool of the arts, so we checked it out and sure enough, there were. So we went to visit and it was AMAZING. It is the kind of place I'd love to hang out in every day. Gorgeous, clean, calm, beautiful, light-filled, big, filled with fish and frogs and birds and child-created art projects. They have a music room and an art room, and they dance, and they have wooden toys and a chef who makes fresh snacks daily, and the milk is organic, and the teachers are certified. The teachers are incredible and most importantly, Milo and Nora were enchanted. They were just taken with everything about it, eager to explore every new room, excited to play with the light table and the wooden instruments and watch the fish.

We spent the end of the tour in the "little kid" playground that has hills and lots of foot-bikes and logs to climb on and wind chimes in the tree and small benches and a giant sand box, and (this was a huge deal to Milo), a digger truck. Milo immediately went for the sandbox and spent the whole time happily playing in there. Nora sat on a small bench next to a little boy and told him "I have my brown shoes on!" When it was time to go, Milo got a little teary because he didn't want to leave. The whole time in the car he kept saying, "I want to go back! I want to go back right now!"

The twin whisperer watched the kids yesterday (I would have re-hired her if I could have, but she has a new commitment to a family with newborn twins who have just reached 5 lbs each). She went with us to the school and fell in love with it too. This was nice because I trust her judgment.

Best of all, they will let us do a 4-day a week contract, so that I can stay home with the kids once a week. This will be a little more affordable, too, as this place is incredibly expensive. I have seen a few different places and it really drives home that in some ways, you get what you pay for, which makes me sad because I think that all children should be able to be in a place like this, rich or poor.

If we luck out we could stay there until kindergarten, which means this is just one transition for them, which makes me glad. (They are applying to be a 4K location, as our district is starting up a 4K program). I am just so relieved that I will have a solution for the kids that is safe, healthy, beautiful, educational, pleasant, etc., and that they clearly like. I am so relieved.

It is funny how hard this hit me. It is not always easy for me to go off to work. I need to feel like I can trust whoever is taking care of M&N. I need to feel like they are in a good, healthy situation and are happy. When everything broke open last week, it was really rough. I felt so achingly sad for the kids, so wistful that I can't just stay home myself, so miserable about it all. I broke out into a rash. If I don't feel like my kids are set, then I can't do anything, I just become useless. Sometimes I think it's a miracle I ever get anything done.

For the first 4 months of the babies' lives they were cared for by us and their grandmothers. Then they had a nanny for 2 days a week until they were 9 months old, then they had a nanny for 3 days a week until they were 2 and a half years old, then in July it switched to 4 days a week. Now, at 2 years 9 months, they will go into a preschool setting 4 days a week, and we'll keep it that way for the next year. This time next year maybe we'll stay at 4 days, or maybe we'll switch to 5, we'll have to see. I'm glad that they slowly transitioned into more care over the years, and that we've had this opportunity to spend so much time with them ourselves while still working. It makes for late nights and working on the weekends for me, but I'm okay with that. I know that in 3 years, they'll be in kindergarten, and things will change all over again.

Pause

Dealing with a childcare crisis and I just have too much going on right now. Completely overwhelmed and bummed out. Back when I crawl out of this funk.

"I Could Crack My Head Open?"

Last night, I put Milo to bed in Milo's crib and Nora to bed in Nora's crib. This morning, I heard a lot of suspicious noises and then when I walked into the kids' room, Milo and Nora were in Nora's crib.

These beds can't come soon enough!

Traveling

I have a lot of travel scheduled for this semester: Laramie, bay area, and Houston in September, Ohio in October, DC in November, DC again in December. My first trip is this week.

I am going to try an experiment in which I leave my computer at home and take my iPad instead. In part I don't want to lug around my huge laptop because I am flying so much (My Town --> Denver --> Laramie --> Denver --> San Jose --> Denver --> My Town), and driving around a lot too (San Jose --> Yosemite --> San Jose). So carrying it around and worrying about leaving it in cars and hotel rooms is a bit of a pain. In contrast the iPad is light and small and easy to slip into a purse.

I have to give a talk, but it's kind of a short commentary type of talk rather than a formal research talk, so it's not clear to me whether I should have slides or not. But I am creating slides just in case, and thankfully the iPad does allow me to do this as well. I use keynote to create the slides on my computer, place it in dropbox, get it off of dropbox on the iPad, open in keynote, and voila! I have a special dongle that attaches the iPad to a projector. I have also found that it's a lot easier than I would have thought to edit and change (or even create) slides on the iPad itself.

I will have a lot of PDFs and documents to read through at the conference, and will need a way to take notes, but I have a nice notetaking app on the iPad and I have some good pdf readers. I haven't yet shelled out for Pages (like word) or any of the PDF annotating apps, because I haven't needed them yet -- I don't tend to do a lot of annotating directly on PDFs. But if I feel the need to, I'll just get Noterize, which is pretty cheap ($3.99 I think). My current note-taking app is free, and with my wireless keyboard I can take lots of notes quickly. I also have the ability to record verbal notes if necessary.

So, it'll be quite interesting to see how it goes without my computer! I will probably feel a little naked without it, but I think I can pretty much do everything I need to with the iPad, and having constant connectivity with the 3G network is a nice perk, too.

