Race and Space

I know that we're supposed to be talking to the kids about race, but I don't really know how to do it. So I end up doing it in really lame ways (I think). We have books about people of all different cultures and ethnicities, and we also have books specific about race, about how there are people of all different colors and isn't that great, etc. But it's hard to know what to say to a 2-year old. We're in the car, and we see African American kids walking to school, and I say "Look, those kids have brown skin, just like so-and-so (somebody they know). People have skin with all different colors! All skin colors are good! There are people with all different types of skin colors, and every color is pretty!" Duh. So, so dumb and lame. Then they'll say something like "My favorite color is blue today!"

Today we went to school and an African American dad held the door for us. I was holding Milo and Nora was walking next to me, holding my hand. As we passed right in front of the man, Milo said (RIGHT in front of him), "That man has a black face!" The man and I sort of simultaneously spoke. I said something super lame, like "That's right, everybody has different colored faces", and the man said, matter of factly, "That's right, I have a black face." I was thinking, God, he's probably so sick of crap like that, and now he's getting it from my kid.

I really have no idea what I should do in cases like that, or how I should handle it...should I apologize? The dad was quickly ushering his own kid into a different classroom, so he was on the move. I know I need to keep talking to the kids about it, but I'm probably not doing it in the best way. One of the little girls in the kids' class is Black, and it's not like Milo and Nora don't ever see or play with people of color, but it is interesting how Milo really seemed to be struck by it this morning with this particular dad.

And on a totally different note, here is one of the most wonderful videos ever of a family project. They decided to send a camera up into space attached to a balloon, and then retrieve it. What an amazing movie:

Homemade Spacecraft from Luke Geissbuhler on Vimeo.

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.)

Procrastination

I've noticed something interesting today as part of my role in a service task for our national organization. I've had to assign reviewers to proposals, and reviewers needed to complete their reviews by the end of the day today. They've had them for about 3 weeks, and last night we sent out a reminder email that their reviews are due. We asked them to have them done by "the end of the day tomorrow".

So now it's 5 p.m. today, and as I look at the statistics I see that out of our 134 submissions, 2/3 of them have not been fully reviewed yet, and 1/3 of them have been. So 2/3 of the submission still need to be reviewed -- at 5 p.m. on the deadline day! I knew people liked to wait until the last minute, but this is more extreme than I would have guessed. I find it kind of funny to note that pretty serious procrastination, down to the wire, appears to be the rule rather than the exception.

(Although just to be clear, I'm not innocent of this myself. Just last week I completed an article review only about an hour before the deadline, and I'd had it for 6 weeks.)

What I Did on My Summer "Vacation"

It's been a busy summer in the life of your typical tenure-track Mama. Here's what I did:

-- Traveled to Portland with the family for one vacation, and went "up north" to stay at the lake for some R&R for a second weekend trip.

-- Had two weekends by myself when the family took trips without me.

-- Finished and submitted an R&R, got one article rejected, revised it and re-submitted it, got the article accepted.

-- Finished analyzing the data for a second article (writing it now).

-- Completed revisions on a book chapter.

-- Outlined a co-authored article.

-- Hosted two work conferences for out-of-town colleagues.

-- Outlined two books.

-- Went through the big transition with the kids to lose their pacifiers, and I'm happy to say they are now 100% pacifier free (we went cold turkey).

-- Potty trained one child.

-- Traveled to Arkansas to be filmed discussing issues of teaching and learning particular math topics.

-- Finished a major consulting project developing online content for the professional development of Algebra II teachers.

-- Chaired or sat on the committees of 3 dissertations and 3 master's theses.

-- Developed the content for two new mathematics courses for in-service teachers while overseeing the development of the remaining three courses.

-- Received my first royalty check for a book I co-authored.

-- Wrote and submitted two proposals for the American Educational Research Association (AERA).

-- Organized and assigned reviewers to 134 proposals for AERA.

-- Transitioned my children from booster seats with trays to big-kid chairs at the dinner table.

-- Grew my first tomato.

-- Attended 10 project meetings.

-- Watched my children develop the concept of threeness.

-- Walked roughly 168 miles to and from work.

-- Attended one child's birthday party, one grown up's birthday party, a dozen playdates, one baby shower, and cooked dinners for three families with new babies.

-- Had several outings with good friends, ate delicious food, drank excellent wine, watched sailboats at the terrace, and listened to several great bands.

-- Visited countless parks and playgrounds.

-- Had one date with my husband.

You know us professors, we have it so easy, what with our summers "off"! By the way, I did all of this without getting paid a single cent from my institution. Fortunately, I do have national grants providing me with some salary this summer for doing particular research activities, but the month of August has been an unpaid month.

Dancing

Nora and Milo were having a grand old time chasing each other through the house this evening. It is so nice to watch them enjoy each other. Then Nora ran up to Milo in the kitchen, and he just stopped, listening to the song that had come on, and said to Nora, "Shall we dance to the music?" Nora said, "Okay!" and they started dancing.

By the time I started filming they were vamping for the camera, but it's still cute:

Crisis of Confidence

I am having a big crisis of confidence at work. I know that I need to just get over it and move on, and I'm starting to do that, but it is amazing how hard this is.

I am trying to write a paper that I view as my last big important-for-tenure paper. I need to get it accepted for publication before I go up for tenure because I intend to use it as my second "signature paper". This is one of two papers that everybody on the divisional committee will read (that tricky cross-disciplinary committee that keeps denying my colleagues tenure), everybody who has to write me an external letter will read, etc. So it needs to be, in my mind, a very good paper.

Moreover, my first signature paper, which is in review after an R&R in our field's top journal (oh please oh please oh please), is a very social paper. It represents my shift to attending to social processes in the classroom and how they support a particular type of mathematical activity. It is still a pretty mathematical paper, but its social nature represents a shift for me, an expansion beyond what I have done before. I feel like this next paper needs to represent the other side of my research, the highly cognitive side. So this paper is a conceptual analysis of an area of math learning that hasn't really been explored conceptually before. I see it as balancing out the first paper.

The issues are that it's hard to do well, and I am building on two big things. The first is the notion of a conceptual analysis, and I need to write a good enough paper that what I produce stands up to that term. I am afraid that it won't, and people will read it and say "You think that is a conceptual analysis? It is way more shallow than that, and you suck."

