Snow Snow Snow

This morning, Nora said, "Today after school I'm going to shovel, okay? Okay??" Milo: "Me too! Can we shovel today?"

Sure, kids. Knock yourselves out. They think shoveling is such a novelty. Can we maintain this attitude for the next 14 years or so?

Our semester starts late in January, so we're still on winter break. I've been sick all week, but the kids are back in school so I've had the rare chance to actually, like, be sick and rest and stuff. On Monday I had to go into work for a bunch of meetings, and on Wednesday I had to take care of the kids all day, but otherwise I've taken a lot of naps. I've spent the week mostly napping and analyzing data from the comfort of my couch after dragging my sorry butt out of bed each morning to get the kids to school. It's been pretty luxurious.

Today I actually created a star chart for the kids for daily behaviors like getting dressed without a fuss, picking up toys, saying please all day without having to be reminded, eating dinner without fighting, etc. I never thought I'd be the star chart type of person. Desperation pushes you to new levels.

Yesterday when the bus let the elementary school kids off at the corner (right outside our house), a kid stepped off the stairs and looked at the snowy neighborhood and yelled, "Oh my God, it's GLORIOUS!"

It Was A Saab

This morning when I came out of the preschool and approached my car I heard a dad telling his 3-year old daughter, "This car was designed by the Swedes. It's built for snow."

This may be a sign that our preschool is a bit too posh for the likes of me.

Letting Go

It has been super warm here. We haven't had any snow accumulation at all this winter, so far, which is unheard of at this point. Today the high was 50 and it was sunny.

It's supposed to turn cold and snowy sometime tonight, so we took advantage of what might be the last nice day for a while and went to the botanical gardens. It was downright pleasant outside.

Look at that bare ground. So weird. Also, there are buds on my lilac bush. The poor thing thinks it's March instead of January. We also went into the greenhouse, which is warm like a tropical forest, with exotic plants and birds. Here is a self portrait:

It is always fun to be in this warm environment in the dead of winter (even though it hasn't exactly felt like the dead of winter lately). The greenhouse is big enough that you sort of feel like you're outside. It smells terrific. It's kind of nostalgic, although I can't actually say what it makes me nostalgic for. A combination of San Diego, St. Louis, and Kyoto in the summer.

2012 is shaping up to be a good year for me to permanently let go of some bad habits. Some of those things have been thrust upon me, unanticipated, but on reflection I've realized this is an opportunity for me to make my own positive choice to leave some bad habits behind for good. It feels good to make that decision myself and commit to it. When I make serious changes they tend to be for life, so it's not a trivial thing.

One of those things might be meat. We eat very little meat, and what we do eat is limited to chicken and seafood, but I think it may be time for me personally to finally let go of my attachment to those things. I also think it is time to try to move away from dairy as well, to some degree anyway. I could certainly consume less of it than I do now. None of this applies to the kids. I am concerned with their need for iron and protein and fat, and will do whatever I can to get those things into them. But when you get to be my age, things are different. I'm too old now to ignore issues like cholesterol and risks for heart disease and cancers.

I'm feeling very positive about letting go of the bad stuff and embracing a more healthy future, one that I continue to fill with hard exercise, fresh foods, enjoyable solitude, and time with Jake and the kids, family, and true friends.

Mylow

Today I saw a picture of a kid with the name "Mylow". Hey. Who knew Milo was a popular enough name to get its own special spelling?

I knew about the name Milo since I was a kid and read the book The Phantom Tollbooth. It's about a kid named Milo who drives his little car through the phantom tollbooth and then goes on all sorts of philosophical adventures.

I didn't want either kid to have a super popular name because I grew up with a name like that and it was a pain in the neck. In fact, from 4th grade through 12th grade I went to school with another kid who had my first and last name. We were always sort of vague enemies on principle. She wasn't a great student. Sometimes I'd get letters warning me that I was in danger of failing a class that I wasn't even enrolled in. In the fall of my senior year, no joke, my high school actually sent her SAT scores to my first batch of college applications.

There was a period in the 80s when lots of people named Amy would use alternate spellings. I started having to clarify that my name wasn't spelled "Aimee" and such. Huh. Never thought I'd see "Mylow". Actually, that's kind of an awful name, now that I think about it. My low.

Speaking of Milo, tonight he bit Nora on the back, hard, and broke the skin. OMG WTF. That was definitely Milo's lo.

Two Towers

When I came out of the bathroom, there were two towers of blocks flanking the doorway. Each tower had five blocks in it. I asked Nora how many blocks were there all together, and she said, "1, 2, 3, 4, 5...6, 7, 8, 9, 10. 10! Five and five is ten, and ten and ten is...[thinks]...twenty!"

It is interesting how development occurs in fits and starts across different areas. Before having kids I sort of assumed that kids would either be progressing normally, behind, or ahead in a general sense. But now I see that this differs across different skills, at least for my kids. Nora is very into counting, skip counting, backwards counting, adding, subtracting, and so forth. But...she's still not potty trained at night (not even close). She recognizes her letters and sounds out words now (with varying degrees of success). But...her motor skills are not so great so it is hard for her to write her name. Some things come easy and early for her, and other things come harder and later.

**********

A few days ago before the ice rink across the street turned into a big puddle, I let the kids try skating for the first time. Milo, accustomed to having an easy time at any physical task, had no caution and kept trying to take big glides. His falls were frequent and spectacular. Nora was more cautious and deliberate. Her falls were gentler.

Milo took a really bad fall, landing flat on his back and banging his head on the ice. After that, he was done. He cried and cried and cried. I took him to the bench and held him, but had to sit him there for a second to go help Nora back up. When I came back, there was a giant, 3-inch long stream of yellow snot hanging out of his nose, tears falling down his cheeks. So sad. I dug around for a kleenex and found an old, dusty crumpled one in my coat pocket. So I used the inadequate kleenex to clear away the enormous snot slug, and then had a new dilemma. There was no garbage can to throw away the inadequate kleenex. Searching around in vain, I then thrust it back into my pocket.

As I held Milo and comforted him Nora kept trying to skate, falling over and over and over again. Somebody gave her a little chair and she would hold onto it for a bit, but then she'd let go and venture away from the chair. Then she'd use the chair to help herself get back into a standing position after each fall. I had to pry her away from the ice so that I could get Milo home and dry. I think she would have stayed out there all day, falling and getting back up over and over again with no desire to ever give up. This is the flip side of Nora's persistent temperament.

The next day I reached into my pocket to pull out my glove, my favorite leather glove with a warm furry interior. As I pulled it on I felt something slimy against my wrist. The warm furry interior was covered in Milo's snot. I looked at the glove's tag. It said, "professional leather clean only." Sigh.

4th Year Check Up

I don't feel much like writing these days. Too much I can't really write about or don't feel like sharing anymore.

The kids had their 4th year check-up today. Nora weighs 24.5 lbs and Milo weighs 27 lbs. Milo is 37.5" tall and Nora is 37" tall. These sizes are puny but their doctor still thinks I should put them in kindergarten in the fall (a year early), which I am pretty sure we won't do.

Milo seemed to fail his hearing test, but sometimes it's hard to get him to cooperate so who knows. But I have noticed that his hearing is bad these days so we're going to go to an audiologist. He also has a sinus infection. Also, possibly enlarge adenoids and/or allergies. Nora seems okay. Despite the kids' slow growth the doctor thinks they're okay because they're on their own respective curves. Those curves aren't on the chart, but I guess following your own curve is more important than being on the chart.

