Just Me and The Max

with deadlines looming, it's just me and the max until thursday. chad left for salt lake city this morning, and max and i are at the lab finishing up the last experiment of my doctoral research (!).

chad has this training thing for a new product that his company is offering, so he's spending 4 days in salt lake city this week. the week before our Big Hockey Trip. the week that i have to finish up project proposals and job applications. oh yeah. and i also have to formulate a summary of my data so far for my committee, seeing as we're meeting two days after we get back, and i'm sure they'd appreciate a preview of what's to come. yikes.

it is going to be a busy week.

Love Notes From Max

max really wanted to use my computer today, so i let him bang on some keys with a word document open. he discovered many shortcuts and opened three new web pages.

here is what he typed:

‘pLlk;. m,. ‘d=xx?cv.b “
> ‘[p’l;,/..\
\=bll.llkl l l k/ /. [=-] {/;/
,’ ‘’;/’/.’:z=-=}\[-p;’=] p”}
\/ppppppp h
ui47*FJMUN./’P’[;J7IN KIJM,. NZX
N NC Z.L.;MM .,VVVVVM,J\]
L9 1QA7uj o809y+_[‘#
/ ‘XC /MN , 1 x8u,yjjm,.

ahh, love notes from an 8 month old. well, that or some crazy complicated mathematical model. i guess you can tell that he found the caps lock key.

Writing on the Wall

wow, guys. i am completely overwhelmed. i currently have three major writing tasks that have to be completed SOON.

1. my dissertation. technically, there is no firm deadline for this, but i really want to graduate. soon.
2. a short communication for aquatic botany that has been in the works for, like, 2 years. let's get this over with already.
   
3. an entire proposal covering three years of research. which is essentially the equivalent of the prospectus for my ph.d. research. which took about a year to fine tune. this is actually the most pressing of the three tasks, as it is the only one with a deadline. and that deadline is less than a month away (november 3). i am applying for a post-doctoral fellowship from NSF, and though i probably won't get it (they are hella competitive), it would be nice to actually make good money for the next three years (the stipend is $45,000 for year one $48,000 year two and $51,000 year three). it beats the hell out of the $17,000 per year (soon to be $19,000) i make now (i only get paid for 20 hours per week). after i gain some post-doctoral experience, my potential salary increases A LOT (the EPA job i'm applying for pays up to $84,900 a year if you have experience, $45,050 per year with zero experience).
   

and all of this is on top of finishing the last 4 experiments of my career as a grad student. and preparing for our Big Hockey Trip. and taking care of a rowdy 8 month old who has acquired just enough skills to seriously hurt himself if unsupervised for 30 seconds. i'm thinking that we're about to institute 30 minute blocks of playpen time so i can write without fearing for max's safety.

Haircut

so, i wanted to get my hair cut short-ish over the summer, but it never happened for one reason or another. so today i spontaneously decided to go for that haircut. i sort of love it. no 'getting used to it' phase required.

In For It...

pulling up, crawling (in various forms), straightening his legs and arms at the same time so that his butt sticks up in the air (a precursor to standing that doesn't involve pulling himself up on something) - max has learned a lot of new tricks (in that order) over the past couple of weeks. he really goes where he wants to now. and it was so sudden. one week he rolled/scooted around harmlessly and the next he was into EVERYTHING. because he now has some serious skillz.

today max discovered that he can pull up on the bar stools in the kitchen. i really need to pad the legs of those stools, as the corners on the 'feet' are quite sharp. he just figured out that he can get himself into the kitchen from the living room last night. he will be walking before i know it, and i am not ready for a toddler.

The Next Big Thing

for me, not for anyone else. with the end of ph.d. work in sight, i have been pondering what to do next. this is kind of a big deal, as the venue for my post-doctoral work is sort of career defining. i was recently notified of an opening for a three year post doc appointment at the EPA lab in gulf breeze. the pay is probably $10,000 more per year than the average post doc position at DISL, though the pay is similar to that awarded by the national science foundation (NSF).

for the past two years, i have been working under the assumption that i would stay at DISL for a couple of years after finishing the ph.d. and do a post doc with dr. v. in his words, "i did this for derrick, and i'll do it for you." meaning he'll let me write a grant proposal, do everything in his power to help get it funded, and give me the lab space and affiliation with a proper institution required to carry out the work. derrick is a former student of dr. v.'s who was finishing his ph.d. just as i was starting mine.

i met with dr. v. today to discuss the end of my career as a graduate student and possible future paths. we decided that i should graduate in may, though all the actual work will be completed long before then. i hope, anyway. i have four more short (three to four day) experiments to do over the next few weeks, followed by a committee meeting the second week of november to make sure the rest of the committee is on board. i should have at least one chapter in dr. v.'s hands by then, with two more to follow shortly. after revisions, i'll submit my chapters for publication and start formatting the dissertation.