The other big thing is that I want to build on this very specific idea that this very smart and famous guy produced a few years back. But I am totally too chicken to really do that. Because I know they'll have him review the paper, and I'm afraid he'll say "You think that what you've done builds on my idea? You totally missed the mark, you completely misinterpreted my idea, and you don't know what you're doing." Lest you think this is just me being hysterical, this is actually completely realistic. In fact last year Famous Guy #2 (who is waaaay smarter than me, way older, an international leader in the field) did build on Famous Guy #1's idea. And Famous Guy #1 totally trashed him in exactly that way. He did say, "You missed the mark entirely, you messed up." So if Famous Guy #2 can't get it right, what makes me think I can?

This is further complicated by the fact that Famous Guy #1 is somebody my mentor is thinking of soliciting for a letter for me. So I can't go and write a crappy paper that incorrectly builds on his idea, now can I?

So, this paper has to a) be very cognitive and mathematical, b) achieve the status of providing a conceptual analysis of a new content area, c) correctly build on famous guy's idea, d) get accepted into a top journal this year, and e) be a "signature example" of what makes my research so awesome, i.e., totally showcase my awesomeness. Which is a hell of a lot of pressure to put on one paper. I am super afraid to write this paper.

That said, I'm just soldiering on, but it is really hard. It is hard and scary. I think I just need to tell myself that even if I don't get this paper accepted, it'll be okay, I could always fall back on a different piece to showcase my work. Just because I want it to be this one doesn't mean that I won't get tenure if it isn't, in the end, this one. But still, gaaaaaah. I have never experienced this much writer's block or serious self doubt in my work, and that is including the dissertation. This is the hardest paper I've ever had to write.

I have no idea why I overused the word "totally" so much in this post.

Sticker Shock

I just bought beds, a dresser, a night stand, a small bookcase/nightstand, a medium bookcase, and some canvas storage bins for Milo and Nora. Furniture won't ship for a few weeks, so there is still time to buy:

-- Bedding

-- Mattresses (I'm thinking of buying organic without the cancer-causing chemicals or flame retardants)

-- Comforters or quilts

-- Rugs?

-- A light for Milo

-- A nightlight for Nora

-- Wall decor? (But they seem to hate pictures)

Whose room gets the glider? What other things for outfitting a kid's room am I forgetting? I'm sure quite a bit. We already have a dresser for Nora and an old bookcase that I intend to paint for her. I was thinking maybe I would include Nora in deciding what kind of sheets and comforter she would like -- maybe I'll take her to the store with me. I already know that Milo would LOVE construction vehicle sheets, but I'm not quite sure what Nora would like.

This means we have to get rid of our futon, and find some place to put my desk and office things. Eventually I will use the sunroom off of our living room as my office, but right now it is the kids' playroom and I don't want them to lose that quite yet, as they are still too young. So I'll just be without an office for a year or two, which is a drag but will hopefully be okay as I tend to do most of my work on the sofa anyway.

Overwhelming! In just a month or so, they will be in their own rooms in big-kid beds!

(Why yes, I did find both of them climbing out of their cribs tonight, why do you ask?)

Cranky Pants

Well, Nora didn't have any successes in the potty today and just had accidents in her underwear. She didn't seem to have good feelings about the potty, so we're all done for now. It's back into diapers tomorrow. Meanwhile, Milo soldiers on. He's still doing a terrific job. I think Milo has the ability to sit down on the potty and deliberately relax in order to pee, and Nora can't do that yet. She can hold it, but she can't pee on command.

I also think the potty stuff has been upsetting her because she has gotten crankier and crankier over the past couple of days. Tonight she was an absolute bear. She just insisted on arguing with me over and over and over again. It's nuts. I hate to think what she'll be like when she is actually capable of arguing. She will not let it go! For instance, before bed she wanted to stand on a stool and try to touch the ceiling. I said no, and it's too dangerous, and she could fall, so no. And then she just can't let it go:

Nora: But I want to! I need a stool!

Me: I said no. Do you want to read a book with me? (Lame attempt at distraction)

Nora: Stool! Stool!

Me: Oooo, Milo, look at that train you're building! (Deliberate ignoring)

Nora: But I need something to stand on! I want to stand on a stool! I want to stand on a stool!

Me: (Gazes off into the distance and ignores)

Nora: Stool, Mommy! Stool! Mommy, I need a stool to stand on! I want one! (Getting teary)

Me: Nora, I said no. I'm not going to discuss it with you.

Nora: (Yelling) BUT I NEED A STOOL TO STAND ON! STOOL! STOOL! STOOL!

Jake: Oooo, do we have our own copy of Victor Vito? Look at that, we have a Victor Vito CD, should we play it? (Lame attempt at distraction)

Nora: I WANT A STOOL TO STAND ON MOMMY! I don't want to stand on the floor! But I don't want to! But I need something to stand on! I need something! I need a stool to stand on! I need it Mommy! But I want a stool!

Me: Nora, you seem to be operating under the false assumption that you are allowed to continue an argument with me after I have made my decision. Once I have decided, it is no longer up for discussion.

Nora: Don't use that word! Don't say that!

Me and Jake: (Trying not to laugh)

Nora: STOP LAUGHING! But I don't want to stand on the floor! I need a stool!

On, and on, and on, and on. Seriously, she doesn't give up. And once I say no I NEVER change my mind and give in. Even I'm not that dumb. I'm not going to give her the impression that all of this insane toddler-esque arguing actually works. Eventually I told her I was leaving the room and I would be back when she was done arguing.

Arguing with a toddler is like arguing with a crazy person. They don't follow the rules at all. It's like if I'm having an argument about whether we should put lights on the bike path in order to make it safer for people, and I say "As somebody who walks on the path after dark I would feel safer with it lighted, especially after the attacks on the path over the past year." And then the other person will respond, "But the sky is blue in the summer!!!" and then look at me expectantly, as if that disconnected statement has trumped everything and clearly won the argument. And then I'm all, uh, wait, what? And then the other person starts crying angrily and hurling random objects at my head.

I don't even want to think about what it's going to be like when Nora is actually capable of deductive reasoning and logical inference, and can formulate a real argument.

Conversation

At breakfast this morning, after Jake had already gone to work:

Milo: I'd like Daddy to hold me.
Me: You love Daddy, don't you.
Milo: Yeah. Do I love trees?
Me: I don't know, do you?
Milo: Oh yeah. It's really beautiful outside!

