the sometimes senseless ravings (and the occassional rant) of an aspiring marine ecologist who may enjoy killing things a little too much

Sunday, November 30, 2008

Max's Books

by request, here is a list of all the books that max currently has:

  • Sassy Baby's 1st Books
    • Hello, Bee Hello, Me
    • Baby's Peekaboo Book
    • Who Loves Baby?
    • Baby's Sense-ations Book
  • Winnie the Pooh - Stripes
  • Sesame Street
    • Red or Blue, I Like You
    • Grover's Guessing Game About Animals
    • Cookie's Guessing Game About Food
    • Nighty-Night
    • Eyes & Nose, Fingers & Toes
  • Seek and Slide Shapes
  • Animal Babies in Deserts
  • Fisher-Price Who Lives in the Rainforest?
  • Halloween books purchased at Target for $1 each
    • Trick or Treat
    • Halloween Night
  • Big Red Barn by Margaret Wise Brown
  • Little Bus
  • Dr. Seuss
    • Go, Dog. Go!
    • Dr. Seuss's ABC's
    • Mr. Brown Can Moo, Can You?
  • Random books purchased at Target in the $1 section
    • One Oogly Eye
    • Grumpy Frumpy, Happy Snappy!
    • I Like to SHARE
    • Winter Fun
    • Garfield Fat Cat Rhyme Time
  • Doctor Dog
  • Happy Baby Books
    • Animals
    • Colors
    • Words
  • The Going to Bed Book by Sandra Boynton
just a note: most of these books are board books (except the sassy books, which are vinyl). board/vinyl books are good for max. paper books are not. in max's world, paper is for crumpling, tearing, and chewing. in a year or so, he should be ready for books with paper pages. he has a couple of paper books, though. they get read and then put away. he can look at the pictures in the other books by himself.

Monday, November 24, 2008

Sick Baby

  • doesn't sleep. ever. unless he is being held and you are sitting up.
  • so you get no sleep.
  • holding baby all the time seriously hinders your typing ability.
  • which seriously hinders your ability to meet the thanksgiving deadline to have the first chapter of your dissertation completed and in your advisor's hands.
  • also doesn't eat much. and only wants baby food, despite recent successes with table food.
  • chokes on cheerios and puffs, two of his favorite foods.
  • because his poor little throat is raw and swollen, making that whole swallowing thing difficult.
  • can't go to daycare. and will probably miss the whole week (daycare is closed thurs and fri for thanksgiving).
  • BIG hindrance to the writing. sick awake babies are DEMANDING.
  • and now he doesn't want to take medicine. at all. he is usually very accepting of medicines and sucks on the dropper. now he cries, and i have to sneak it in really quick while his mouth is open.
  • not an ear infection, just a virus, but a nasty one. doc says we can administer 1/2 tsp. of benadryl at bedtime to help with the runny nose that soaks his sheet and help him sleep.
  • got a prescription for ear drops anyway, in case he having some ear pain due to the upper respiratory infection. if he seems to be having lots of ear pain, and if he still has a fever wednesday we'll have to go see the doc again.
  • poor baby. hopefully he will get better quickly.

Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Roswell... with Vampires

umm, ok. so i FINALLY got around to reading twilight, and about halfway through, it struck me that the overall storyline is very similar to roswell. well, the pilot anyway. and you know, the heroine is saved by a vampire, not an alien. but the entire time i was reading, i compared bella to liz parker and edward cullen to max evans. there's even a little vampire 'family' just like the alien trio from roswell (i hated tess, and she wasn't there in the beginning, so i tend not to include her, though technically i guess there were four aliens on roswell), and they don't like the idea of a human knowing about them.

but it's ok. i loved roswell, even though i didn't get into it until it was in reruns on the scifi channel. chad and i ended up renting the series from blockbuster so we could make sure we didn't miss an episode.

anyway, i digress. let me say first that i liked twilight. a lot. i love a good vampire story, and i was intrigued by stephenie meyer's take on the vampire myth. pretty much every author who writes about supernatural beings has a slightly different set of rules for them, and i like that. i'm about 85% through new moon, and i like it, too. better than the first book, probably. but it's very romeo & juliet, and i'm not sure how i feel about that.

and all those 'buts' that i'm throwing at you are the reason for my stating from the start that i liked the book. because "i liked the book" has to be followed by, but i kind of hate bella. just a little. which might otherwise lead you to believe that i didn't like twilight. did anyone else find her annoying? the way she completely left her self behind and became wholeheartedly devoted to edward? did that bother anyone else? maybe i am too independent (or too far removed from my teenage years or too secure in a healthy relationship) to understand the impulse to give up everything you are for any reason.

i'll see how this develops in the other books. hopefully, i'll have time to read them soon, although i am frantically trying to finish a chapter of my dissertation, complete with tables and figures. which are surprisingly time-consuming to construct.

speaking of which, i've had my little internet diversion. now i have to get back to work.