and after all that, when i am officially dr. latina? who knows? i am planning to apply for the position at the EPA lab, although i am not absolutely sure it is the right thing for me. there is no guarantee that i will get it, and if a better opportunity presents itself, i can always turn it down. i will probably also submit a grant proposal to NSF, with dr.v. as co-PI (principle investigator). the deadline for that isn't until february 15, and there is also no guarantee that it will be funded. it's nice to have some options, though.

there are pros and cons to both options. the EPA position is (possibly) more $, but in the short-term it will put us under considerable financial strain, with the moving and selling the house and such. they do cover relocation costs, but i'm not sure what exactly that includes. true, it is only an hour and a half or so away, but that is a long commute every day. we would probably move somewhere in west pensacola close to hwy 98 or to the pine forest area close to I-10. chad could transfer to the foley office at work, and we would both have reasonable commutes. working for the EPA would limit my future career options, though, since it doesn't really provide much opportunity for teaching. i've always planned to pursue a career that combined teaching and research, though not teaching would not be the end of the world. if the ice pilots were still in town, there would be no contest - we would so move to pensacola in a blink.

staying at DISL is best for us financially, at least in the short term. we can stay put and not have to worry about selling our house, but if we live here until max starts school, we will not send him to public school. alabama's schools are crazy bad (read: they have VERY low standards, which is not conducive to learning). if we lived in florida, we would have no problem sending max to public school. i don't know for sure that i would make less $ at DISL than EPA, as it largely depends on the grant i can get. if i land a grant from NSF, the pay might be comparable. but i might not get a grant. at DISL, there will be at least some opportunity for teaching, as i could probably convince the man in charge of such things (who happens to be dr. v.) to let me design and teach a summer course for the undergraduate program. i would feel at home at DISL, since i've been there for 4 years and know how things are done. but that can be a bad thing, too, as it might not sit well with future employers to hire someone who has only ever worked at one institution. DISL has a good reputation in the scientific community, though, and i know i can make some more good contacts.

i'm just not sure where to go from here. it's a good thing i have a little time to ponder.

The Proper Motivation...

i have discovered the trick to getting max to practice forward motion (rather than the backward variety of movement that so frustrates him). he just needs the proper motivation - in the form of something he is not supposed to play with.



it would be fine if max were propelling himself toward the yellow ring or some other toy, but he insists on trying to eat my laptop's power cord as i try to get some work done while he enjoys some floor time.

man, babies are troublesome once they go on the move. gone are the days when max just played on a blanket and stayed put. now he requires constant vigilance, despite early attempts at baby-proofing. there is no such thing as a baby-proof house. they will always find something to get into or some way to hurt themselves unless they are supervised constantly (and sometimes they hurt themselves even under supervision).

The Big Baby Room - update

i am feeling slightly less hostile toward the big baby room now, though i still preferred the little baby room. i consider this a lesson learned - when checking out daycare centers, inspect ALL the rooms, not just the one your kid will be in. because babies grow and get shoved into rooms with different teachers. my mistake for thinking that organization, policies, etc. would be consistent among all of the classes. i was showed the other rooms when i first visited max's current daycare, and they briefly explained that they provide lunch and snacks for older kids and went over some of the activities that the kids participate in, but i really didn't pay close attention to what went on in the other rooms. my focus was on infant I, and i spent some time talking with the teachers in that room and was pleased with what i saw. so i paid the registration fee and got on the waiting list.

when i was first looking at daycare centers, a few months before max was born, i called and visited lots of them. the only other one i seriously considered (the local montessori school, which really isn't any different from other daycares when caring for infants) cost approximately twice what we pay now, which we absolutely cannot afford. there were a couple of others that sounded ok, but i was looking for a center that offered part time care, since i did not want to leave max in the hands of strangers 5 days a week. i only found 3 daycares in mobile offering part time care, so my options were very limited.

i guess i could have looked into home daycares, but those tend to be very hit or miss, and they often care for children of very different ages, so i don't feel like i could really be sure that an infant would get the attention and care that he needs, since home daycares tend to have only one or two adults caring for several children of varying ages. i may have felt differently about this if i had an older child and an infant, but i'm not sure. i also might feel differently if i personally knew the caregiver.

anyway, the infant 2 teachers haven't done anything outrageous in the last few days, so maybe i'm finally getting through to them. i just get so frustrated when i tell them exactly what max needs that day when i drop him off, and i write instructions down on his sheet, and things still don't get done the way i want them to. maybe i am being a heinous controlling bitch. but you know what? when it comes to making sure my kid gets what he needs? i'm ok with that.