Potty Training Day 3

This morning I took Nora to the doctor to have a look at her rash. It isn't yeast, and the doctor wasn't really able to diagnose it or get a good culture. So we have another prescription cream, this time for eczema-like issues, even though it's not eczema. She said that Nora should see a pediatric dermatologist and when I tried to get an appointment, they won't see her until Sept. 26, 5 weeks from now. Thanks, HMO.

So we have to wait until the end of the week to let it continue to get worse, and then Nora's doctor will intervene to try to get an earlier appointment with the dermatologist. If this system sounds stupid and like we are needlessly causing Nora extra days of discomfort for no good reason, that's because we are. I guess I'll see how it goes with the new cream, though.

Milo is continuing to do a great job with the potty and Nora only peed in the potty once today. She held it for hours before that. This evening, though, she peed on the floor twice, huge amounts. It is obvious she has control to hold it, but for some reason does not want to pee in the potty. Maybe this is due to her rash, but she hasn't been complaining about it and seems to be happy sitting on the big toilet on her own volition (but just not peeing in it). So I think we'll give it one more day and if she doesn't improve, we'll give up and try again in a couple of months.

I kind of wonder if, in this case, cloth diapers is going to be kind of a drawback when it comes to potty training. The kids are totally used to the feeling of a wet cloth diaper on them. That is probably not any different from the feeling of wet underwear. So to them, it'd probably feel "normal" to wet their pants.

To be honest the kids are wearing me out right now. I am finding it hard to divide my attention between them and the beginning of the school year and my attempts to grasp enough time to finish my current article. I feel like the need to continue the big last-chance-before-tenure publishing push is competing with the need to focus heavily on the kids right now, who are both in intense and needy stages for various reasons of their own.

I feel like I need to be stronger and just keep barreling forward for just one more year or so...things will get easier, the kids will not always be two, I will not always be gazing at the upcoming tenure process...

At some point, in a year or two, things are going to ease up.

Potty Training Day 2

Milo has had a great time with the potty training! He hasn't had a single accident in 2 days! When he feels like he needs to go, he just runs to the potty to pee, all on his own. He loves our happy dance and is just so happy to please. Given Milo's historical complete lack of interest in all things potty related, I am totally surprised at how completely he has taken to it so far.

This is yet another situation in which if I'd only had one child, and that child was Milo, I would be a completely insufferable parent. "What do you mean, your baby doesn't sleep through the night? What do you mean, your toddler won't eat vegetables? All you have to do is be firm and consistent and it'll all work out!" Thank goodness I have Nora to take me down about 500 notches.

Nora has had a fair amount of success on the potty too. She has pooped in the potty twice, and she seems to find it easier to poop in the potty than pee. She peed once on the big toilet today, but that was it. Other times it was obvious Nora had to go, and she kept leaking and having mini accidents, and she would sit on the potty for about 0.5 seconds, but then pop back up again, not able to let herself just pee. I kind of think that part of what makes this hard for Nora is that if she knows that there is something I WANT her to do, this makes it very hard for her to do it. Her need for control and power is so strong. So is mine. It is the perfect set-up for a never-ending power struggle between parent and child and so, being the adult here, it is on my shoulders to not let that happen. Which means I need to back off, back off, and back off some more when it comes to Nora and let her find her own way. Also, to make it totally non-emotional and boring.

I realized this halfway through the day so I am not encouraging/cajoling her to sit on the potty. She knows the drill, and I know she has to be willing participate for this to work. The potty is there, and she is naked.

She did pee on my shoes today. So, that was fun.

I will be interested to see how she does tomorrow with Buddy in charge, rather than me. Another complicating factor is that Nora has what I thought was a yeast-based rash but despite two full days of nakedness and 3 days of prescription cream from the doctor, it is actually growing and spreading instead of getting better. So perhaps this is affecting Nora's feelings about the potty? We'll see what the doctor says tomorrow. The rash is on her thighs where she sits on the potty, so I wonder if it is uncomfortable for her to sit like that, especially if it is tender and itchy.

Potty Training Day 1

The twins are 2 years, 8 months old. Today was our first day of hard-core potty training, after a year of sitting them on the potties regularly with very little outcome from that. (They just couldn't be bothered).

We have hardwood floors, which makes it easier for me to accept the idea of accidents and giant puddles on the floor. We can just wipe it up. Last night we rolled up our rugs and stored them away. I also folded up thick blankets and put them on the sofas to provide a little protection to the cushions. Then today we had them naked all day long from the waist down. Half the time, they were completely naked, finding that to be a great treat.

I didn't really do a whole lot of reading or preparing for this. I had found some advice somewhere for 3-day potty training that suggests you have the kids totally naked from the waist down for 3 straight days, keeping them at home obviously. Then, depending on how they do, you can start to take them out for short trips. But they should stay naked at home for a long time -- I think the suggestion was 3 months, which doesn't seem realistic to me, but we could certainly have them in loose clothes on the bottom without any underwear. I think the idea is that being naked really tunes them in to when they're about to have an accident, or actually having one, whereas if they've got underwear on, it might feel too much like a diaper and they might forget.

So anyway, for their first day, they did great! We had the little potties on the main floor in the living room. Nora pooped in the potty in the morning, and she peed in the big toilet before her nap, and peed in the potty in the evening. Milo peed in the potty several times and didn't poop at all. Milo didn't have any accidents at all. Nora only had one, which occurred when they were outside in the back patio playing with a giant bucket of water. So, in the midst of all that water, Nora found herself peeing onto the concrete, which isn't all that surprising and is also pretty much the best case scenario for an accident.

Each time either kid got the feeling that it was time to pee or poop, he or she would run to the potty. So they clearly can anticipate it ahead of time. Both kids were very, very excited about their successes. We rewarded them by getting very excited and doing a happy dance, which they loved, and also with stickers. They certainly seemed to care more about the happy dance.

Early in the morning when we were starting off, both kids would say that they needed a diaper, which told me that they needed to go. But by the end of the day they weren't talking about needing a diaper, and they were just running to the potties to go. Hooray!

The other thing we did was get them to drink a ton so that they would have to pee a lot. I accomplished this by buying apple juice. Juice isn't something I buy for them at home, but they know about it from being at other people's houses or parties. And they love juice. Juice is like toddler crack. So I bought some apple juice and this was a very exciting treat for them. I gave them diluted juice throughout the day, which had them needing to pee periodically, so they got a lot of good potty practice.