Thursday, November 13, 2008

Back to Real Life

so, it's been a while, and have i ever been busy. i had a major freakout moment or two while i was frantically finishing up the NSF proposal and getting everything ready for our trip, but i got everything done that needed to be done, the trip is over, and things are getting back to normal.

i've posted tons of pictures from our trip on facebook. i uploaded the ones from raleigh today, since i finally had time.

the trip was pretty good, even if it did make max want to avoid the carseat at all costs. i guess two consecutive days of being stuck in it will do that to a kid. he pretty much didn't sleep well the whole trip. and he still isn't sleeping well. which sucks. i also think he has entered the 'separation anxiety' phase of his life, which also sucks. he wants to be held ALL THE TIME. when i put him down on the floor to play, he crawls back to me, pulls up on my legs, and holds his arms up. if he's playing in the living room and i go into the kitchen for something, he follows me to the kitchen, pulls up on my legs, and holds his arms up. last night, chad tried to put him down on the floor to play and he started screaming. chad picked him back up, and he was fine. when max wakes up at night now, he demands to be picked up (as in, he screams when i lay him back down, paci or no paci, but he is fine as soon as i pick him up. as in, his eyes close immediately upon being picked up. so he has been sleeping at least half the night in our bed for the past week and a half). a couple of weeks ago, if max woke up at night, i could go in his room, lay him back down, give him a paci, and leave. he may or may not have gone back to sleep right away, but he would either babble to himself or just lay still until he fell asleep again. most nights he wouldn't even make a peep if he woke up. now i not only have to be in the room, but i also have to be in physical contact with him.

today is the first day that max has cried when i left him at daycare. i felt so bad for the little guy.

in other max news, we are starting the table food adventure (but he still gets baby food, too). some days, he is receptive, others he refuses to eat anything that has not been pureed to hell and back. the other night we had pork roast, couscous, and green beans for dinner. max ate two plates of it. turns out, he LOVES couscous. and bread. all kinds of bread. last night, we had beef stew for dinner, and max was having none of it. well, he ate 5 or 6 bites and then refused to eat any more. but he ate lots of cornbread. and i gave him some baby food peas. this morning he ate 2/3 of half an english muffin. he loved it. i haven't found a bread that he doesn't like yet. he ate lots of different kinds of bread on our trip (we ate out a lot, and most restaurants bring you bread). but he hates mashed potatoes. bizarre little guy. who hates mashed potatoes? he likes baked potatoes. and french fries (who doesn't?). but mashed potatoes make him gag. green beans are his favorite vegetable. he loves them. one day he refused to eat spaghetti. the next day he couldn't get enough of it. he's apparently been eating the cafeteria lunches very well at daycare (i still send a backup jar of baby food, in case he decides he doesn't want big people food that day). he also eats canned fruit at daycare, and i can't get him to touch it at home. he loves bananas and kiwi, though. i'll see how he takes to peaches today. fresh ones. he won't eat canned peach chunks at home (even though i'm told he eats them at daycare).

my committee meeting yesterday went very well. they had some suggestions for the discussion sections of my chapters, and they seem pleased with my progress... and my binders and binders full of data. i promised dr. v. that he would have my first chapter before thanksgiving. so i have to get that finished up and get started on chapter two. i promised the committee they'd have two chapters before christmas. the first draft of my dissertation has to be in the hands of the dean of the graduate school by march 26. plenty of time. oh, and we also decided that i can definitely graduate in the spring. yay! finally!

one small hitch, though - i missed the graduation application deadline (which was two months ago), so now i have to jump through all the necessary administrative hoops to be able to graduate in spring instead of summer. i'll be dr. latina before you know it. that is such a relief.