I think we're all more than ready for preschool to start back up on Monday.

Milo

I don't know what Milo's deal is these days. He keeps having meltdowns over very little things, and he gets extremely upset. It feels more like 2-year old behavior than 4-year old behavior. This morning, his building kept falling down, half the time because he'd knock it down himself, then he would get extremely frustrated about the whole situation and just lose it, complete with banging his fists and feet on the floor and crying. It's not the losing it that bothers me, per se, so much as how minor the thing can be that causes him to lose it.

Next week is the kids' 4-year check up. I intend to talk to the doctor about Milo's snoring. Sometimes I wonder if he is more sleep deprived than I realize, despite sleeping for 10-11 hours at night and then still napping for 2-3 hours during the day. When we were up north I ended up sharing a room with Milo, and I was shocked at his snoring. It sounded like he could barely get any air in, half the time. He seems kind of permanently stuffed up. I wonder if he has an allergy to something?

Milo only asked for one thing for Christmas, an "I can read" book called Fireman Cat or something like that. I dislike these "I can read" books, as they're so boring to read, but the kids really like them. They got a few for their birthday and Milo saw an ad on the back page of one of them of other books, one being Fireman Cat. Nora wanted one called Morris Goes to School. So I ordered both off of Amazon. Because I was busy, okay? And didn't have any more time to go out to a brick and mortar store. These books cost something like $1.95. A few days later, an Amazon padded envelope came, with the books, and I didn't even open it but just tossed it under the tree. (Cue foreboding music).

Then on Christmas morning, we opened the envelope, and it turns out that only Morris Goes to School was in there. No Fireman Cat. Poor Milo. If I'd had half a brain and had checked the envelope, I could have discovered it and probably found Fireman Cat in town before Christmas. But as it was, there was no Fireman Cat that day. However, hurrah, yesterday Fireman Cat arrived and sure enough Milo does absolutely love this little book. Nora likes it too, especially since being fire fighters is their big thing these days.

That, but then This

Today, 3.5 hour car ride from hell, whining children from hell, thank goodness Jake was driving as I would have driven us into a tree just to stop the noise. Jake is the yin to my yang, and thank goodness for that too.

Tonight, good friend, good wine, neighborhood joint, really quite lovely. All is better with life now. That is all.

Merry Christmas

Time for rest.

Little Gems

Every now and then I have one of those students, a student whose ideas and/or writing provides endless delight. I am almost done with my grading insanity now, and I saved the best final paper for last. I am grading undergraduate papers which means lots of writing-related irritations of one sort or another, but this last student hasn't failed to entertain me. One of my favorite sentences: "I do not feel that this is an activity greatly inhibited by the noise in the classroom, so upon reflection I still do not mind that the first five minutes after the bell in this period are best described as an eighth grade cantina."

4:09 A.M.

Oh it's that familiar middle-of-the-night quiet. The street is dark, and there are no sounds, and being up at this time reminds me of all of those other snow-covered dark times I used to be up, nursing and rocking babies.

Huh. I was starting to feel a little sorry for myself over this latest bout of insomnia I've had all week, but this memory has suddenly jolted me out of it as I think about how easy my life is now. I am up at 4 a.m., but tomorrow is Saturday and that means that I do not have to be up again at 6 or 7 a.m. I do not have to feed two babies every three hours, and that damn infernal pump is in the hands of some other hapless mother, so it is a middle-of-the-night sound I will never, ever have to hear again. And although I am up, I am not terrified about my future and tenure, and I am not trying to work out the mental calculus of how I will get all of my work done tomorrow despite being so exhausted that I cry without even realizing what I'm doing.

Maybe I'm awake because I'm a little sick. Or maybe it's the resurgence of those years of conditioning, becoming too accustomed to being woken suddenly from a deep sleep, adrenaline rushing through my body all at once.

Maybe it's this house decision, and my latest hesitation the consideration that we shouldn't tie ourselves to this town too tightly, not when our university system, which gets 7% of our state's funding, has to absorb 38% of the state's budget cuts for the next year. Or maybe it's the news that we'll have another 2 years of wage freezes, following the past 6 years of freezes, furloughs, and pay cuts.

--- Wild. I just heard strange child noises and went on immediate high alert, as a parent's body will automatically do in the middle of the night, waiting for that next cry, but then I realized that I was hearing a kid laughing in his or her sleep. ---

It's that continuing question we've all been grappling with over the past couple of years. Stay, and ride out the storm? Or get off before the Titanic sinks? I've been watching more and more people decide to jump ship. I can't get off if we've just bought an expensive house.

Tonight the kids were really excited about Christmas. This is the first year that they really get it, and are clued in to what is happening. A few times Milo said, this evening, that Santa was coming. Like, as in, right now -- he saw him driving up in that car out there on the street.

Also, tonight, Milo and Nora each decided on their own at separate times after dinner to go upstairs and put on their pajamas. When Milo decided to do this, I heard Nora go up with him and boss him around / encourage him as he was changing. "Now put your pants in the laundry basket, Milo. Good job!" I had a premonition of the future, one in which Nora continues to be the ring leader and Milo follows along.

I remember another 4 a.m. darkness, when Nora was 3 months old or 5 months old or 8 months old or something like that, rocking her and rocking her and gazing out the window at the inky blackness and waiting, waiting, waiting for her to fall back asleep. I remember looking at her sweet little baby head and thinking that there would be some point in the future when I would give anything to have an hour in the middle of the night to rock that baby again, to revisit that time.

This is not that time. I am gladder than ever right now that my kids put on their footie pajamas all by themselves, that they speculate together about Santa's arrival, that they thunder up and down the stairs like a herd of horses, that they crack each other up with belly laughs over their disgusting 4-year old jokes. I don't want to defile the sweetness of their babyhood, and it was sweet, but I am continuously gratified by the children they are now.

OW

Christmas coming, so it was just me and Mike, an ex college football player, at gym class today. So when our trainer said "want to do something different?", we said sure, and now -- wait? Did you hear that? I think it was the sound of my arms falling off.

Warm up: 2 laps of high knees, 2 laps of side squats, 2 laps of high kicks, 2 laps of front-and-back squats.

Rotation 1: 12 triceps pulls, 12 side-to-side jumping pull ups, 6 squats (60 lbs), 6 box jumps. Repeat 4 times.

Rotation 2: 10 bridges, 12 box push ups, 10 triceps overhead lifts. Repeat 4 times.

Seriously, box jumps are not that hard unless you've just done 6 squats lifting 60 lbs each time. And triceps overhead lifts (I'm totally making up half these names) are not that hard except when your arms are already dead from all those bridges and push ups. Also, I seriously seriously suck at bridges. The other guy who was in class today is super strong (he squats 110 lbs compared to my 60) and was totally way better than me at everything, despite being older than me.

My arms have never ever hurt that much. The end.

It is good that our trainer mixed it up today. I was starting to get a little cocky, thinking, these workouts aren't so hard anymore. Good to get completely smacked down.

Not Feeling' It

In short: Tired, getting sick. Tough week.

Jake and I are waffling all over the place on this house. We're going to see it again when my folks are here so we can show it to them and see what they think. (Get ready for a house tour Mom.) I am in a bizarre state of analysis paralysis.

Our grant is just about done now. I have about 180 pages of finals to grade in the next 2 days. All that black text on white background staring at me, taunting me. But I just want to sleep all the time.

Difficult grad student issues that just never, never, never end year after year after year. I try not to write about stuff like that. It's my story, but it's somebody else's too, so it's not really mine to share.

