He loves this toy! Good thing, because Blake spent lots of time putting it together...
It's so fun to be at this stage, where Isaac is laughing more and more. So cute!
Thursday, November 13, 2008
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
About my boys
Blake was published! He spent three years as an undergraduate/graduate student in a lab at the U and the research he did contributed to a paper in Nature magazine.
Life is not fair. I also sent in my graduate research to be published, now fully two years ago. It was rejected by one of the reviewers and given ten thousand comments by the other reviewer. I spent hours fixing up my paper with the help of my advisor and now it is under review again. It has been such a pain. And Blake didn’t have to do anything and now his paper is all pretty in a journal! OK, so actually I only spent one summer on my research and a couple months writing, so Blake collectively took more time on his. And between the two of us, I’d rather he was published. I don’t need to write a resume to our kids and list my publications in the Journal of Geotechnical Engineering so that they will hire me as their mom. But Blake’s publication will help for residency, etc. So fine. But I still wish my paper was published!
Blake also did research this summer and he just displayed a poster at the medical school. Isaac and I went to see it.
Isaac fell asleep on the way home.
Halloween was fun. Isaac was a dragon. It is hard to make costumes! I don’t know how people do it--this just about did me in. I don’t even know how many hours I wasted on it. My machine kept going crazy and I kept making mistakes. So I never actually finished it—notice the unfinished sleeves. But it was fun to dress Isaac up and go to our church’s trunk or treat. Isaac fell asleep right after we got there because it started at 6 PM, just about his bedtime. I guess he didn’t want any candy...
Life is not fair. I also sent in my graduate research to be published, now fully two years ago. It was rejected by one of the reviewers and given ten thousand comments by the other reviewer. I spent hours fixing up my paper with the help of my advisor and now it is under review again. It has been such a pain. And Blake didn’t have to do anything and now his paper is all pretty in a journal! OK, so actually I only spent one summer on my research and a couple months writing, so Blake collectively took more time on his. And between the two of us, I’d rather he was published. I don’t need to write a resume to our kids and list my publications in the Journal of Geotechnical Engineering so that they will hire me as their mom. But Blake’s publication will help for residency, etc. So fine. But I still wish my paper was published!
Blake also did research this summer and he just displayed a poster at the medical school. Isaac and I went to see it.
Isaac fell asleep on the way home.
Halloween was fun. Isaac was a dragon. It is hard to make costumes! I don’t know how people do it--this just about did me in. I don’t even know how many hours I wasted on it. My machine kept going crazy and I kept making mistakes. So I never actually finished it—notice the unfinished sleeves. But it was fun to dress Isaac up and go to our church’s trunk or treat. Isaac fell asleep right after we got there because it started at 6 PM, just about his bedtime. I guess he didn’t want any candy...
Saturday, October 25, 2008
Apartment
We love our new apartment. It was the cheapest two bedroom around. And it is way nice, especially compared to what we have been used to. But we are renting from an individual condo owner, and I don’t think the place has been really cleaned in years. I have been going at it, little by little, washing walls and cleaning blinds and washing the cabinets. I will be so happy when we finally settle down into our own house and I will not have to clean anyone’s filth but my own family’s. I always wanted to fix up a house but now I’m rooting for brand new. Anyway, I was cleaning a deep kitchen cabinet and found a receipt for 1992! Scary.
Our neighbors, for the most part, are very quiet. But last week someone buzzed us three times at 3:30 AM. Blake finally went to the door. It was some drunk girl trying to get in to our neighbors. They weren’t home so she buzzed us. That would be a logical step if it were 7 PM. Blake yelled at her that she was going to wake up our baby. (The buzzer is really loud.) She said that Blake didn’t need to be so rude and wasn’t he going to let her in? He said no and knocked on our neighbor’s door. No one was there. 5 minutes later we heard him get home and open his door to let in a whole party of people! At 3:30 AM! We didn’t care—we couldn’t hear them in the apartment, but we wish our neighbors had friends smart/sober enough to realize it’s not exactly kosher to buzz a random person in the wee hours of the morning.
Our neighbors, for the most part, are very quiet. But last week someone buzzed us three times at 3:30 AM. Blake finally went to the door. It was some drunk girl trying to get in to our neighbors. They weren’t home so she buzzed us. That would be a logical step if it were 7 PM. Blake yelled at her that she was going to wake up our baby. (The buzzer is really loud.) She said that Blake didn’t need to be so rude and wasn’t he going to let her in? He said no and knocked on our neighbor’s door. No one was there. 5 minutes later we heard him get home and open his door to let in a whole party of people! At 3:30 AM! We didn’t care—we couldn’t hear them in the apartment, but we wish our neighbors had friends smart/sober enough to realize it’s not exactly kosher to buzz a random person in the wee hours of the morning.