So, all in all, I am happy with Day 1. I hope tomorrow goes as well. We will still put them in diapers for sleeping, especially since they're not in beds yet, but maybe this will be the beginning of the end when it comes to washing diapers.

Random excerpt: Tonight after dinner we had blueberries for dessert, and the kids weren't all that into them. Jake said, "You know, when I was a kid, fresh blueberries was very special and we almost never got to have them." Nora retorted, "When I'm grown up, I'm going to PICK the blueberries and I can be the boss!" She told him all right!

Ossm

Tonight at dinner, we were having a conversation about how Milo woke up four (4) times last night.

Jake: Why did you keep waking up last night, Milo?

Milo: (Silent, thinking for a minute) Hmm. That's a good question!

The entertainment value of kids just can't be overestimated.

Signs That You're Cracking Up

My fantasy thinking goes something like this: if I got hit by a bus, not in a really bad way, but maybe some minor injuries that require me to spend several nights in a hospital for observation, then I could sleep. That's all I need. Just a few nights of recuperation from minor bus injuries in the hospital.

But then I remember, you never get any sleep in a hospital anyway, because they're constantly waking you up throughout the night to take your blood pressure and draw blood and stuff. So the bus/hospital idea wouldn't really pan out.

I'm so bad at getting sleep, I can't even properly fantasize about it.

Not Ready, Part II

I hate how the arrival of August always seems to indicate "SCHOOL IS COMING, SUMMER'S BASICALLY OVER" when it's just barely August! I mean, around here, schools don't start until September (including my university), so basically August means the last full month of summer. It is still summer, darn it! Stop acting like it's already school season!

I haven't achieved all of my summer goals yet. I just finished my final round of data analysis for my Last Big Tenure Paper (tm), i.e. signature paper #2. I haven't even written it yet. I think my goal was going to be to submit it by Sept. 1, but more realistically it'll be around Sept. 15 or Oct. 1. Not a disaster.

It has been harder to be productive this summer than I'd anticipated because I spent so much of it sick, and struggling to get enough rest. I am less productive when I'm tired (duh). Both kids currently have colds again, but it seems to be mild for them. I am hoping I don't get it this time, because I feel like I can't afford to get sick yet again.

I have been running more often through the summer, and that has been really nice. Sometimes I even run in the mornings before work because work meetings have been few and far between. Then I can just drive to work and make up the time I lost running. Tonight I went running after the kids went to bed, because I badly needed to get out after a frustrating day in which Nora refused her nap, cried for ages, and then was incredibly cranky and difficult for the rest of the night. If it weren't for the darkness issue I'd run at night all the time. For the first time in ages I actually got to the point at which I felt good and like I could keep going forever.

When I got back home at 8:45, both kids were still awake and putting up a fuss. Sigh.

Exercise is necessary to keep me sane but it hasn't helped my body budge from my apparently new weight set point. I have been diligently working on that without much "slipping" for, oh, over a year now. So I think it is time to face the fact that this might just be the new equilibrium, like it or not, barring something extreme. And the only extreme yet healthy thing I can imagine would be some intense training regimen, and that just isn't fitting in with my life right now and the need to get tenure and be a present mom. (I do either walk or run at least 3 miles a day, every day, so it's not like I'm sedentary, but still...pretty lame). One thing that is important to help me accept this and not constantly beat myself up about it is to only buy and wear clothes that actually fit and flatter my body. My current body, not the body I wish I had. So that is what I am doing. I am not the same size that I was in graduate school. This is something to just accept, I guess...

Technology has been helping me gear up for fall. Two free and awesome programs have been making my life easier. One is dropbox, which is like a folder where you can virtually store stuff and synch it to every computer. It appears like a normal folder on your computer and when I save a document there on my work computer, it automatically shows up on my laptop at home and on my iPad as well. This is great for working on the same stuff from work and home without having to constantly email files to myself.

The other is Mendeley, which is a citation index but is also a way to store and organize your PDF journal articles. You can also import cites from the web and from lots of different databases (but not ERIC yet), and most exciting, this program resides on both my laptop and my desktop and again can be synched via the web. Not only that, but you can share citations and papers with others, which is very handy. Unlike Endnote, it's free (up to a point). I was never able to get into Endnote for some reason, but I am loving Mendeley. The way I used to keep track of my citations was embarrassingly old school, so it was time to step it up.

Now I just need to find a good qualitative data analysis program like nVivo that actually works on a Mac, because I just don't want to deal with PCs.

We are going to try potty training this weekend, serious hard core (rolling up the rugs). Oh my! I am not sure how this will work, or if it'll work, but it's worth a try. Added motivation is the fact that poor Nora has a terrible yeast diaper rash -- she desperately needs naked time. Naked time, here we come.

Not Ready

Put the kids to bed, then heard a commotion a few minutes later and walked in to find Nora climbing out of her crib.

Shopping for twin beds right now.

Which means sheets, and quilts, and pillows, and separating them into 2 rooms, and losing my office, and additional bedroom furniture...

Our Dumb Sweet Cat

We have this cat, Caspian, who is the sweetest cat you'll ever meet. He is huge (as in tall) and he acts more like a dog than a cat sometimes. He'll follow you around, he loves to cuddle, if there's a lap, he's on it. He has never once bitten or scratched anybody. This is really saying something given how Milo has tried to abuse him over the years, complete with body slamming him in his attempt to "hug". There have been times when Milo has actually hurt Caspian before I was able to get to him and tear him off, and all Caspian does when that happens is meow in pain. He never, ever defends himself. He is one seriously sweet cat.

Caspian likes all people and when Jake isn't around he'll cuddle up to me any time I sit down. But really, he's Jake's cat. This cat adores Jake.

Anyway, the one downside to Caspian is that he is a really dumb cat. For instance, when we put the baby gate up on the stairs, it took him about 6 months to realize that he could actually easily jump over the gate. This is after 6 months of watching our other, smaller cat do it every day.