I found a sack of 3T Christmas clothes that I must have set aside a year or two ago; I have no idea where they came from, possibly hand-me-downs. They include a beautiful red Christmas dress that Nora absolutely refuses to wear or even try on. I find myself getting frustrated that she will only wear about 10% of the clothes in her drawer, but then I read this and resolve to be more understanding.

On the bright side: Today Nora and Milo played for a good 15-20 minutes in a homemade bedspread tent on Milo's bed without any fighting while I goofed around on my laptop downstairs. That alone is a sign that life gets easier all the time.

House We're Thinking of Buying

My colleague lives in our neighborhood and is selling his house. We took a look today. It has all the room we'd ever need and storage would never be a problem. It has a lot of nice things about it. We're very tempted to make an offer.

It probably won't work out, though, because they don't want to take a contingent offer, and Jake doesn't want to make an offer that's not contingent on the sale of our house (understandably).

Also, bonus picture from last weekend's tree cutting expedition.

Wondering

Am I being too outspoken these days and therefore offensive? Maybe I should tone it down.

Some Birthday Pictures

On the kids' birthday we shared a treat of pumpkin bread and a Curious George story with friends:

Against All Odds

Mentor and I are just about finished with the penultimate draft of the grant we've been working so hard on. It goes to our internal editor and then we'll do one final pass. In some ways it's harder to write this with three PIs than writing it alone, but in many ways it's much better since everybody brings a different type of expertise to the table. Anyway, because it's due soon we've been working around the clock on it.

But today NSF let us know that there are 900 letters of intent for this program, and they expect to fund 30 proposals. Oh...shit. 30 out of 900 just seems impossible. Those odds are just impossible. I feel really discouraged.

How are there even 900 people in our field doing grant-funded research? I didn't think we even had those kinds of numbers. This is wild. Anyway, it's tough to spend so much time and effort on something with such a small chance of success. Sometimes that's just the nature of the job, I guess, but with grants in particular the stakes are so high. I don't know how we'll fund everybody next year if we don't get this grant. Le sigh.

December 14

Wow, what a day, I'm beat. It's an Irish Russian kind of night.

The kids had a busy and exciting birthday. I think they had a great time.

It rained all day and was about 45 degrees today! What a contrast to 4 years ago, when it was bitterly cold (single digits?) and there was a foot of snow on the ground. I'll take this weather any day. I know we have our cold and snow coming, and it's fun to have big snowstorms, but this is really nice.

I know the holidays are busy for everybody. I feel like they really kick my butt now because I've got the kids' birthday, Christmas, and the end of semester (finals and tons of grading) all happening at the same time every year. Phew! Like I said...beat.

Have a Berry Happy Birthday

The kids' birthday party was today, along with another little girl in their class who shares their birthday. We combined forces and did a craft party. One of the things I brought was fruit. I made a berry medley with blueberries, raspberries, strawberries, and blackberries. Then I put it into 20 dixie cups. Then I put the dixie cups into my very nice glass brownie pan, the one that has a tupperware lid, and also came with an insulated fitted bag, perfect for taking brownies or other dishes to parties. I put the extra dixie cup berry medleys in a loaf pan on top of the brownie pan. Then I held the whole thing carefully in my lap as we drove to the party, cake secure in the trunk of the car.

Then, we got to the party and I got out and put the berries on the hood of the car to get Milo out. And then...

.

.

.

Poor berries. Poor non-existent brownie pan, the only brownie pan I had. No fruit at the party. We did have pizza, though, and carrots and a pinata and cake and lots of arts and crafts.

Both Milo and Nora are in that last picture.

The pull string pinata was a hit (much easier than bashing). The kids had a good time today. Instead of having presents, we had everybody bring a toy for Toys for Tots. One kid did give Nora and Milo birthday cards that play songs when you open them. The kids love these cards. They've been playing with them all day.

Cute stuff: At school, the kids have been reading poetry with their teachers. They read Hector the Collector and Milo asked to hear it again. The poem describes a fellow who loves to collect small things. At the end of the poem, though, another character calls the collected stuff "junk." While listening, Milo's face changed to a deep frown. When asked if he had anything he would like to share about the poem, Milo said, "That's not nice to say it is junk. It's treasure. I like string and rocks and it's not junk!" Then another kid said, "I like rocks too!"

Nora told me that she wants a horse. (I thought it'd be a while before we'd be fielding pony requests for Christmas!) To make sure I knew what she was talking about, Nora explained, "A horse that I can ride on. And one for Milo to ride on too."

Wow

The kids are almost 4! They're turning 4 on Wednesday. Tomorrow they're having their first birthday party.

Wednesday happens to be our home day, but we're all going into school at snack time to share a snack and a story with their friends. Also, Jake's parents had told us that they're driving through town at that time and want to stop by on the kids' birthday. In fact, his mom refused to send a package because it was so important to her to be able to physically be here to give the kids their gift on their birthday. (His parents live in Florida but are driving up here for Christmas, passing through our town on the kids' birthday).

Except...now they aren't. There was just...something...that kept me from telling the kids that their grandparents were coming to see them on their birthday. The kids love Jake's parents and I knew they'd be super excited about it. But something made me hold off. And now I'm very, very glad I didn't say anything because his parents have decided that they're actually going to be coming through town during the day on Tuesday, when the kids are in school and Jake and I are at work, and they'll miss us all together. So no birthday visit after all.

I'm glad I listened to that instinct so that Milo & Nora don't have to be disappointed.

Listserve

We have a neighborhood listserve and here are the recurring themes that get people to post over and over again on the exact same topic:

1) Cats. People post to the neighborhood annoyed at their neighbors' cats being allowed to wander outside, crapping in their gardens, killing their songbirds, and menacing their animals. People will also implore cat owners to keep their cats inside for the sake of the cats' health and safety. Toxoplasmosis has been brought up. Some have threatened to turn the cats in to the human society. This is always a one-sided discussion because so far, nobody has ever posted defending their rights to let their cats out free. This might be because it's actually a rule in our town that cats are not supposed to roam free (but many do).

I am in support of trying to get people to keep their cats indoors, because those cats come around to our house and terrorize my own indoor cats. They come up to our doors and windows, and royally freak out my cats, who then sometimes fight with each other because they can't get at the trespasser cat right outside the window. Also, one neighborhood cat has routinely attacked small kids, including Milo when he was around two. He missed Milo's eye by about a centimeter. His owners have an "aw, shucks" approach to the situation and don't seem to think they're capable of keeping him inside. However, I've never written to the listserve about the cat problem because as far as I can tell, nobody has ever changed their behavior as a result of these emails.

2) Lights on the bike path. This is a discussion/debate that rears its head routinely. Those in favor occasionally propose a project in which the city installs lights on our very, very dark bike path. Then people who have houses along the bike path all object. Apparently a proposed project may be moving forward to install directional (down facing) lights on the path. There is a hearing next week. We've been getting lots of long, detailed, angry emails from people with houses on the bike path. My sense is that they are worried that their house values will decrease due to light pollution.

I'm in favor of lights on the bike path. It's pitch black on that path so I can't use it in the winter, because even leaving work as early as 5 p.m. means it's dark on the walk home. The bike path is by far the most direct route home but I don't feel safe walking in the blackness. A cyclist, even with a light, could easily miss me until it's too late and run me over.

3) Routine (like weekly) pleas for parents to hose the ice rink every night throughout the winter. We have an ice rink maintained by the neighborhood, which means parents have to spend a few hours each night hosing the rink, standing outside in the freezing cold. Jake has accepted that he'll need to sign up for some shifts this year now that our kids will be using the rink.