Isaac got an early Christmas present from Grandma Karen and Grandpa Kent. He loves it already! The first time we put him in it, he played/looked at each toy, one by one, moving himself around the circle, until he had gone around three times. It’s amazing to me he can do that already.
Isaac also loves to see how many fingers he can fit in his mouth...
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
4 Months
Isaac is the spitting image of his dad. The following picture is one of Blake that Blake’s mom sent us. Crazy. Although I think Isaac is not quite as chunky. We went to the doctor last week for the four-month visit and Isaac dropped from 90 percentile in weight to only 75th! Congrats to 15 lb 10 oz, 24.5 in. Sir Isaac. I will celebrate by eating a cookie.
Wednesday, October 8, 2008
Google Picasa
Wow, coolest program ever! I made the above collage from it. I know it’s not very fancy and you can do much more things with digital scrapbooking, but it doesn’t get much easier than Picasa collages. I am addicted to editing our pictures now. I look so much better airbrushed! Just think, I was going to ask for a new camera for Christmas, but now I am just as happy because my pictures look cool with all the gadgets. Favorites: sharpen, warmify, glow, retouch. OK, sharpen isn’t saving right now, but I’m sure those google engineers will get it working soon. What can you do, it’s the beta version.
Isaac is doing so much better sleeping. He is definitely outgrowing his colic or fussiness or acid reflux, whatever you want to call it. He goes to bed at 6:30ish and sleeps until at least midnight, but usually later. Once he slept until 5 AM! After that he’s eating and sleeping until 8 AM. Life is good. Last week, I was even able to start putting him down during the day for naps. It was getting really exhausting holding him all day and having him insist to be held during his naps. He doesn’t always let me put him down, but at least once or twice during the day I get a break. And then I’m really productive and do things like edit pictures or read novels like the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency, which was really good.
We just got new insurance, and they are stinky about pre-existing conditions, so they won’t pay for Isaac’s reflux medicine. But we think he is outgrowing it anyway, so we are going to see how he does with tapering off the meds. Wish us luck!
Isaac is doing so much better sleeping. He is definitely outgrowing his colic or fussiness or acid reflux, whatever you want to call it. He goes to bed at 6:30ish and sleeps until at least midnight, but usually later. Once he slept until 5 AM! After that he’s eating and sleeping until 8 AM. Life is good. Last week, I was even able to start putting him down during the day for naps. It was getting really exhausting holding him all day and having him insist to be held during his naps. He doesn’t always let me put him down, but at least once or twice during the day I get a break. And then I’m really productive and do things like edit pictures or read novels like the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency, which was really good.
We just got new insurance, and they are stinky about pre-existing conditions, so they won’t pay for Isaac’s reflux medicine. But we think he is outgrowing it anyway, so we are going to see how he does with tapering off the meds. Wish us luck!
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Grocery Shopping
When I first moved to St. Louis, I quickly decided that I was not going grocery shopping by myself. Once, on the way home from work, I was trying to be efficient so I went to Aldi’s—a totally St. Louis place to grocery shop. It is German minimalist so it is a tiny store with only one brand of everything. It is the cheapest place to buy food (I think) so naturally, it attracts ME (student budget) and a not-so-upstanding other population of the city. Oh, and you have to release your grocery cart with a quarter, which you get back if you return your grocery cart. Awesome, I love it. Anyway, you can only pay in cash or by debit card, so I paid by cash and I forgot to zip back up my change purse because I had to pay those pennies (I am so my mom) and all of my change dropped on the floor. The cashier was really nice and jumped down to help me. The man behind me also stooped down and kept what he picked up. Thus, I decided that he could keep the 35 cents or whatever, but I was not going grocery shopping alone because it just creeped me out.
But now that I am a stay-at-home mom, I feel bad making Blake go grocery shopping with me. “Hi, Blake, I’m glad you’re home from school. I haven’t done anything productive today except to feed and hold/bounce your son.” So I went to the store by myself. This time, though, I was at Shop N Save instead of Aldi’s, which attracts a slightly nicer crowd. What a workout! I held Isaac in one arm and pushed the grocery cart with the other. It got quite heavy too, because we are trying to build up our food storage again now that we know we aren’t moving for another three years. And it was buy $50, get $10 off day. I love that! St. Louis does have pretty good grocery stores. When I got to the checkout, I started to one-handedly put all of my stuff on the conveyer thingey (is there a name for that?) and a lady pulled up behind me and started helping me! Such a small thing but it absolutely made my day. Made my week. Made my whole grocery shopping experiences in St. Louis that much better. So thanks to the nice Shop N Save patron.
I have a great husband. Whenever I complain, he does something about it. Usually. So I complained that we never go on dates anymore and this weekend he took me on one! Isaac tagged along, but he made it more fun. We picnicked in Forest Park and went to the zoo. I guess Isaac had to come along or we would have looked a little silly at the zoo by ourselves. Not that it probably looked all that better with Isaac sleeping in the front pack or chewing on the front pack with his head down, totally oblivious to all time and place.