The other annoying thing is that Caspian begs to eat, just like a dog, when it is meal time. I feed the cats twice a day and when it gets to be about that time, Caspian is all over me, weaving around my legs, meowing pitifully, excitedly jumping up and starting to run downstairs as soon as it looks like I'm about to get up. Which is fine, and then I'll go and feed him. But the annoying part is that Caspian then tends to forget that he has already been fed. So if I happen to still be home about an hour later, he will start the whole routine all over again, totally forgetting that he actually still has food in his bowl. And I'll say, exasperated, "Caspian, I already fed you!" but because he's a cat, he doesn't understand. And I have to literally walk downstairs with him, to his bowl, and then he'll suddenly remember, oh yeah, there's already food in my bowl, and I can totally eat some more right now! Score!

It's Back

Nora's reflux was back last night. Poor thing. She hasn't woken with this in ages, maybe it's been a year or so? But last night it was back and she was in a lot of pain, burping and coughing just like Jake does when he has reflux. After she burped she would cry and complain that her nose hurt. Jake said that when he has reflux, those burps bring up acid and phlegm and I can imagine that would sting and just feel terrible.

When I recently took the kids to the doctor for a check-up I asked her about keeping Nora on Prevacid for her reflux. Prevacid is the more serious medication for it, and long-term use of it has shown a loss of bone density. That's in adults. There haven't been enough kids on it to do a study on kids, but it wouldn't be surprising. Given that potential concern and the fact that Nora seemed better, her doctor suggested we experiment with cutting back her dosage to see how she would do. So I cut it back a little bit, not a lot, but then tonight happened. So I guess it is still an issue for her.

She couldn't really fall asleep until 4:30 a.m. At one point I was in the nursery with her, sitting on the chair next to her crib, and she was sleeping sitting up. Little hands wrapped around the bars to keep herself upright. It hurt her to lie down, but she was so tired. I propped her up with me on the sofa until she fell really good and asleep, and then she was able to get a few hours.

Food These Days

So my philosophy with food now is to follow that Child of Mine idea, in which the parent's responsibility is what, when, and where, and the child is in control of whether and how much. At first it was hard to totally back off of trying to encourage, cajole, reward, or otherwise force the kids to eat. But backing off entirely from that has totally changed mealtime. It is about 100 times better now. They no longer resist sitting down to meals, and instead enjoy it. I no longer try to get them to eat "one more bite" of whatever, or try to bribe them to eat particular foods with the promise of dessert.

Yes, there are some meals when Nora will eat next to nothing. But I just grit my teeth, do nothing, and know that she will probably eat more at the next meal, which she does. When she says "I don't like this" or "I don't want to eat", I just say, "That's okay, you don't have to eat. But you do have to sit with us at dinner." And then she inevitably eats. I think she was testing whether she really does have control over whether she eats. Recognizing that the control is in her hands, she goes ahead and eats.

Dessert is not an every night occurrence. I don't want them to think of it as the natural end to a meal. I do tend to pull it out, ironically, on those nights when Nora has eaten very little. Then I console myself with the calories she is getting from that bowl of ice cream. On nights when she eats a good meal, I tend not to bring out the dessert much.

So there is another trend now to sneak vegetables into kids' foods. Some people are against this because they think that vegetables should be a normal, not hidden, part of kids' lives and meals. I agree totally, but my opinion is, why can't I include vegetables with meals, offer it all the time, and sneak it in? So, I do both.

For instance, tonight our dinner was fajitas with roasted onions and green peppers, rice and black beans, corn tortillas, fresh tomatoes, cilantro, and chipotle peppers. I gave the kids the rice and beans, green peppers, onions, and tomatoes. I also gave them some meatballs (which Jake and I don't eat but is great for the incredible calories they pack), as well as some bread with peanut butter. My idea is to give them the adult food that we eat every night, but also give them one or two items on their plates that aren't new and that I know they like. So I didn't make any mention of whether or what they should eat on their plates, I just offered it all to them.

Milo ate the rice and beans, tortilla, green peppers, tomatoes, and meatballs. He also licked the peanut butter off his bread. He tasted the onions but didn't eat them.

Nora picked all of the black beans out of her rice and ate them one by one. She ate one bite of her bread with peanut butter. She ate one or two bites of her meatball. She then surprised me by eating the rice. She also surprised me by taking a bite of her green pepper, because she saw Milo eating it. She then spit it out, but I was happy that she tried it. She didn't touch the tomatoes or onions.

We always close the meal with fruit, their favorite thing ever. Tonight it was grapes and kiwi.

I am starting to sneak vegetables into their foods more and more, because vegetables are one thing that Nora pretty much doesn't eat at all. So this afternoon for snack I made them a smoothie, which I often do, with yogurt and milk and fruit and some honey, but today I also put in some frozen spinach. And lo and behold they loved it. Another thing I like to do is make them "red" or "green" mac 'n cheese. I make homemade mac 'n cheese for them, the very high calorie kind with butter, a white sauce from a roux, and mascarpone or cream cheese, cheddar, and mozzarella cheese. (It is delicious). Then I will also take some roasted red peppers or some fresh wilted spinach, and then puree those in the food processor and mix it into the sauce. Both kids like that kind of pasta, so I figure, it's a start.

Breads, muffins, etc. with vegetables have been less successful so far.

It's definitely hard to keep my mouth shut about what they're eating, but I don't think that they're actually eating any less as a result of doing it this way. They seem to be eating a little more, if anything.

One last thing. This woman is a genius and I identify with every single part of this post.

Office Envy

I have a serious case of office envy.

Our university has a number of rich donors, like every university, and one of these families is strongly connected to the school of education. They have given the school of education a lot of money over the years in the form of scholarships, endowed chairs, etc. They also gave the school money to re-build our major education building, the one that sits on the heart of campus, up on the hill, right on the quad, next to all of the other old, beautiful buildings.

So anyhoo, the university re-built this building and now most of the departments of the school of education are moving into it. Not ours, though. Our department is staying right here, in our crappy, 60s building on an ugly street, with 11-inch wide windows to protect its occupants from bombs and civil unrest. I dislike our building and I dislike my tiny, cramped office with no view. We did have the chance to move into the new education building, but our department declined because many have primo parking spots and they don't want to give those up. Plus, half of the offices in our building were re-vamped and made into larger, prettier offices. Not mine, though.

So, my friend from another department moved into the new education building last week and today I headed on over there for our weekly lunch together. And oh my God! Her office! It is huge and it has a view of the lake! And it overlooks the terrace with picnic tables and gathering spots, where we ate lunch! And her building has a cafe right inside the building, and a giant fireplace with giant comfy arm chairs for reading and conversation! Nyaaarrrgh, that's the sound of me eating my heart out!