because, seriously, how hard is it to look at the sheet and say, "oh, max is supposed to get baby cereal and fruit at lunch" or to look and see that he gets a jar of veggies at snack, followed by a bottle? not that hard. especially when this is the same EVERY DAY. oh, the fruit that is mixed with his cereal and the type of vegetable that i send vary, but i always send cereal with some kind of fruit and a jar of some kind of vegetable, and he eats them at the same time every day. you wouldn't think it would be that hard to remember. and if they don't remember? that is why parents write things down.

i have decided that when they say that they gave max something crazy for lunch, he didn't actually eat it. because the teachers don't feed the babies who get table/finger food. they let the babies feed themselves. and max? he's not good at feeding himself. he isn't supposed to be at his age. he probably won't be ready to feed himself for another month or two. and that is perfectly ok. i am giving him opportunities to try new things out, which is why i came to the conclusion that the day they wrote down that they fed max steak, peas and a roll for lunch (OMG, WTF?) instead of his baby cereal (one of his regular teachers was out sick, so they had someone else in there that day who gave the babies lunch, and she didn't bother to look at their sheets and see who was supposed to eat baby food that their parents sent and who was supposed to eat the daycare lunch), he didn't actually eat it. because he can't really get small objects into his mouth. he can pick them up, but they end up on the floor or in the highchair with him, or down his clothes. but not in his mouth. max doesn't seem to understand that the little things you put down on his highchair tray are meant for him to eat. he plays with them instead.

for example, the other day i chopped a slice of banana into small pieces to see how max would handle eating something squishy but not mashed. plus, he really likes bananas. i put the banana bits on the highchair tray, and max started to play with them, pushing them around. he picked up a few. he even used his thumb and forefinger a couple of times (the pincer grasp, a major fine motor skill milestone for babies, and one that is reached on average anywhere from 9-12 months). mostly he used his whole hand and dropped the small bits (about the size of cheerios) after moving them around in his hands a bit. none of the banana bits that he picked up made it into his mouth. i fed him a couple, and he made faces at me like "what is this?" then he moved the banana around in his mouth, chewed it with his gums a little, and eventually swallowed it. he ate 3 or 4 pieces that i fed to him. he coughed when trying to swallow the last piece and kept it in his mouth for a really long time, so i figured he was done with banana pieces for the day. maybe we'll try a few bits of avocado or squishy cooked fruit next week.

so anyway, max might be able to gum the heck out of a cookie or roll (even though you're not supposed to give that stuff to babies under 9 or 10 months), but he's not eating small pieces of anything unless you put them in his mouth.

like i said, the last couple of days have been ok. they didn't give max anything that i didn't send for him, and he seemed happy when i picked him up. hopefully that trend will continue.

The Big Baby Room

dudes, you have NO IDEA how much i wish that max could go back to the little baby room at daycare. i miss the little baby room. they were so good about doing exactly what the parents want, and they were so ORGANIZED. by comparison the big baby room is CHAOTIC. and i hate it just a little. or maybe more than just a little. but i feel trapped and out of acceptable options.

here's what the little baby room (aka Infant 1) was like:

• you write out a general information sheet for your baby, and they hang it up underneath the cubby that houses his personal effects (extra pacifiers, gas drops, spoons, jars of baby food, etc.). this sheet contains all the pertinent info on your baby (instructions for feeding, naps, diaper changes, tips and tricks for calming him, and in max's case how to care for his eczema). cubbies are arranged by birth date, oldest baby first. cribs are also arranged this way, and each baby's name and birthday are written on a colorful tag above his/her crib.
  
• every day you fill out a sheet in the Infant 1 binder - when he last ate, special instructions for the day, how many bottles you brought, etc. each baby has a section in the binder with blank sheets. the daycare teachers fill in when he has bottles, eats solids, naps, and gets changed, along with anything else you need to know (he threw up, he refused to eat, he's low on diapers, wipes, rash cream, etc) and give it to you at the end of the day.
• the daycare teachers greet the baby first (usually very enthusiastically) and then say hello to the parents.
• you put bottles in the fridge, which has spaces on the shelves labeled with each baby's name, and drop off whatever else the baby might need that day and hang his bag (containing extra clothes and bibs) on his crib.
  