Isaac has decided that he likes his baths! This is a huge relief to me because he has screamed through every single one since he was born. Needless to say, I only bathed him once a week (maybe once every 10 days...). But now we are bathing him every other day because he has discovered that as much fun as it is to kick the bed, it is much more fun to kick water! I took a video but you can’t see his legs because I couldn’t bear to bare all.
But now that I am a stay-at-home mom, I feel bad making Blake go grocery shopping with me. “Hi, Blake, I’m glad you’re home from school. I haven’t done anything productive today except to feed and hold/bounce your son.” So I went to the store by myself. This time, though, I was at Shop N Save instead of Aldi’s, which attracts a slightly nicer crowd. What a workout! I held Isaac in one arm and pushed the grocery cart with the other. It got quite heavy too, because we are trying to build up our food storage again now that we know we aren’t moving for another three years. And it was buy $50, get $10 off day. I love that! St. Louis does have pretty good grocery stores. When I got to the checkout, I started to one-handedly put all of my stuff on the conveyer thingey (is there a name for that?) and a lady pulled up behind me and started helping me! Such a small thing but it absolutely made my day. Made my week. Made my whole grocery shopping experiences in St. Louis that much better. So thanks to the nice Shop N Save patron.
I have a great husband. Whenever I complain, he does something about it. Usually. So I complained that we never go on dates anymore and this weekend he took me on one! Isaac tagged along, but he made it more fun. We picnicked in Forest Park and went to the zoo. I guess Isaac had to come along or we would have looked a little silly at the zoo by ourselves. Not that it probably looked all that better with Isaac sleeping in the front pack or chewing on the front pack with his head down, totally oblivious to all time and place.
Isaac has decided that he likes his baths! This is a huge relief to me because he has screamed through every single one since he was born. Needless to say, I only bathed him once a week (maybe once every 10 days...). But now we are bathing him every other day because he has discovered that as much fun as it is to kick the bed, it is much more fun to kick water! I took a video but you can’t see his legs because I couldn’t bear to bare all.
Friday, September 12, 2008
Families are forever
When Blake and I moved to St. Louis, we quickly realized that when people say Utah drivers are bad, they have no idea what they are talking about. St. Louis drivers are terrible! They turn left from the straight lane if the left turn lane line is too long. There are exits on the left on the freeway so that is an excuse for slow drivers to sit in the left lane. They are the slowest mergers: either they expect everyone to make way for them, or the slow down if a car is approaching when everyone knows you’re supposed to accelerate when you are merging on a freeway. They don’t get in the intersection to turn left if there is a yield on green sign and if the light turns yellow, they won’t make the left. If they can cut in front of you, they will. And they coast through stop signs.
Not that that is peculiar to St. Louis, or that it has particularly bugged me before. I think we all laugh on Clueless when Dion says, “Hello, there was a stop sign back there...” and Cher answers, “What, I totally paused!” because we all do it. But last Sunday, Blake, Isaac, and I went for a walk. We were crossing the street at a stop sign and a woman approached in a car while we were already in the intersection. She coasted through and started speeding up right as she was hitting us. Blake and I both had to jump out of the way. The car touched both of us but not hard enough to bruise us. We are so lucky that we weren’t knocked down, especially since Blake was wearing Isaac in the front pack. I am glad, though, that I insisted that Blake wear the front pack because what if Blake had dropped Isaac?
Anyway, an experience like that makes you realize what is important in life. We both were just concerned about Isaac. As I cried on and off Sunday night, I thought about how grateful I am for the knowledge that families are eternal. I know that if anything happened, I would see my little boy or husband or sister or mother in heaven.
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Not that that is peculiar to St. Louis, or that it has particularly bugged me before. I think we all laugh on Clueless when Dion says, “Hello, there was a stop sign back there...” and Cher answers, “What, I totally paused!” because we all do it. But last Sunday, Blake, Isaac, and I went for a walk. We were crossing the street at a stop sign and a woman approached in a car while we were already in the intersection. She coasted through and started speeding up right as she was hitting us. Blake and I both had to jump out of the way. The car touched both of us but not hard enough to bruise us. We are so lucky that we weren’t knocked down, especially since Blake was wearing Isaac in the front pack. I am glad, though, that I insisted that Blake wear the front pack because what if Blake had dropped Isaac?
Anyway, an experience like that makes you realize what is important in life. We both were just concerned about Isaac. As I cried on and off Sunday night, I thought about how grateful I am for the knowledge that families are eternal. I know that if anything happened, I would see my little boy or husband or sister or mother in heaven.
Anyway, to lighten it up, here is a stick figure dramitization.
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