4) Complaints about random neighborhood noises. This mostly has to do with noises from the energy plant and overhead planes and helicopters. At one point it morphed into an all-out flame war over the ethics of using public university money to have military flyovers during football games. (Our neighborhood is very close to the stadium, so the flyovers are super loud.) This flame war then ended up getting reported in the local weekly paper!

The rest of the posts tend to be more innocuous, limited to requests for recommendations for good electricians / plumbers / carpenters / roofing guys / nannies / pet sitters, people giving away their stuff to the first taker (we got a trike that way), reports of local crime sprees (mostly car break ins), reports of lost or found pets, and offers to sell or trade tickets to football / hockey / basketball games or plays and shows. It's a great community resource, even though I could do without the occasional anti bike path light screed or cat complaint.

Naughty, not nice

What is going on with our kids? Today Milo had to go to the office to cool down because he was pushing Nora and other kids. WTF? Then tonight the kids took magnets and used them to mark up our walls and doors. Jake was furious and they thought it was all a big joke. What? What on earth is their deal?

Punishments (time outs, no story before bed, etc.) don't seem to matter much at all to them, much less have any effect. I swear Milo can hit Nora, get a time out, we can talk about not hitting and what he should do otherwise, he can even SAY stuff like "I'll just walk away" or "I'll tell her not to do that", and then literally 2 minutes later he'll just hit her again. And Nora's pretty much the same way.

Who knew you could get sent to the office in PRESCHOOL....

Cranky

Well, today was a great day with the kids, if great includes somebody slamming the door and crushing a part of our feline member of the household, spats, skirmishes, hitting, and time outs. The kids turn 4 in exactly 1 week. At that time I expect them to change overnight and stop acting like a couple of drunk psychopaths.

By the way, disturbing story. Last night the kids were talking about how they're going to be the bad guys at school and kill this other kid they apparently don't like. So I explained how that's not nice, and if they killed her, she would be gone forever, and everybody would be so sad, and her parents would miss her so much. They totally didn't give a shit. They still decided they would kill her (I think they pretend, as in, bad guys and good guys, at least I hope!). So then I explained about jail and how, if you kill somebody, you go to jail and you don't get to go home. It is only after contemplating the concept of jail that Nora decided that she would not, after all, kill this other child. Okaaaaaay.

Also, my department apparently has insane people in it. Thank goodness none of these people are in my sub area. But seriously, there are apparently years-old or decades-old turf wars and territorial skirmishes that has resulted in petty jealousies and irrational behavior, to the point that my sub-area was going to meet with a job candidate next week as a group, together, and now we are not allowed to and must meet with the candidate separately. So that we are not perceived as being too interested in this job candidate. Which makes total sense. Oh wait. It makes absolutely no sense. Sometimes I think that this is one of the dangers of tenure. There is nothing preventing you from becoming completely ridiculous and acting like a child.

Also, I have to work every night because I can't go into work on Sunday this weekend.

So what were the good things today? I cut the kids' hair and didn't mess anything up too badly. Also, dinner turned out well. We had dal, roasted squash with a yogurt mint sauce, and chickpeas with garlic, mint, and feta. The chickpeas were especially great.

IBTP

I know that I write about the same thing every year - people changing my name for me! It's like I'm a pitt bull who's got a hold of a rag and can't let go! Uh...maybe not. Maybe that was actually the lamest metaphor ever used. But back to the point, I'm not shedding tears of rage or anything like that, but this is a form of cultural weirdness that definitely fascinates me. I find it quite interesting to try to understand why seemingly normal people try to remove other people's identities in this way.

I have an aunt (my aunt, not Jake's) who does this. She addresses things to my first name and Jake's last name. This is soooooo weird. She knows that's not my name. It never has been. And it's not even like she's Jake's family member and therefore doesn't know what my last name is. So why does she do this? Or more interestingly, why do people in general do this shit to women?

'Cause last time I checked, people aren't doing this to men. To my knowledge, nobody has ever said to themselves, "Hmmm, I don't like Jake's name. I don't agree with his choice, so I'm just going to use a totally different one for him from now on." Oddly, that has never, ever happened. And yet it happens to me on every holiday! So what's up?

I think it's a pretty interesting form of internalized misogyny when women do this to other women. My aunt changed her name when she got married, which everybody did back in her day. I guess she thinks everybody should do that now. Therefore it's okay to...police my lack of doing so? WTF? It's just so nonsensical to me. Hey, I don't agree with your decision, therefore I will just make up a name that isn't yours, and use that for you, whether you like it or not! Your choice means nothing to me! Your identity is meaningless to me! What matters is what I think is right.

The other weird thing about it is that I can only assume that folks who do this care more about their own righteous feelings of being correct (or policing others) than they care about their actual relationship with me. Because you know what? If you keep doing this disrespectful shit over and over again, I pretty much don't want anything to do with you. A long time ago I made the tough decision to not stay in close contact with people who treat me like crap, even if those people happen to be family. And my life has been much, much happier and much less stressful as a result. So what has to happen for you to reach the point at which you'll think, hey, I'd rather make a point to Amy than actually, like, treat her respectfully? (Maybe they're sick of my bullshit, which, okay. Fair point. But this name thing is a really protracted, roundabout way to get rid of me. Just stop corresponding with me. That's easier.)

I Blame the Patriarchy, man.

One last thing. We all have our political opinions. I'm a big ole feminist, which means that I think all people should have dignity, autonomy, and respect regardless of stuff like race or national origin or sex. It also means I think we need to work hard to change the status quo, and I don't love it when people change their names when they get married. But you know what? I use their married names anyway. Whether I like it or not isn't the point. My opinion isn't the point. The point is that it's your name, not mine, and I don't have any right to re-label you as I see fit. So I call people what they wish to be called, because that's, like, just basic respect. (That just makes sense if you view who you're dealing with as an actual full-fledged person, and not just a member of the sex class.)

Knee Fail

I feel very frustrated/sad/angry about my knee. Today I went running on the treadmill at the gym instead of outside, because it was so cold. But the treadmill doesn't force me to use my calves as much, and a mere mile in my knee was starting to hurt.

It has been 8 years of trouble with my knee and various attempts to try to fix this intermittent but always there problem. I feel so bummed about this because it prevents me now from doing any serious distance training. I really feel like now I could run long distances and train for a marathon. My fitness is totally there. My muscles are there. My feet are there. But my stupid piece of crap knee will not cooperate. It's just such a drag.

It seems kind of hopeless, I guess. I don't know why I keep persisting over so many years of things never changing. Am I still going to be running and complaining about my knee in 20 years? Probably.

I Don't Know

Me: Nora, what do you want for Christmas?

Nora: Uh, I don't know. You just talk it over with Santa for me.

Milo, arranging two chairs together: Look at my car!

Me: Wow, what kind of car is it?

Milo: I don't know. I just got it at the old fashioned car store.

Grants and Pull Ups

Mentor and I are submitting another grant along with a collaborator at a different institution. We've mostly got a draft of it now. I've lost track of how many grants we've submitted together at this point. It's a lot (and we've had 2 big ones and 3 little ones funded over the years).

Meanwhile, coincidentally, I got a notice from NSF today about an overdue final report on an old grant I had as a co-PI with another PI from a different institution (I had a subcontract). That grant ended ages ago...for me. Turns out the PI has been milking the grant over the past 2 years through no-cost extensions and not sharing any of the money with me. I haven't seen a penny since 2009. (Even though up through this fall I've still been analyzing that data set, without compensation of course).