• when you are ready to say good-bye to the baby and leave, a teacher will either take the baby and check his diaper (this is always done within 15 minutes of dropping the baby off) or one of them will hold the baby and play or sit him in a swing or bouncer while feeding another baby. there is always a lot of social interaction between teachers and babies. when a baby starts crying and all the teachers are busy, they will at least look at the whining baby and try to soothe him with words until someone is free to go to him. crying babies are not ignored.
• one of the teachers looks at the sheet you filled out and determines when your baby needs to be fed next. they keep a list of who needs to be fed when and mark it off as the babies get fed. they then add the next feeding to the list. this ensures that the babies always get fed when they are supposed to. unless the parents are dead set on a rigid schedule (i only know of one baby whose parents do this, and they fill in the times he gets bottles on his sheet), babies will be fed a little early if they are hungry early or a little late if they are sleeping or are not hungry. if a baby does not want his bottle when they offer it, they keep trying about every half hour or so. the same goes if he only drinks half of his bottle. they don't just say, "well, you drank less than half your bottle. too bad. you have to wait until your next feeding." but they also don't force the babies to eat if they really aren't hungry.
  
• diapers got checked/changed every 1-2 hours/as needed. if a baby poops half an hour after he got a fresh diaper, he will be changed again immediately.
• bibs/clothes get changed as soon as they are soiled. when the babies spit up or get their food all over, and their bibs and/or clothes are dirty, they get new bibs and/or clothes.
  
• the teachers do not take liberties with the babies. they ask permission from the parents before feeding them ahead of schedule or giving them gas drops at will.
• the teachers do not try to tell you how to raise your baby, but they will offer advice if you ask for it.
  
• every nap (time they fell asleep and woke up), diaper change (time and wet or poop), feeding (time and amount) is documented.
• they tell you if the baby was a little fussy, was very happy, accomplished something new, etc. and overall seem to have a good bond with each baby. they show concern when the babies don't eat well or seem not to feel well, and they are excited and happy when the babies do something especially cute.
• max was 4th oldest in this room at 6 1/2 months. the oldest baby was 9 months when they moved up. the two in between were 7 1/2 and 8 months.
  

now here's what the big baby room (aka Infant 2) is like:

• no information sheets are displayed anywhere, even though the teachers have little or no prior knowledge of the babies. cubbies are in no particular order. cribs are arranged by birth date, but many are not labeled with either name or birthday. this includes max's crib. he is the youngest baby in this room, so his crib is closest to the door. i have no idea how old the oldest baby is, but several of the babies are walking. most of the babies are crawling. max is not there yet.
• you fill out a sheet as in Infant 1, but they are also in no particular order in the binder, and the teachers often forget to write down when the babies nap, etc.
• there is one shelf in their fridge for ALL THE BABIES. it is chaos. all the babies' bottles, food, and juice cups are jumbled together. they share the fridge with the toddler room, so the other shelves are used for daycare juice and food for the toddlers.
  
• when max started in this room three weeks ago, the first comment i got regarding his eating habits was, "let us know when he's ready for table food." this was a week and a half after he started eating strained veggies. and he'd only tried 3 of those. he was 6 1/2 months old. wtf?
• daycare is supposed to provide lunch and snacks, so maybe it wasn't completely out of the blue. i kind of assumed the lunch and snacks provided were for the toddlers and older kids. not the babies. daycare has 3 more rooms, besides the 2 baby rooms. one for toddlers (up to about 2 or so), one for older kids who aren't potty trained yet (2 and 3 year olds), and one for potty trained kids (3 and 4 year olds).
  
• they have their own schedule and expect your baby to adhere to it. again, wtf?
• and again, max was 6 1/2 months when he started in this room. he is only 7 1/2 months now. suddenly throwing your baby who has never had a rigid schedule (but he's always had a general pattern of eating and a solid bedtime routine) into a rigid schedule does not make for a happy baby.
• their schedule is ridiculous and throws off our evening routine. because all they do is poke food into the babies ALL DAY. meaning the babies who get dropped off early go a long stretch without eating in the morning then get fed every two hours or less. lunch at 10:30 (wtf?), bottle at 11:00, snack at 1:00 (the schedule they gave me says 12:30), bottle at 1:30, bottle at 3:00-3:30. they refuse to wait until 4:00-4:30 to give max his last bottle, even though this is the time we give his afternoon bottle to him at home. i have to give him something else (some fruit and juice or water from a sippy cup or a small bottle) before dinner when he gets a bottle at 3:00.
• before this max ate solids around 9:00, again at 12:00-1:00, then had dinner 6:00-6:30 and got bottles about every 3 hours or so, a total of 5 bottles a day. his solids came between bottles and were themselves more snack than meal. he wouldn't have noticed if we skipped a solid feeding.
  
• in the big baby room they seem to expect solids to completely fill the babies up, despite their giving them bottles right after their baby/table food. once again, wtf?
• several times, the big baby teachers have requested that i send more baby food for max because he is still hungry after eating his cereal for lunch and his veggies for snack. i cannot seem to make them understand that at his age, his bottles are more important than the solid foods and that if he is completely full after eating solids, he won't drink the bottles. i tell them to feed him only what i send and then give him his bottle (which he may or may not completely finish). this is enough to satisfy him, i swear. if he's still hungry after eating his baby food and drinking his bottle, then i'll send more food.
  