When I dreamt about becoming a professor, I was highly influenced by the novel "The Small Room" by May Sarton. In this story the protagonist is a professor at a small liberal arts college somewhere in the northeast. People wander about the quad, wear knee-high socks, and picnic under the giant trees. It is this type of environment I imagined -- an old, dusty office in an ivy-covered building that looks out upon the quad. In the summer I would see people playing frisbee, and in the fall the open window would bring a crispness to the air and I would gaze upon the changing leaves falling from the trees. Students would come have tea in my office and discuss Big Ideas. There would be an arm chair. Wooden bookcases. A tile floor. A chalkboard.

Sounds idyllic, but such is not my office fate. Fortunately, I can wander over to the nice building and stroll about the quad and watch the students and see the leaves change any time I want.

Community

I walked home from work as I do every Friday, but this evening as I got to my block I saw that my neighbors were out on the porch with their brand new, 2-day old baby. Woo hoo! So I had to stop and hold that gorgeous baby, and a couple of other neighbors were there too, so we chatted and talked about babies and induction and being tired.

I do think it would be nice to have a couple more kids. Four kids would be a nice number. Four is so...friendly. It's a big old group of kids. A gaggle of kids. Four kids would make for lively Christmases. Four would be so nice!

My neighbors keep trying to convince me that it would be a good idea to have another baby but we're not going there. We can't do it, for a lot of reasons, so my two is enough. Plus, while the idea of four kids sounds pretty nice, the idea of even one more baby does not sound all that nice. Although, come to think of it, having just one baby seems like it would be kind of sweet, but...no. No more children for us.

As I sat talking with the neighbors I thought, I need to get home, Jake is going to wonder where I am. But then Milo came running out of my neighbor's house, and then followed Nora and Jake. Turns out they were there too, playing with their friend Millie, who is their age. Milo had Millie's shopping cart and he suggested that the new baby would like to perhaps take a ride in the cart. "And that's why 2-year olds don't babysit," mentioned our neighbor. "I'm sure in about a year he's going to love riding in that cart," remarked his mother. Milo grinned and hopped down the steps to the yard.

Since we can't have a big old gaggle of kids sometimes I wish Milo and Nora had cousins in the same town (they're all the way across the country), or something, something to make it more of a big family feeling.

But we do have a big extended family feeling in the neighborhood, and that is a really, really nice thing to have. They'll take each other's kids after school, the kids wander into one another's houses, they share toys and clothes. I know which kids belong to which parents but if you just wandered into our neighborhood it would be very hard to tell because at any given time any one parent is likely to have his or her kids plus any number of extras. This is community, and it's definitely something I felt shut out of before we had children, but now it has opened up.

Milo and Nora love playing with Millie, so she can drop by any time when her parents need a break and some extra time with their newborn. At this stage, one extra doesn't really make a difference. So yes, it'll just be our two, but at least we live on a block with many, many more to pop in any time of the day.

Gear Ring

Holy cow! Anybody who knows about my dissertation study would know why I think this ring is so cool:

The gears actually turn! I'll have to forward this to Jake, seeing as how my birthday is only, eh, 11 months away.

Duct Tape

I need to locate it, pronto.

I have had it up to here with waking up to a naked kid and shit all over the crib, blankets, wall...

Life is so glamorous.

The Ordinary

This afternoon it was hot, 89 degrees, so we went to the splash park. Above Milo and Nora are snacking on some grapes before getting ready to run back into the fountains. It's a great place to visit. I love the idea of playing in water without constantly worrying that they are going to drown.

But then as we were getting ready to go something extra special happened. A helicopter started flying around, and then it got lower and lower, and then it actually landed in the park! It turns out the city was having a little safety fair or something and so the kids got to climb into an honest to goodness fire engine, as well as the helicopter! Maybe I should have backed up a little in that 3rd picture to show that they were actually sitting in a fire engine, but that's what it was. It was very exciting.

When we got home and Jake arrived, Milo said, "How was your day Daddy? Did you crunch numbers? I got in a helicopter!"

Kids are Funny

Funny things the kids say:

Milo: "Mommy and Daddy stop talking. I'm trying to have a conversation!"

Nora: "I would like meatball. And I'll have a glass of orange juice on the side!" (Nora has never to my knowledge consumed orange juice.)

Nora: "I love you Mommy. And I love strawberries!"

Milo: "How was your run Mommy? Did you have a good run?" (I don't know why this is funny, just that it is such a grown-up way to have a conversation and it sounds funny coming out of his two-year old mouth.)

Milo: "Do I eat ant poop?"

Nora to Milo: "You're not the boss here!"

Milo: "I am the boss!"

Me: "Millie's Mommy is having her baby today! She is going to the hospital and the baby is going to come out of her tummy!"

Nora: "Did she bump her head?"

(Because that's why you go to the hospital)

Milo: "Are you a kid, Daddy?"

Jake: "I'm a grown up."

Milo: "You can snap your fingers!"

Jake: "And drive a car!"

(You can tell from this exchange what is most salient about being grown-up to each person)

You May be a Female Professor If...

-- You have been actively leading a large group of colleagues on a complicated project for the past 7 months and then get to hear somebody in a different department reference this project as "Spearheaded by Professor Greybeard", a member of your team who has been largely absent from the process and has nothing to do with leading it.

-- Your local school district bureaucrat addresses letters to you as "Ms. Lastname", while simultaneously sending out an identical letter to your mentor addressed to "Dr. Mentordude".

-- Your students refer to you by your first name, and refer to your male colleague as "Professor Lastname". Bonus points for the random emails you get from prospective students addressed to you as "Mrs. Lastname".

-- Your work is attributed to your male colleague, as in, "Well in that study that Male Colleague did...", when it was actually your study.

-- You and your male colleague collaborate on a consulting project for an independent firm. You send an email to the contact person with a question that you and your colleague have about the project. No response. You wait a few days and send out another email. No response. You try a 3rd time, and no response. You give in and ask your colleague to email the contact person. He does, and gets a response within the hour.

-- You try to chalk this up to coincidence, but it happens over and over again. It happens so regularly that your colleague starts to joke that it is his manliness that gets quick responses.