This has served as a strong reminder to be grateful for my kind and fair collaborators here at my current institution. People who do not not screw me over. People who get stuff done when they say they will. A collaborator who is fair and equitable about parceling out both the work and the rewards. Somebody who doesn't take credit for other people's ideas, and instead does everything possible promote the work of more junior colleagues. It's easy to take it for granted and forget that not everybody is like that.

Anyway, I really hope we get this grant. It's actually the most excited I've ever been about a project we've proposed together. I think it'd be a super awesome and very interesting project to do. But the grant funding situation is so crummy right now (5%), so it's probably not wise to get too excited over it. Fingers are crossed.

My other goal: Pull up! I am not there yet, but am getting closer. My gym coach got a band out that he ties to the pull-up bar and then I step into so that I do, basically, less-than-full-weight pull ups. I don't think it takes very many pounds off because it is still very, very hard. I can almost do it by myself, but not quite, so then my coach has to spot me just a little bit. However, I am doing all of this work after the crossfit class each time, when my arms and shoulders are already tired from the workout. My gym coach says, "You're going to get there in a few weeks." I don't know if it'll be that soon but hopefully in at least a couple of months I will get there! For some reason I have identified a pull-up as my own personal benchmark for becoming awesome. I think this is maybe because my friend Anne does pull ups and I want to emulate her awesomeness. (Hi Anne!)

What's Hard?

I asked the kids what's hard. Here are their answers.

Nora: Throwing a tire up is hard. But I can throw up a tire.

Milo: Glass is hard.

I Want A Vacation

Didn't I say something about taking a vacation after tenure? Right now I'm longing to spend January in a tropical location, like we did 6 years ago for our honeymoon. It's not in the cards right now, but maybe spring break, or next year...

Update

That was great! 5 miles and my lungs felt just like I was taking a walk. If only my knees could last as long as everything else. But it's amazing how much crossfit class has done for my running fitness...this class is the best thing I've ever done.

Just Do It

Feeling very, very happy about some really great much-deserved good news from a friend. Hooray!

Now, a reflection on running. I think that I never would have taken up running if I hadn't lived in San Diego for 4 years.

The thing about San Diego is that it is pretty much always awesome outside. It's, like, always 70 degrees and sunny. You wake up every day and you just long to be outside. You look out the window, open it up, and think, hmmm. Look at that blue sky. Feel that warm, ocean breeze. Hear the birds chirping. It's so nice out! Let's go out! Being there just draws you out, pretty much every single day of the year. So why not go running? In fact, you basically end up longing to be out running, because it's just so beautiful.

Here, now? Not so much. Because when it's 40 and drizzling, all day long, nothing about that pulls you outside. You look out the window and think, brrrr. It sure is wet. It sure is grey. What a nice day for curling up on the couch with a book and a blanket. I don't want to be out there.

All of that is to say, I'm about to go put on my clothes and go for a run, and yuck. Sure as heck don't feel like it. Here I go.

Hello, I Love You, Won't You Tell Me Your Name?

The weather is being kind to us right now, but of course any day it could turn and we'll see a blizzard or -10 degrees. The neighborhood has a running poll about when the park ice rink will be ready to go. Most people seem to think it'll happen sometime around the kids' birthday.

Soooo, that means, this year, ice skates! Around here people start their kids skating practically as soon as they can walk. We've had to wait until now because my kids have small feet, and decent skates only start at about a toddler size 8. Today, our neighbor gave us a pair of comfort skates for Milo to borrow for the season. They're just his size. She also told me where to go to find skates that will fit Nora. So we went there this morning, and Nora tried on a pair of comfort skates. Their smallest size is just a little big for Nora, but I think we'll be able to make it work with double socks and some growing over the season.

Skates are really much better now. Back when I did ice skating as a kid, there was no ankle support. Now, they make skates structured sort of like a ski boot, and they're much more comfortable. I bought a pair for Nora and also found a used pair for myself that are just like new. It'll be interesting to see how well they do skating. The kids wanted me to buy them hockey sticks, too, but I told them we'll have to wait until they learn how to skate properly before we start playing hockey!

We had a nice Thanksgiving with 4 crazy kids running around like a bunch of monkeys on crack. They kept each other busy. I started off the day with a 7K in my five-finger running slippers, and it went well. Should have gone for 10, but I needed to get back and get the turkey in the oven.

I've been home with the kids for the past 3 days and I have not done any work. Tenure is the gift that keeps on giving.

Thanksgiving

It was a nice day today. After playing outside for a while, both kids got too hot for their coats.

It's supposed to be 59 degrees tomorrow!

My 18-lb turkey is brining in a cooler on the back deck. We'll have 8 people here tomorrow, which is a nice doable number. Jake is currently making an apple pie. His crusts are terrific!

Jake has to work on Friday, but he is going in an hour late so that he can get up with the kids. What a nice guy.

Progress

Well, I got the opportunity to practice that comforting thing with Nora much sooner than I thought I would. Nora had a rough morning on Saturday, and by the time it was nap time she was pretty pissed off about things. So she went into this spiral of doom that sometimes happens before nap. She needs to either use the bathroom, or wear a pull-up because she cannot stay dry at nap otherwise. 99% of the time, she goes potty and doesn't wear a pull-up and all is fine. It's just that 1% when she freaks out, like she did on Saturday. She had a full bladder but was super upset, and refused to go to the bathroom and refused to go take a nap. This was actually the same issue that caused me to lose it way back in the summer.

This time, though, Jake was home so after 10 or 15 minutes of Nora screaming about how she wasn't going to do either, I transferred her over to Jake so that I could take a break for a couple of minutes. Then I brought up the timer and told her that she had 5 minutes to either use the potty or get off and put on a pull-up and go take her nap. After 5 minutes, Jake wrestled that pull-up onto her and you would have thought we were murdering the child, what with all of the screaming and thrashing on her part.

But as soon as that was done, I was able to swoop in, pick her up, and cuddle Nora in the rocker to help her feel better. And lo and behold, it worked! I rocked her and told her that it was okay, and that I understood how angry she was, and how she didn't want to wear the pull-up. She calmed down and told me she wanted me to rock her for longer, so I did, until she was very tired and using a soft whispering voice to match my own. I didn't put her down to bed until she was feeling better and calm, and once we reached that point she was ready to go down to nap without any fuss. She went to sleep easily and felt much better after her nap.

Of course I felt better too. Once you spend time calming down a child, you can't help but feel better much as they do. I was glad to handle it that way. It was easier to do because Jake was home, so we could trade off duties so that we could each take a break when we needed to.

I hope I can remember this tactic and remember to have more empathy for Nora when she is in the throes of the most difficult times. I know that her upset feelings are very real.

Milo has been dry at nap and through the night for quite a long time now. He wears underwear at night and (knock on wood) has never had an accident since I put him in underwear. Nora, however, still doesn't stay dry at night. She's also pretty resistant to going to the bathroom right before bed. Nora really hates the concept of pre-emptively going to the bathroom. In her mind, it only makes sense once she urgently needs to go. So she still isn't dry at night. But, then, Milo also potty trained for the day about half a year earlier than Nora did, and Nora eventually got there on her own without any problems. So I imagine it'll all work out at night too...just on her own schedule.

And, just to emphasize something Nora does well, I should mention that she sleeps through the night very well. Milo struggles with bad dreams every few nights, but this is a rare occurrence for Nora. Which is worth noting, given her early struggles with nighttime sleep. She's really come a long way.