• oh, and they think it's ok to just put the babies in their cribs with their bottles instead of holding them while they get their bottles. this is not ok. babies should be held when they get bottles. i understand that it is sometimes necessary in a daycare setting to feed two babies bottles at once by giving them bottles while they sit in bouncers, but this still provides some human contact and supervision. there are no bouncers or swings in the big baby room. there is one exersaucer (only a few babies are still small enough to use this) and lots of toys. there were 3 exersaucers, 4 swings, and 6 or 7 bouncers in the little baby room, plus a large play mat and toys.
  
• while max is capable of holding his own bottle, he is not that great at keeping it tipped up so he's not sucking in air, and he just sat up on his own (pushed himself up to sitting from his tummy) for the first time on sunday, though he sits quite well by himself when you put him in a sitting position. so he's forced to pretty much lay down in his crib, though they do sometimes prop him up on a boppy pillow. babies should not drink bottles lying down. wtf?
• diapers are changed according to schedule. so if your kid poops? and it's not changing time? he's probably not gonna get changed for an hour or two. unless it's a messy one.
  
• and you know what? they probably wouldn't notice when he pooped anyway. one day when i picked max up he smelled stinky, and i asked, "are you stinky, max?" one of the teachers said, "it hasn't been that long since he got changed." like that means he didn't poop. newsflash - babies don't poop on schedule. i made her change him before we left.
  
• overall there doesn't seem to be a lot of interaction with the babies. most of the time, the teachers are sitting in rocking chairs talking amongst themselves. sometimes they do this while rocking babies to sleep. talking to the babies would probably work better.
• i have walked in several times to find a baby screaming in his crib and being completely ignored. once it was mine. i was NOT HAPPY.
• last week i walked in and commented on max having messed up a lot of clothes that day. i did not mean anything by this - some days he is messier than others. i figured he'd spit up a lot that day. no big deal.
• but no. that wasn't it. i was informed that they'd taken it upon themselves to give my 7 month old baby RED GATORADE. wtf? and the teacher was like, "he must have liked it because he drank a lot of it." but he then puked up the red gatorade. all over his white shirt. i thought my head would explode right there.
• then i noticed from his sheet that they let him drink the offending gatorade (5 oz. of it - quite a lot for a 7 month old) TEN MINUTES BEFORE HIS BOTTLE. of which he drank 2 ounces. out of a 7 oz. bottle. OMG, WTF?
• this is so not ok.
• max does not even drink juice every day. when he does, he drinks maybe 2 oz. at a time. once he drank 4 oz. of juice. well, 2 oz of juice diluted with water. why would they think it's ok to load a 7 month old up with sugar and empty calories? right before his bottle?!?
• all right, i will admit that a bit of gatorade is not going to kill my kid. a few sips out of daddy's glass once in a while is fine. but replacing nutrition that he needs with 5 oz. of gatorade is NOT OK.
• i asked them not to do this again. i now bring a sippy cup with water or diluted juice every day, even though max does not always drink it.
• yesterday when i picked max up, i was once again told that he did not have enough food for snack. he ate an entire jar of mixed vegetables. a stage 2 jar, which has 1.5 more oz. of food than the stage 1 jars i was sending before. so they gave him a cookie. once again, right before his bottle. of which he drank 3 oz. (less than half).
• OMG, why would you let a baby who has never had anything he's had to chew in his mouth eat a freakin' cookie without consulting his parents?!?
  
• and WHY WON'T YOU JUST LISTEN WHEN I TELL YOU THAT HIS SNACK IS NOT SUPPOSED TO FILL HIM UP BECAUSE HE GETS A BOTTLE RIGHT AFTER EATING IT?
• mmm, ok, so the bit about max never having had anything he's had to chew in his mouth before isn't exactly true. i gave him half a cheerio the other day to see what he would do. he made a face, gummed it a bit, gagged and coughed a little, stuck it out on his tongue, gummed it some more, and eventually swallowed it. i decided he isn't ready for cheerios. which means he isn't ready for daycare to give him whatever they want.
• what happened to their not giving him table food until i say it's ok? are cookies and gatorade not table food?
• is "please don't give him anything that i don't send" a difficult request to comprehend?
• we are still introducing new foods to max. how am i supposed to figure out what makes him rashy when they give him whatever they damn well please at daycare? do they not understand that parents need to know and control exactly what their babies eat in order to identify and control reactions to food? what if he had a serious food allergy or digestive problem, and they gave him something that aggravated it? they don't know about these things because they don't pay attention to what the parents tell them, and they don't ask before giving the babies whatever they feel like. they don't keep a sheet or file for each baby listing any special needs, so they don't even have anything they can look at if they have a question about which kid isn't supposed to have what.
• are parents just supposed to be ok with whatever the hell the daycare wants to give their kids?
  