Famous Guy #2 is going to be at the conference (and I have to provide remarks on his talk, which is freaking me out), and we've been communicating a bit over email. I'd always heard that he was kind of a tough character but so far he's been incredibly nice and supportive towards me. I even shared that I've been having some difficulties writing my current paper and he said, "Let's be sure to talk. And perhaps you can share some rough drafts -- you never know what breaks a logjam!" How nice! I hope this conference is as helpful as I'm anticipating for helping me work out some tricky ideas that I'm struggling with right now. I know that once I'm there and in the thick of it, getting some valuable connections and some mentoring from FG#2, I'll totally not want to leave early like I have planned. But then once I arrive in CA and see my friends, I'll be glad I did.

My Skinny Boy

It's hard to fatten up a kid who will give away his ice cream sandwich so that he can eat some grapes instead (I'm talking about you, Milo!).

Autumn made a brief introduction this week, although it seems to once again be receding, but in the meantime I pulled out some old 24 month clothes for the kids. And now I have discovered a problem with Milo's pants. Now that he is in underwear and no longer has his giant bulky diaper, his pants won't stay up. Don't they make toddler-sized belts? (They don't). And, by the way, since toddler-sized belts don't exist, why do all of the pants have belt loops?

Yesterday we got the news of our colleague's denial, then we had our first graduate seminar. Then after the seminar we all went down to the student union to finish up an entirely unproductive Friday over beers. (Well, in my case, wine). Nobody could concentrate on anything. My mentor and I spent the whole time wondering what was going on and going through various "what if" scenarios. Like he always does, he spent some time emphasizing "but in your case, it'll be fine", but the words ring hollow to me now.

We ate nothing, but I drank one cup of wine, which I didn't even finish, and yet by the end of the afternoon I felt drunk. I don't know how that works. Then that evening Jake and I went to a very nice restaurant to celebrate our anniversary. They gave us complimentary glasses of champagne before dinner. Then they gave us little amuse bouches, rosemary crackers with mozzarella and truffles in olive oil. Dinner then began with candy onion soup with pine nuts, bacon lardons, and grape must. The next course was market heirloom tomatoes with grilled sweet corn and Maine lobster, lime-cayenne aioli, and pain blanc. The final course was line-caught fluke with toasted farro, bean and pancetta salad, shallot marmalade, and a ground cherry-pine nut pesto. Because I felt like I should, I also had wine with dinner, but it was probably a mistake because before the meal even started I felt exhausted and semi-drunk. Dessert was called chocolate mousse, but actually it was basically the biggest, fanciest s'more I've ever eaten. There was a graham-cracker crust, a dense, dark chocolate mousse, and a marshmallow top. It was outstanding and I couldn't finish it even though this is the type of place where you can't get your food boxed up to go. After dessert they brought out another little snack, a dessert version of the amuse bouche I suppose, with tiny tasty desserts.

I haven't eaten a meal like that in years and by the end my body was working so hard to process it that I could barely function. I fell asleep at 9:30 and woke throughout the night with a stomach ache. The food was so incredible, but I pay for it when I eat like that.

There have been many emails flying around today in the wake of this departmental event. My friend is handling it well, heading out of town to spend time with her nieces this weekend. "Friends and family, that's where it's at", she says cheerfully. I think I am shut down and just don't want to deal with anything. I need to prepare a statement and a talk for a conference next week. I need to pack and do laundry. I need to finish the section of a book I'm writing. I need to finish my stupid article. I need to do some last-minute things with my graduate course before I leave town. And all for what? So that I can lose my job in a couple of years? Sometimes it all seems kind of pointless.

Nerves

There are tenure disasters happening that I can't really write about, because it's not my story to tell. But it's all terrible. I feel so sad for the people involved, and scared to death about my own case.

Rody Horse

The kids have these horses called Rody horses, which look like this:

They are big, and they're meant to ride on. The great thing about them is that you blow them up and they can be any size, to fit a 1-year old up to a 4-year old. I thought the kids would love them, but they have never really spent much time riding on them.

Lately, though, they've been playing with their horses a lot, but not riding them, basically just treating them like enormous dolls. Tonight Nora was swinging it around and doing "ring around the rosy". Later, they pretended a huge box was a school bus, and they put both of their horses on the bus to go to school. Then Nora dragged her horse into the living room and said "My horse is going to pee on the potty. He uses the litter box." She then tipped him back so that he was peeing, and she said "He peed in the litter box! Good job, horsie! You get a sticker! You get...horsie underwear!" This cracked me up. When it was time to go to bed, Milo tried to push his horse up the stairs. He said "I'm making you go upstairs because you weren't listening, horsie." It's just a matter of time before one of them ends up putting their horse into timeout!

Storm

We had a big thunderstorm last night complete with giant crashing booms. Just as well because it woke me up from a nightmare about tenure. I guess it's fitting that I would have my first nightmare about tenure the night before our semester starts.

(What's messed up is that tenure is still a year+ away from me, and I am already having nightmares about it. It probably has to do with the fact that my mentor and I have begun some of the early strategizing and preparing of materials this week. Talk about a long process, getting ready to get started on it now, and the earliest I can expect a decision will be December 2011.)