Bullets of Friday

• I've been having this interesting conversation with my former advisee about gender and stuff, and what it would take to move beyond gender, and then coincidentally we watched an old Star Trek (TNG) episode from Season 5 about a species with no gender. Then Riker meets this individual who has a feeling and a sense that she is female, which is totally not accepted in her culture. And people like her are ostracized and ridiculed, and denied their rights to be who they are, and taken for psychological treatment to be cured of their sick ways, and meanwhile Riker has fallen in love with this person, and you think, wow, even back in the early '90s it totally wasn't okay yet to talk about gay issues except through this really ham-handed and protracted metaphor. (Pretty good episode, though.)
• Last night. Too hot! Augh! Covers off! Eventually drift off to sleep. Wake. Nora coughing! I'm worried! It goes on. I get up and put on her humidifier, hoping that'll help. Back to sleep. Up. Too hot! Back to sleep, eventually. Wake. Jake is breathing in my face! Augh! I'm awake forever. Finally fall back asleep. Wake -- Milo comes into our room, crying. He had a bad dream! There was a monster in his bed! Jake lets him into our bed. Cute, and it's sweet to see him sleeping cuddled up to his daddy, in his little footie pajamas, but then the kid snores. He has a really stuffed up nose and it is seriously not possible for any human to snore any louder than this kid is snoring, in my ear, at 5:30 a.m. I give up.
• I house my grant through this research center. The director of the research center decides we will have a poster fair and each PI must submit at least 1 poster. Um, please. If I had a poster lying around, that'd be one thing, but I don't because I don't like to do posters (it's just my weird thing), and I'm sure as hell not going to make a poster for this. Even though the director thinks he can mandate it from each PI. This is what tenure looks like! (I say to mentor, "good luck trying to force me." He says, "We've all learned better by now!")
• Best project meeting EVER today. My grad students are awesome. One of them is running a teaching experiment right now. It is her first time and she's doing a great job. And then we started talking about a kind of random side note, but eventually figure out, oh holy shit, it's not a side note at all, it's like this super critical thing about how this context I've used in TEs since 2007 actually could be used for the general case, and I never realized it until now. It's really weird to say that, because it's kind of insane that I never thought about it before, and as soon as I started working it out I realized right away that it could work, and why it would work, and why had I never bothered to think about this in the past 4 years? WTF, me? We end our meeting to go to a seminar and my grad student posts on G+, "Project meeting: MIND BLOWN."
• The kids are very interested in the Jack and the Beanstalk story these days. We got a book out of the library called Kate and the Beanstalk, and I think it's got all of the basic elements. (Goose that lays golden eggs, money bag, self-playing harp, giant). I never thought about how trippy these fairy tales are. Like the giant says, "Fi FIE FO FUM, I SMELL THE BLOOD OF AN ENGLISHWOMAN. BE SHE ALIVE OR BE SHE DEAD, I'LL CRUSH HER BONES TO MAKE MY BREAD." Kind of grisly stuff, but this doesn't seem to bother the kids one bit.

Not Smart Enough Yet

Remember way back in July Nora and I had that rough time in which I ended up yelling at her? So I've been working on how I deal with Nora ever since then. Since that terrible day, she has had a few rough patches but nothing as bad or as protracted as that day. A huge part of that has been my behavior, of course; when Nora starts to go into a frame of mind in which she's latched onto something and is very angry for a very long time, I've been practicing staying unemotional and disengaged from it. That has helped her let go. I am happy that I haven't yelled at Nora since that day in July.

This morning was definitely the worst time we've had since that day. It was 22 degrees out, and Nora wanted to wear a short-sleeved shirt and no socks. She hates socks. She hates long-sleeved shirts, and she hates sweaters. She tells me that long-sleeved shirts bother her hands. This is hard for her, since winter is coming. (She says, "I wish it were summer again.") I made her wear a long-sleeved shirt, which annoyed her right off the bat, and then she was unhappy about everything after that. She didn't come downstairs when I told her to (defiantly yelling "NO!"). She didn't want to put on her winter coat. She was pissed that I made her put on socks. Pretty much everything was pissing her off at that point, so she was yelling and grousing constantly in the way that she does when she gets into that kind of mood.

I was angry too, but not yelling at her, but I let Milo get into the car first since he was behaving well. This incensed her, and she was screaming at me the whole time I was strapping Milo in, and then when it was time for her to get into her carseat, she refused. So I had to pick her up and physically put her into her carseat, and she's screaming and fighting me like a banshee the whole time. Like a cat who doesn't want to go in the carrier. I didn't yell at her or react. I drove them to school. She's yelling at me the whole way there. She's demanding that I let her out of the car. The thing that is challenging about times like this is that Nora doesn't know how to stop for a second and just breathe. She has to complain and yell the whole time, and her brain races to find random things to demand so she can meet that need. Like, let me out here! Park the car here, in the street! I don't want to go into the parking lot! I don't want to get out of the car! I don't want to go into the school! Put me back into the car! Auuuughhhh!

So I'm a robot the whole time, and get them into the school, get her coat off (after much protesting and refusing to cooperate), get her hat off, and the whole time in the hallway she is yelling about how she doesn't want to go into the classroom, and PUT HER BACK INTO THE CAR, and I'm basically just not reacting. Then I make her go into the classroom, half carrying her, and I deposit her into the arms of her teacher and say, "Here. Take her." Then I say "Goodbye" and leave immediately as Nora starts thrashing and crying. I felt like I needed to leave immediately because I could not take one more second of being with Nora or I was going to lose my temper and yell at her.

So...I didn't get emotional, and I didn't yell at Nora.

So why do I feel so bad?

As I drove home, I realized all the things I could have done to help Nora, that I didn't think to do because I was so clouded by my anger and frustration. What I should have done, once Milo was happily in the classroom and Nora was still freaking out in the hallway, was sit with her. I should have sat down and put her into my lap and held her and comforted her. I should have talked to her about how angry she was, and how it was such a rough morning. But I didn't do any of those things, because I was so pissed off. I should have remembered that she is three, and this is what three-year olds do sometimes. And the times when I am the angriest are probably precisely the times when she most needs some comforting and hugging.

So, I feel like it was another parenting fail. I only realized after the fact, when I was no longer in the moment with all that screaming and grousing, the right thing to do. So hopefully reflecting on it now will help me remember this the next time, and hopefully I can take the time to give her some comfort next time when she needs it.

Our Day

Different Strokes

Cute kid moment of the day: Milo was playing downstairs in the living room when Nora came stomping down the stairs. As she came into the room, Milo said, "I love you so much Nora." Awwww.

In the midst of this crazy you-can't-sign-a-petition thing going on at Jake's work is a hard lesson for me, which is, I cannot try to make Jake be me. He is not going to sign a recall petition, and he is not going to leak the memo to anyone. He is afraid of harm to his job; a job he doesn't exactly love, and wouldn't necessarily mind leaving for something else.

Jake is cautious and reserved. He is easygoing, gentle, humorous, and easy to live with. He doesn't seek out a fight. He doesn't find it easy to stand up for himself, so that's something he pretty much doesn't do, ever. (That sentence right there neatly sums up his entire relationship with his entire family.)

We are very different. I am opinionated, passionate, and outspoken. I get worked up easily over issues of injustice. I am courageous, but I can also be hot headed and impulsive. Jake is none of those things.