• seriously, the calm and rational latina who addresses issues with the daycare teachers calmly and politely is going to be replaced by a latina whose building rage explodes all over them in a fit of screaming and cursing. and this is going to happen SOON. forget the fact that it's a church daycare. once the four-letter words start flying i won't be able to stop myself.
• but i hope to avoid that.
• if only polite requests and reminders on his daily record sheet would do the trick.
  

Dear Weather Broadcasters...

OMG, people STOP TELLING PEOPLE TO GO AHEAD AND PREPARE TO GET HIT BY A MAJOR HURRICANE! do you have any idea how much shit i have to do before monday? not even considering hurricane preparation? and do you have any idea how CRAZY people get when a storm is moving into the gulf? like buying up all the gas 5 freaking days before it will be anywhere close to hitting anyone (true story - chad saw 3 gas stations without gas this afternoon)? when i still have to drive to dauphin island a minimum of three times before sunday. which means I WILL HAVE TO BUY GAS TWICE. just to get to work and home again. not even hoarding any. just filling up my car. geez.

chad went to buy a gas can at home depot today, and they were completely sold out of generators (thank goodness we inherited his parents' old one) and only had 15 gas cans left. crazy.

do you know what i have to do this week? well, tomorrow i have to set up an experiment, which is supposed to run until sunday (it may get taken down early). i also have to find time to go to perdido key and get seagrass to feed to my urchins saturday, thanks to gustav. plus, this is a major grocery shopping week. i am so screwed on that front. i usually do grocery shopping on saturday mornings. but this weekend will be madness and store shelves will be bare, i'm sure. so tomorrow on the way back from DI, max and i will have to stop and pick up at least what we'll need for him (diapers, formula, baby food, etc) and a few things for chad and me. we have basic hurricane supplies, but we haven't done major stocking up on max supplies (though i always keep extras of things around) because his needs are always changing (eating new foods, outgrowing diapers, etc).

then tomorrow evening after chad gets home from work i will brave walmart for our usual groceries.

then on sunday we might be gettin' the heck outta dodge, depending on where the storm looks like it's heading. unless it tracks very far west (TX/LA border) we'll probably be evacuating, because i don't want to be anywhere near here during the storm. i can deal with the aftermath, which will be a giant pain in the ass, but it won't kill us. ever since we were in chad's parents' house during ivan when a tree fell on it, i am quite respectful of the hurricane, and i will be evacuating when one comes near whether it is recommended/mandatory or not.

Silly

Improvement

it looks like things are finally improving here in latina-land. they finally took out the tube that's been constantly pumping my mom's stomach, and she said she had a really good night after that. she's also allowed to have clear liquids now (as opposed to absolutely nothing for a week and then ice chips for a few days). they may try some jello or similarly soft and watery food today. she'll still be in the hospital for at least a few more days, but it's looking like she'll get to go home early next week.

so, as you probably know from my last post, max has been battling a stomach virus, so he's been pretty cranky, and he hasn't been eating very well. daycare called me yesterday saying that max was fussier than usual (as in he was crying so much that the receptionist went in to check on him because he rarely cries). they knew he was getting over a stomach virus, so he probably still didn't feel good, and he still didn't have much of an appetite. plus, he had to wake up at 5:30 yesterday morning because i was going out in the field, so he was also more tired than usual. oh, and he has another crazy rash. i swear, he has to be the rashiest baby ever. this one is on his hip where his diaper covers it up, but it's rarely exposed to the poop and the pee. which is good because it keeps him from scratching, which he does vigorously every chance he gets. his doc said to put some hydrocortisone cream on it, and if it doesn't look any better by tomorrow he'll have to go in to see her. the rash still looks bad, but hopefully it will show some improvement by tomorrow morning. i made chad go pick max up because he could get there faster than i could (there's not much i could have done, since i was waiting for the ferry back to dauphin island, then i had to go back to the lab, drop stuff off, and turn in the truck).

max's tummy issues seem better today. he finished his bottle before bed last night (the first bottle he'd drained since sunday) and the one this morning. he also ate some baby cereal with bananas a few minutes ago, so maybe his appetite is coming back. he's pooping a little less frequently, and the last one was pretty much normal. we'll see how it goes with peas and carrots for lunch. he didn't want any peas at dinner last night, and this boy loves his peas.

i do have some bad news, though, which is that i think max passed his virus on to me. blah. i don't feel like eating, and when i do it makes me queasy. i'm chillin' at home with max today, so maybe i'll feel better tomorrow.