-- A senior professor in your college finds out that you have children and casually refers to you as being "risky" for having done that before tenure. She does this in front of a group of people, one who happens to be your friend, an untenured male who recently had a baby. His actions aren't described as "risky". The senior professor does, however, coo over cute pictures of your friend's unrisky baby.

-- Visitors to your suite assume that you are the secretary. Putting your title on your door doesn't seem to do anything to change that assumption.

-- When you answer your own phone, the caller asks to speak to the professor.

-- When you are at a professional function with your colleague, a visitor assumes that you are the wife of your colleague and not a professor.

-- You (a secondary content specialist) are at a function with your male colleague (an early childhood, elementary specialist). Everybody at the function keeps referring to you as the early childhood specialist and your colleague as the content specialist.

-- After six years of serving on the same committee with the same set of mathematicians who know you well, they still ask you what you do with elementary teachers, despite having been reminded a dozen times a year that you run the secondary program and have nothing to do with elementary education.

-- You meet somebody new at a conference who has read your papers. He tells you, "I thought for sure that this paper had been written by a man."

-- Any time you are in a working group, you are asked to take notes for the group.

Just a snapshot of my summer!

I know I have it way, way better than some of my friends in other fields. My field is pretty small so as a result, I am mostly known. People know who I am and what I do and what I write about. The smallness of our field means that these kinds of things happen a lot less than they might otherwise, because mostly we are familiar with one another. I would describe most of the things I put up with as generally benign. It could be a lot worse, like some of the stuff that happened to me when I was an undergrad in a math dept.

I think it'll be interesting to see how my responses to stuff may change after tenure. Right now somebody can do practically anything to me and I'm not going to react or put up a fuss because tenure is coming up. I don't want to offend anybody, ever. It'll be interesting to see if, and how, that may change.

************

This week I am thrilled because I looked on my calendar and saw that I have no meetings all week! So I decided to refuse any new meeting requests that might come up and work from home all week, doing nothing except writing (okay, and some service tasks, and one critical advising task). Seeing as how I'm not getting paid this month, it seems fitting to avoid meetings and try to focus more on my own work -- if I were smarter, I'd figure out how to pull this off for an entire month instead of just a week.

Disturbing

A little disturbing: Going into the kids' room this morning and finding them both naked from the waist down.

More disturbing: Finding a smear on Milo's crib sheet that looks suspiciously like he used it to wipe his bottom.

Even more disturbing: Finding a little turd sitting on the floor.

Especially disturbing: I had stepped on it.

Really especially disturbing: Barefoot.

Most disturbing: The nagging fear that I didn't find it all, and there must be more somewhere lurking in the corner...just waiting for me to step on it.

I Don't Want To Be Betty

Monday I was so tired. Saturday night was an up-all-night kind of night with Nora having a stomach ache. I find that after a sleepless night I'm usually okay the next day, running on adrenaline, but two days later I collapse. So Monday was a hard day. My mentor and I had a collaborator in town for a two-day work session as we outlined a book (I am writing two books this year with collaborators). So I was at the office by 9, then we worked until 4, then I read a dissertation from 4 to 6, then we took our collaborator out to dinner. Got home by 9 p.m., and then finished reading the dissertation by 10:30 and I was done for the day.

So at that point, it'd be logical to go to sleep. All through dinner I was struggling, and my mentor kept saying "you look tired" and "you must be exhausted". But I think once you get to a certain stage of tired, you just can't shut down, or at least I can't, so I was awake until about 2:30 a.m.

What is wrong with me?!?

Slept until 4:20 a.m. at which point Milo woke up. Back to sleep at 5, kids were up for good at 6:30. So, today was another long, tired day.

Back home this evening, I was cooking dinner when the kids arrived home with Buddy. They'd been swimming in the lake. They were either over tired or over hungry, because they were cranky. Nora kept whining for me to hold her. Milo kept making this frustrated noise that grates on my nerves like you wouldn't believe. It goes something like this: Huuuuaaaaaahhhhhh! At dinner, both kids were whiny and petulant and uncooperative. I had made linguini with tomatoes, basil, and fresh mozzarella, all things that they like. They had chicken, and bread. Nora spent the entire dinner whining and then crying and then pitching a fit because I wouldn't give her jelly or peanut butter on her bread. (My policy is no short-order cooking, so what's on the plate is what they get, period. There is always at least one thing, usually more, on their plates that they like and are guaranteed to eat. They can have as many servings as they desire, but I won't make new things just because they don't feel like eating what's there.)

Milo kept trying to put his feet on the table. Nora kept trying to pitch a fit and she refused to eat. And you know what, I was pissed. I was cranky myself. So tired, and not in the mood to deal with it. To be honest, I really wanted to yell. I really wanted to yell at them.

But I didn't, because I don't want to be like Betty Draper. So I distracted them and devised a silly game with them and made them forget their bad moods, and then they started to eat without realizing they were eating, and then they cheered up, and we got through dinner without any disasters. (And I did not give in on the short order cooking thing).

Other nights I will probably mess up and lose control of myself and yell at the kids. I'm a very verbal person and yelling is how I express my anger, especially when I'm sleep deprived. I'll inevitably lose it, I'm sure, and then feel guilty about it. Like a terrible mom, which is sometimes how I feel. Like, I keep thinking I should be better at this. It should be easier for me. It should be more natural. The way it seems to be for other people. But at least sometimes I'm able to do the right thing, and can keep it under control even though I've reached the end of my rope. And tonight I'm proud of that.

Bonus picture: Milo insisting on using the vacuum. A decade from now when I'm trying to get him to do his chores I'll remind him that he used to demand to use my vacuum!

Back

I was feeling very pissy about traveling up north with the kids but that was silly because they love it up there. The minute they hopped out of the car they were literally bouncing around with excitement and joy. All of the things that scared them last year, like the dog, are now sources of delight.

Jake's parents' house is basically the perfect grandparent heaven for a couple of kids. It's got a lake, woods, boats, a dock, and all kinds of things to explore. They have a little play kitchen, and a sand box, and a lot of Jake's old toys, and other random things that they've picked up from garage sales and such. Nora loves that kitchen and Milo adores the sand box. They both got about 800 mosquito bites but never wanted to go inside.

We also took a boat ride, and went swimming, and ate all kinds of new foods (Nora actually ate tomatoes, and spaghetti, and Milo ate a ton of sushi one afternoon). Being up there sort of feels like being at camp -- the house is basically a cabin, and they usually have a bonfire at night, and you can sit outside and listen to the loons and watch the water.