So of course, if it were me, I would not obey an order to not sign a petition. I would also directly speak against it to my boss, and I would make the memo public. I'd probably all-too-easily risk job loss over something like this. Jake exists at the other end of the spectrum, and there is probably a happy medium somewhere in between us.

This past summer we were up north and a weird, cranky old man started yelling at us for walking down his private street when we were on a walk. He wouldn't let it go, and he was being unreasonable, and it was dragging on. (By the time he started yelling at us, we were no longer on his private street; we hadn't realized it was private, it just looked like any other street.) I started arguing back with him, and the more unreasonable he got, the more aggressive I got. Meanwhile, Jake got more and more conciliatory. I think our basic natures are such that I am a "stand up and fight" kind of person, and he is a "do whatever it takes to keep the peace" kind of person. I am fight, he is flight. It is probably good that he is not like me in that regard, or we'd never have any peace.

So, I am pretty pissed off about this memo forbidding employees to participate in their constitutionally-guaranteed right to petition, but like it or not, it's not my fight.

Outraged

Today marked the day that we begin gathering signatures to trigger a recall election of our amoral, unethical, harmful disaster of a Governor.

Today is also the day that Jake's boss, the State Auditor, told him and everybody else that they are not allowed to sign a recall petition. Jake is a state employee, and their justification is that this branch of the state is supposed to be non-partison.

How exactly is preventing your employees from signing a recall petition to oust the Governor non-partisan, again?

Research and Resistance

So over the past couple of years there have been some meta-analyses looking at all of the peer-reviewed research on brain differences between male and female babies and children. Some of this ends up on my radar because some colleagues and I published an article in Science a few years ago about a topic somewhat related to this, and so they mention that paper and we get connected to the conversation.

Anyway, the meta-analyses show a very clear set of results from the peer-reviewed research: for young children, there is surprisingly little evidence for any brain differences between boys and girls. In fact, there is a compelling lack of evidence for all kinds of things: no evidence that young girls and boys learn differently, for instance. No evidence that girls are inherently better at reading and English and boys are inherently better at math and science. No evidence that boy babies are more focused on objects and girl babies are more focused on people. The evidence for the popular assumptions about sex-based differences just isn't there.

This is in clear contrast to the set of popular books (not based on science) that receive a lot of positive and uncritical attention from the media. These books suggests that girls learn one way and boys learn another, they suggest that schools are failing boys, there is a boy problem, boys are in trouble, men are from mars and women are from venus, etc., etc. People are eager to buy into biological sex-based differences, and this is the dominant set of assumptions guiding our conversations today.

I had an interesting experience in which I put the statement on Facebook about peer-reviewed research failing to show sex-based brain differences in children. As I anticipated, there has been something of a response from people expressing disbelief about this. Some folks say things like, "But my daughter and my son are so different."

I find it interesting that people I talk to are, in general, very very resistant to the notion that the differences you find with boys and girls are not attributed to biology. I think there are a couple of reasons for this.

For one thing, if you have a boy and a girl, and they are different in somewhat stereotypical ways (boys like to play with boy toys, girls like to play with girl toys, etc.), then you don't want to believe that you yourself are somehow responsible for this. In fact, you probably don't even want to believe it's preventable. If it's just biology, then there's nothing we can do about it. Some parents might even say, "We're not doing anything to encourage this. This is just how they are. Boys and girls are just different." It reminds me of Larry Summers' description of how he gave his girls trucks, and they played with those trucks as if they were dolls. See? Girls just play differently! (As if the anecdote were evidence of some sort.)

This argument doesn't take into account all of the ways in which kids are socialized by the broader culture. The only ways in which one could argue that boys and girls act differently and know that it's not due to socialization is if all of these factors are in place:

-- The kids are too young to be influenced by outside friends, or by other kids at preschool or daycare, etc.

-- There is no television in the house, no advertising, no commercials, no popular magazines with ads, no videos.

-- All of the books in the house are totally gender neutral. So there are just as many truck characters that are girls as boys, and just as many mommies in the books go to work as the daddies, and just as many daddies in the books change diapers as the mommies.

-- The roles played by mom and dad in the house aren't gender stereotyped. So mom works just as much as dad, and mom's career is as important as dad's. Dad does as much cooking, cleaning, and baby caring as mom does. Mom does just as much yard work and fixing of things as dad does.

And so forth. I highly doubt Larry Summers' house was like that. (To be fair, he did later come back and admit that his statements had been inaccurate.) Even if parents aren't *explicitly* encouraging different ways of behaving, we model it all the time. I'm not making an argument that having gender-stereotyped roles in a family is necessarily wrong, I'm simply arguing that if those roles exist, we can't assume they don't influence the kids in those families. We also exist in a larger cultural context that very young children pick up on. Children learn in a myriad of ways about who they are, how they belong, and what they should be doing.

I think another reason for this resistance to accepting a lack of hard-wired sex differences in children is that if we accept it, then we have to then face many more uncomfortable implications. Boys and girls do act differently. Men and women do play different roles in our society, as evidenced by the small percentage of women at the very top of the STEM fields, the small percentage of women who represent us in our political system, and the small percentage of women who are CEOs and presidents of companies. If this isn't hard wired, if men aren't somehow biologically better at object manipulation and therefore mathematics, for instance, then what does this say about the fairness of our culture? It challenges the myth of meritocracy, a myth that most Americans hold dear.

So, I've found that you'll get all kinds of resistance (from women as much as men, which makes sense to me) to the suggestion that boys' brains are no different from girls' brains. Maybe we should be taking a harder look at how we treat all of our children.

Settling In

Who knew that getting tenure is practically like having a birthday? I have gotten a number of sweet and wonderful tenure presents!

-- Flowers from a dear colleague

-- A surprise party thanks to my awesome grad students and colleagues

-- A wikipedia page (!?!?)

-- A bottle of champagne from our retired professor neighbor and his wife

-- A beautiful scarf from a long-distance friend who used to be a professor in our department

-- A subway card from a former doctoral student of ours, who graduated a couple of years ago (and she wasn't even my advisee!)

How cute is that? And, of course, my present to myself was an iPhone. I also got an iPhone for Jake as his tenure present from me (if anybody deserves a tenure present, it's Jake).

This weekend Jake and I had a party to go to on Friday and so we decided to make the most out of our babysitter and go have dinner ahead of time. When I first moved here, 7 and a half years ago, the neighborhood main street about a 10-minute walk from my house only had a few interesting options. There were a couple of coffee shops, one great restaurant we both loved, a semi-okay Mexican restaurant, a lousy Italian restaurant, and one kind of low-class townie bar. So the eating wasn't great, and if you wanted to take a stroll to get a late-night drink, the townie bar was the only option.

(Or, I guess, we could get in the car and drive 3 miles to downtown. But who wants to do that all the time?)

But this street has received more and more attention over the years, and has become more of a hot spot thanks in part to Trader Joe's moving in. Before, it used to be a place with some obscure tile art shops and maybe an antique shop or two, but nothing fabulous. Now there are a number of great clothes shops, but even better the dining and bar scene has gotten great. (For the midwest). All of the original restaurants are still there except the lousy Italian place, which has turned into an awesome bistro and wine bar. There is also a second great bistro and microbrew bar, a cafe and wine shop, a new upscale Irish pub/restaurant, a wood-fired pizza place, and an Indian restaurant. The only national brand commercial enterprise is Trader Joe's. All of the other bars and restaurants are local, and they're all very good.

Our town seems to be getting better and better, aside from the whole political disaster thing, which isn't minor, but on a small and local scale we've got pretty much everything we need. Really, we should probably just stay forever.