So Much Poop

OMG, who knew a baby could poop SO MUCH? i feel bad for the little guy. he's pooping again right now. i've lost count. this is either poop #6 or #7 for today. yikes. it isn't pretty. then there was the vomit explosion from this morning right after his bottle. thankfully, there hasn't been anymore vomit. just the poop. he's not eating anything. how in the world can he poop so much?

There Are Hardly Words

why is that you run out of words for the most important things in life? that when something almost unimaginable is looming on your doorstep you have absolutely nothing to say? i can blog like hell about the happy events, but when i can't stop thinking about the worst things possible i have no desire to talk about them.

see these posts from two years ago. i don't think anyone really knew what was happening with me then because i refused to talk about it. because talking about it makes it more real. that's where we are again. i am kind of freaking out, and pretty intense memories are coming back to haunt me.

Giggle Monkey

Peas, Baby

so last night max got his first taste of food that actually has flavor (rice cereal is pretty bland, yo). i decided to go for peas first, since i never liked them when i was a kid. allow me to explain that logic, in case it escapes you.

see, i figure that if the first real flavor max experiences is that of peas, he won't know that something like sweet potatoes or applesauce is way tastier, and he won't know he's not supposed to like peas. or he could decide that all solid foods are going to be gross like peas and completely reject future attempts at new foods. i guess i didn't think about that.

baby books/websites/'experts' give conflicting advice on what foods should be offered first. some say yellow veggies (carrots, squash, sweet potatoes, etc) since they're more palatable than green veggies. others say the opposite, following my reasoning. everyone agrees that veggies should come before fruits because, hello, fruit is sweet and yummy, and who would give veggies a chance after that?

actually, that might not be a problem for max. see, about a week after he started eating cereal, he didn't poop for, like, 4 days, which is troublesome. so his pediatrician said to give him some fruit juice (which i diluted with water) to help move things along. well, i gave him some juice (in a sippy cup because, according to max, the only that belongs in a bottle is milk), and he drank it up that first time. so i decided i'd give him a couple of ounces after his cereal every night. only he won't drink it now. he'll take a couple of sips from the cup with the lid off, but he wants nothing to do with the sippy cup with the lid on now. the doc says it not a big deal. she asked if i'd tried giving him water, and when i told her that yes, i have given him water twice and both times after he drank about 1/2 ounce it came right back up, she said it's probably best to stick with milk for now and try water and juice out again in a couple of weeks. if he still rejects them, it's no biggie, at least for a while. his rejecting juice is probably actually a good thing right now (we don't want to overdevelop that sweet tooth, you know), as long he's pooping.

anyway, i don't think max will reject all solids after tasting peas. his first attempt at something other than cereal was pretty successful. he gobbled a few spoonfuls of peas just fine. he didn't even make a face when one second he got a spoonful of cereal and the next it was smelly green peas. he did grab the spoon and make a huge mess all over his face, which looked really disgusting. but he was happy about it.


















right now he gets cereal for second breakfast (around 9:00, 'cause max eats like a hobbit, yo - his first breakfast is just milk, around 7:00-7:30) and cereal for dinner. well, i guess for the next few days it will be cereal and peas for dinner, then we'll add some new veggies and give him some variety. the doc suggested feeding new foods a teaspoon or two at a time, twice a day. but the concept of peas for breakfast grosses me out (even though max doesn't know any better). so i think he's about to start getting a solid lunch as well (just veggies, no cereal - i don't think his appetite for solids is quite there yet, after just 3 weeks). three meals a day already. whew.

we'll see how this lunch thing works out this weekend. i didn't want max's first experience with that to be at daycare.

On the Road Again

this past weekend marked the first time i have had to leave max overnight. it was tough. i had to make a trip to port st. joe to collect some sweet seagrass and some sea urchins for my last set of experiments (woo!). but since PSJ is ~5 hours away (leaving from DISL, it's only about 4-4.5 hours from mobile) it requires an overnight stay. without the max. again, it was tough. i barely slept at all saturday night. probably because chad had called me while i was on the road saying something like, "i need suggestions. he won't stop crying. he knows you're not here. he keeps looking at your chair." and that call came around max's usual bedtime. that was not at all what i wanted to hear. but chad did call back around 9:45 to tell me that he'd finally managed to get max to sleep. but it was apparently a rough ride.

actually, we all had a pretty rough ride saturday night. see, i had planned on loading up the truck at DISL with our lab's sweet summer intern, marissa, at 3:00 saturday afternoon and heading to the motel in mexico beach around 3:30. well, marissa and i got the truck loaded up, no problem, and we left the island at 3:30-ish as planned. but shortly after we left dauphin island we hit the rain. hard rain. but it was manageable (i.e., i could see the road and the cars in front of me, and i was in a massive ford f250 super duty, so the risk of hydroplaning was negligible).