Most people go to this location for a week or two in the summer, and most of the houses on the lake are summer cabins. Jake's family lived there year round, and this was their full-time home. He had a childhood that was different from most of us who grew up in suburbia. His brother rode a snowmobile to school in the winters.

Tonight after we got home we had a nice dinner and then while I was washing dishes Milo climbed on a chair, fell off of it, and gashed the corner of his eye. Jake and I were so freaked out and trying to see how bad the cut was that this scared Milo and he cried for a long time. I didn't know if we should take him to the hospital to get a stitch. The gash is about a centimeter long and the eye itself is fine, but I guess the fact that it is on his face has me worried that he will get a weird-looking scar. It was a deep gash. If he had the same type of cut anywhere else on his body, I wouldn't have thought twice about it. Anyway, we decided it was silly to go to the hospital for something that probably doesn't need stitches, but still, I feel bad. I swear Milo is so danger prone. He has no fear at all and currently he has not only that nasty gash, but a ton of bruises, cuts, and scrapes on his legs, plus all of the mosquito bites -- he's a mess.

Nora is a little more cautious and so she gets far fewer injuries. I guess in this case Milo takes after me and Nora takes after Jake. I'm just happy we made it through the trip without any major mishaps. That place up north is a kid heaven but for a parent it looks like one enormous danger pit.

You Can't Always See What You See

Tonight we were playing with the iPad and the kids had a game in which there were a bunch of fish, and they had to touch the fish that was different. So there might be about 10 identical red fish, except for size, and one green fish. But neither one could touch the "different" fish. It was weird. I'd start by saying "which fish is different?" and they'd randomly touch any red fish. Then I'd say "which fish is not red?" and they would still randomly touch any fish. Once I said "which fish is the green fish?" they could identify it. But they don't have the idea of "different" or of "not x" yet. I hadn't realized that.

Child cognitive development is so interesting. I totally could have gone into that field instead of the one I'm in.

It actually reminds me of this time with a bunch of 8th graders. I had wanted them to explain something about a situation with growing rectangles, in which the rectangles grow but keep their height/length proportion. I wanted them to come up with a justification for something by drawing rectangles, and in particular I hoped they would draw a general rectangle, an H x L rectangle, instead of giving a specific example with, say, a 2 x 3 rectangle.

So everybody did their own explanation and tons of kids drew rectangles, but only one student made a general H x L rectangle. All of the other ones were specific examples with specific numbers. So I had 3 kids put up their rectangles and I asked them what was different about the H x L rectangle, compared to the other ones. And the students literally could not see any difference. They thought of tons of tiny insignificant differences, trying to come up with any distinction, but the idea of one rectangle being a specific example versus another being a general case was just not there for them. Even though it was so glaringly obvious to me. It really brought home how much of a disconnect there is between teachers and middle school students on the topic of proof, when middle school students aren't yet able to perceive any meaningful difference between a specific example and a generic case.

*******

Tonight was the first night in a week that Milo went to bed without crying and putting up a fuss. So we're making progress. We haven't yet had a night in which he hasn't woken up crying, but I feel like he is slowly getting better.

We're going up north to Jake's parents' place on the lake for the weekend tomorrow. I think it's going to be a giant pain in the ass. But it's just a weekend.

Who Needs Sleep?

I get so tired in the afternoons that sometimes I literally can't stay awake. Yesterday I fell asleep in a chair in the living room with the kids right there harassing me, the music on, Jake clattering in the kitchen...I'd wake up for a second when somebody poked me or spoke into my face, and then I'd fall asleep for a few seconds.

Today I felt the same way. I put my head down for a nap but 2 minutes later Nora woke up and started crying. I had to get up but I was so tired I almost couldn't make myself do it. I felt like it was a monumental effort to keep my eyes open.

And yet here it is a 12:30 a.m. and I am still awake. I just spent an hour awake in bed. Why can't I fall asleep now when I could not stay awake this afternoon? It's so dumb, it feels perverse.

I feel like this sleep problem is kind of ruining my life, and if I have to get up early every morning (which I do) and mostly cannot nap in the afternoon (which I can't) there is no solution in sight. I actually went to my doctor with this set of concerns to see if there was something she could do. She prescribed some Ambien for me but only gave me 10 pills and no refills. I thought it would be some sort of super-powerful miracle drug but it only worked about as much as Benadryl works for me. My doctor seems to be far less concerned about my weighty woes than me, so maybe I should get a new one. Hard to say.

Anyway, I'm glad I was awake tonight because I heard Milo the minute he began to wimper, and I was able to comfort him and rub his back in the crib before he fully woke up and began to freak out about the fact that he doesn't have a pacifier. Milo is having a harder time giving up his pacifier. So far he hasn't been able to go to sleep yet by himself without it. Instead I have been holding him or rocking him to sleep. Which probably isn't a great habit but I don't want to just let him cry. I feel like it is hard enough and cruel enough as it is to take away such an important comfort object. He is, rightly so, mourning the loss of something hugely important to him. The least we can do is comfort him through that during the night.

Nora's having an easier time. She had a few tears in the beginning, but not too many, and now it's more an issue that without the pacifier she remains keyed up longer than usual. She isn't upset or crying about it, but she's kind of hyper and is having a harder time calming down and getting sleepy without it. And she is having a hard time going back to sleep when she wakes in the middle of the night. These are all expected and predictable consequences of taking away pacifiers, I suppose.

So, needless to say, we haven't been sleeping very much since operation ditch pacifier occurred. When I am in bed I often think I am hearing the kids crying even though they're not. It's like these faint auditory hallucinations. Sometimes I'll be sort of drifting off and then I'll think I'm hearing somebody cry. So I'll instantly become wide awake, listening for it. And I feel like I can hear it faintly, even though I know that nobody is actually crying. (Because when they do cry, it isn't faint. It's loud, and very real.) But even though I know it isn't real, I can still hear it, and it kind of drives me nuts and makes me anxious.

Hmm, and I wonder why I can't sleep!

It's Hard to be Little

Operation ditch pacifiers happened today. It's gone about as one might expect. To date, nobody has yet managed to fall asleep without a pacifier.

The kids were okay with the idea of giving away their pacifiers until nap/bedtime. Then it has been most definitely not okay.