"Sick" Day

I just spent the whole day at home with Milo, who was apparently sick. But it turns out he wasn't really sick, so he was just his normal self.

I can't tell you how nice it was to not moderate any fights. On his own, Milo is an incredibly easy kid. He's cheerful, easygoing, independent, and happy to play on the floor with his trains and trucks. The most he asked of me all day was to read him some books. When it was nap time, he happily skipped into bed.

Piece. Of. Cake.

Is this what life with one kid is like...a house that is not filled with angry screams all day long? Wild.

Pajamas

Me: Put on your pajamas Nora.

Nora: I'm going to pick out the potty book tonight! I want to read that one tonight!

Me: Put on your pajamas Nora.

Nora: Mommy when is the moon going to get full?

Me: Put on your pajamas Nora.

Nora: Milo, if you're not stuck there hold out your hand! Hold out your hand Milo!

Me: Put on your pajamas Nora.

Nora: When is it going to be winter? When is the snow going to come down and not melt and then we'll have to shovel it?

Milo: NORA PUT ON YOUR FLIPPIN' PAJAMAS.

Well, we're caving to this whole birthday party madness!

The kids have been to about 5 birthday parties in the past month or two. We have been to the Little Gym and Pump it Up a lot. Another classmate's mom told me that she was trying to find something for her daughter's birthday next month that's not the Little Gym or Pump it Up, and they're going to do an art studio birthday party.

Anyway, the kids are super into the whole birthday thing this year, and they really want to have a big party where they invite everybody in their class. Plus the 4 neighbor kids they like, plus another classmate's sister...we're talking like 20 kids now plus parents. Not going to work for our house! (Oh for a summer birthday...) So suddenly Jake got all worried about their birthday and what we're going to do, and he was researching kids' birthday party options in our town, which is, like, I think the first time ever that Jake has done anything like that. And now we have scheduled a birthday party at the children's museum.

I feel like we have become those people.

On the other hand...at least they share a birthday, so we only have to deal with this once a year! (For now). Once kids hit elementary school, they don't invite every kid in the class to their birthday party, right? ...Right?

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Yesterday at the start of our gym class we were stretching with these giant heavy bars that we put on our shoulders, and our gym teacher said "Dang, you've got some muscles on you, don't you." I looked around. "Are you talking to me?" "Yeah, girl!" Ha. I am getting stronger! (Still no dead hang pull up, though).

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It is snowing right now. Nov. 9 seems a little early for this nonsense if you ask me. At least it's not sticking...yet...

Fall Back

I'm looking forward to when the kids can play more games and know what they're doing. Nora is really into War now (the card game), and man is that a boring game. And of course she wants to play it about 800 times in a row.

Today we went to a birthday party at one of those bouncy places where all the kids jump around in giant bouncy castles, go down giant bouncy slides, etc. Everything is filled with air. While we were there, standing around for an hour watching our kids all have a blast, I came up with a great business idea. People should combine the kid bouncy party idea with a bar for the parents. Make the bar be behind a giant one-way mirror. Then parents can sip their martinis in the quiet bar while observing their kids bounce in the other room. For those morning parties, make it a coffee shop.

I am writing a journal article again, after a long hiatus this year. Feels good.

New Goal

Now that I've got tenure, I need a new goal, and that goal is to do a pull up from a dead hang.

(A small goal feels good).

So my upper body strength is shit! My legs are strong, probably from running, and my core abdominal muscles are decent, but my arms and chest and especially my shoulders are super weak. A lot of this is related to gender. We women do fine in class with the leg stuff, and when it comes to planks and other core strength stuff I find it easier than the guys, but as soon as I have to use my shoulders to heft something over my head, forget about it. It's not pretty!

Anyway, I like my gym teacher because when I said that I wanted to get strong enough to do that kind of a pull up, he just accepted that immediately as a reasonable goal. He showed me how to start at a flexed arm hang and then slowly lower myself down, the slower the better, and do 5 reps of that every time after class to build strength. Hopefully this is a goal I can achieve sometimes in 2012.

I really like focusing on strength and fitness instead of other stuff, like weight. Maybe because it seems way more doable. I mean, it's kind of a pain in the ass when it's 5:00 and I don't feel like doing it after a long day at work, but I'm always glad I did.

Skills and Candy

Milo: Did you know Mommy has two M's in her name?

So today I wrote some words with the kids on the magnadoodle. I wrote CAT, which they can recognize, then I wrote FAT, and showed them how you replace the C with the F and it still rhymes. Then I wrote SAT, and asked the kids what sound an S makes. Nora said, "Sssss....sat!" I see that as the first word that Nora actually read, as in decoded, instead of, say, recognizing a word as a whole object.

Maybe it is time to start teaching the kids to read a little.

Then Milo decided to practice his writing, and it turns out he can write his name! Way to go, Milo. I know they've been doing some of that at school. I took this picture and sent it to Jake.

Halloween candy. There is a prevailing wisdom that it's okay to let kids self regulate with the candy. I let them eat as much as they wanted on Halloween, which was a fair amount. Nora ate an entire full-sized Snickers bar WHILE she was trick-or-treating. But from here on out, I'm putting down a limit. They're totally not regulating their candy intake. Blech.

Reviewing

I have been doing a crapload of reviewing lately. This is okay, since I took a little hiatus from reviewing during my busiest tenure push, so I feel good about giving extra back now. But I've started to notice some weird things about reviewing in such a small field.

One, if the manuscript is lousy then it's not a given that I know who the author is. Often the author might be a new graduate or even a grad student or something like that. But if the manuscript is very good, these days I can almost always tell who the author is, even though it's supposed to be blinded. Our field is just too small. I tend to get asked to review in areas about which I know a lot, so I've published in those areas and I've read the literature. If somebody is writing in one of those areas, I can recognize the work. I know it'll be one of two or three people who has done work like that. As soon as the manuscript begins to include blinded cites (Author, 2010; Author, 2008) then I say, oh, I know that so-and-so published that 2008 paper about that topic.

Anyway, I guess what I'm saying is that our field is really too small for genuinely blind reviews, half the time. I reveal my likely knowledge of the author less and less these days. I resolve that by not trying to specifically pin down the author. I might have a strong suspicion about who it is, but in most cases I can reasonably say that I'm not 100% sure. If I don't have any close relationship with the likely author, I can be objective. Occasionally I'll run across something in which I know without any doubt who the author is, definitively. (For instance, if somebody doesn't blind something well enough, and refers to a specific study about a specific student's reasoning, and I'll recognize the student's pseudonym). In those cases, I reveal my knowledge to the editor and let them to decide whether I should continue the review.

I'm reviewing a very good manuscript right now. You can tell it's great when you find yourself wishing you had written it!

I recently reviewed a very poor manuscript. I got extra pissed off when the author(s) discussed a recently-published study of mine in a way that revealed that not only had they not read the paper, they hadn't even read the abstract. They mis-characterized the paper so grossly that reading 2 sentences into the abstract would have revealed their error. That's just incredibly sloppy. You shouldn't discuss papers in your lit review that you have obviously never read.

I've begun to notice that often I can tell pretty quickly into a read whether the manuscript should be accepted or rejected. If the intro and lit review is crappy, then there's little chance the study will be well-constructed enough to merit acceptance. In contrast, a very well-written intro tends to reveal a carefulness of thought that is often associated with a well-designed study. However, occasionally I end up changing my mind by the end of the manuscript, so it's best to keep an open mind throughout.