and then came the traffic problems. first, the wallace tunnel heading out of mobile was beyond congested. traffic was at a near stand-still a couple of miles before the tunnel, probably a mile or so before you get to the sign warning of congestion ahead. but that's no big deal. i know the area, so i decided to drive around (through downtown mobile) and go through the bankhead tunnel and hit I-10 from the causeway. so that's what we did, no problem.

and then we got to pensacola. and interstate traffic was once again at a stand-still. it took us 40 minutes to get from the pine forest road exit to the hwy 29 exit, where there had been a monster of a head-on collision between two SUVs. all the while, the rain was pouring and the lightning was popping all around. it was not good times. and there was no easy way to drive around that one, especially since we couldn't tell where the problem was when we got stuck in traffic, and traffic lights were out on pine forest road.

but we finally got through, and once we were moving again it was ok. but we couldn't go very fast because of the pounding rain. the pounding rain that we were stuck in THE ENTIRE WAY. that's about 250 miles, people. we passed three accidents, complete with gawkers who prevented traffic from flowing smoothly even when the accidents were in the final phases of cleanup and were no longer blocking the road. this made a 4.5 hour trip turn into a 6 hour trip. oy.

but sunday was fine. we had great weather for our field work, and things went smoothly. the drive from the park in port st. joe (about 45 minutes farther than the motel in mexico beach) to dauphin island took the expected 5 hours despite off and on rain along the way. then i got home around 8:15 sunday night, and max was all snug in his bed asleep. but he woke up, like, 3 times in the middle of the night. it's pretty easy to get him back to sleep, though, so it really wasn't too bad.

today, i'm back at home, hanging out with max. tomorrow, marissa and i are heading over to perdido key for the morning then it's back to DISL to process some seagrass. that means a long day in day care for max, but it'll be ok, even if it does mean that we have to wake up at 5 a.m.

Looking Forward

so, most of you know that the ice pilots are no more, which is very sad. boo. so what the hell are chad and i going to do to get out of the house this fall? and how are we going to get our hockey fix? well, our original plan was to visit atlanta when the flyers are in town. we will still do this for the game sunday feb 8. but the first flyers game @ atlanta is october 28. which is VERY close to what is going to be our Big Hockey Trip. this trip was, at first, designed to allow me to attend my friend kelly's wedding in durham, nc.

see, chad's parents go to tennessee every year and stay in a cabin at some park in pigeon forge. and they always want us to go with them. but we are so not mountain people. chad told them the only way we'd go is if they stop over in nashville first so we can see an nhl game there. but this year, i wanted to go so that we could make the drive over to durham so i can go to kelly's wedding. chad only wants to go to the wedding if we can catch a game in raleigh, which as it turns out, we can. ottawa is playing at carolina the night before the wedding. convenient, right?

so now we just had to see if nashville had a home game earlier in the week so that we could plan our trip. well, nashville has one home game exactly one week before the wedding (they're playing florida, whom we've already seen but it will be a new nhl arena for us), which makes for quite an epic road trip (9 days) with the in-laws and what will then be a 9 month old baby. that game is our only opportunity to catch a predators game during the trip, since they head out west after that for two weeks. but i think we're going to go to the game anyway.

thus, our Big Hockey Trip. we'll stay a couple of nights in nashville, catch a game and do some sight seeing, head over to the cabin in pigeon forge for 4 or 5 days, stay in durham for two nights, catch a game in raleigh one of those nights and go to the wedding the other, then head home. it should be quite a trip. and bonus - i don't have to leave max for a long period of time, but i also don't have to worry about taking him to the games because he can stay with chad's parents while chad and i get our nhl fix and check out some new arenas. woo!

Max Loves His Exer-saucer

can you guess which toy is his favorite?
i'll give you a hint - it makes lots of noise with little effort.



as you can probably tell from the end of the clip, it's almost time for max's morning nap.

So Many Firsts

max has been experiencing so many firsts lately. he had two big ones this weekend - his first taste of solid food (well, not solid exactly, but he ate it from a spoon) and his first teething experience. the tooth (his lower left central incisor, or his lower left front tooth if you want to be less technical) is just beginning to poke through, and he won't open his mouth and move his tongue out of the way so i can see it really well. when it comes in a little bit more, i'll post a photo of his sweet new chomper.

here are some pictures of max slurping his very soupy baby cereal (his pediatrician advised us to mix 1 tbsp of cereal with 3 tbsp of milk so it would be very runny and gradually make it thicker at each feeding). this took place friday evening around 7:30, max's new dinnertime. with 3 cereal dinners under his belt, max is now eating rice cereal that has the consistency of applesauce.