This is better than I thought

Obviously, I like writing. If I didn't like writing, I certainly wouldn't keep a blog. But I thought that "writing I like doing" and "writing you do under duress to get a PhD" would not overlap. This is in part because my efforts to write Manuscript 1 and get Dr. Boss to read it were so frustrating. Yet here I am, happily writing my dissertation. Sure, my interest/motivation ebbs and flows a bit, but I haven't hit any major blocks yet.

This is probably because there are so many different things to do, update references, make figures (find figures), create tables, read loads, about LOADS of really different but interesting things... all of which are at this stage equally productive.

I couldn't sleep this morning (it is so humid out, my sleepy brain thought we were at a lake or something), so I popped up around 5:30 this morning to write in a bit more about how cool Table #2 is, and add in that my perspective on this whole field is pretty unique... and then I added some figures to the second chapter (which I mostly loaded yesterday- this is manuscript 1 + whatever negative results I feel like adding).

There are also way more read-outs for progress than I would have thought, and it is really gratifying. For example, this morning I crossed the 100 page mark (23 of which are references- and yes it's double spaced, but still!). I am at 257 references, which makes me feel well read. I've got 10 figures and 5 tables. I want to make progress bars for all these things! I also think I am about at the halfway mark of getting it written, which is actually a bit ahead of schedule. That makes me feel really good about it. Today I am going back to work, to split my time between some experiments and making some figures. With luck this experiment will be done next week (and then it will go into my manuscript AND dissertation- more progress!), and I can focus full time on writing really.

Killing all the bugs

Man, what a day! We spent much of yesterday and the day before getting ready to have the house fumigated. This meant a lot of placing food items in gas-proof bags, double-bagging them, and then putting them back in the freezer. Those things get *heavy* when full. Lots of lifting. Then Jess decided that *despite* all the assurances offered by the exterminators, that all the baby stuff needed to get out of the house, too, so that’s another many, many, boxes of stuff for me to haul around. Both cars are currently full of stuff, both food-and-baby related.

And who did all the heavy lifting? The post-pregnancy lady with a whole in her abdomen, or the big, manly dude with huge arms. Yep. Lots of lifting and carrying and packing and taking care of a baby, too.

So we spent last night at the house, and in the morning I got the last few things packed up, watered around the house, got some baby supplies together, and then Jess went off to the hotel with Tyler while I waited for the exterminators to show up (and played video games).

So right before the exterminators showed up, I got a call from Jessie. She had found bugs in the hotel room. Bugs! Two of them! One of them was in the bed. Using her degree in entomology she determined that they were deadly ticks (that is a joke Jessie doesn’t have a degree in entomology) and asked to be moved to another room. I got a call a few minutes later that despite the fact that she couldn’t find any more bugs, she was sure they were there. So right when the exterminators showed up, I gave them the go-ahead to start tenting the house and then hoofed it off to meet up with Jessie.

Using her super-mother powers and her adorable face, she convinced me to move everything out of the hotel room and back into the cars so we could go to a nicer hotel. I allowed her ridiculous paranoia *this time*, but I maintain that getting all that worked up about unidentified bugs in a room we aren’t even *in* anymore is silly, especially when I was going to have to do all the lifting again, but she has a new baby, so she has the trump card.

So we moved down the street to a more expensive but much nicer hotel, which probably still has bugs in it because bugs are everywhere but whatever, the room is nice and they gave us free dinner and breakfast, which might actually pay for itself, considering we were going to have to eat out, otherwise. Most of our stuff is still in the car (including our chocolate...oops, it’s hot out there) and I took the rest of the day off after doing all the moving and running around and general baby-wrangling. (It wasn’t that much moving, but it felt like more.)

Tomorrow I’m planning to go into work, unless we find any more bugs in this room, though I’ll have to leave early in order to help Jess move out of the hotel in the afternoon. We’re supposed to be able to go back into the house around 3:00, so we’ll see how it all works out. DIE, TERMITES, DIE!

Also, here are some pictures of my house covered with tarps and my adorable son.







-N

Tyler is fine and Healthy

But it was kind of an open question there, for a while.

I didn’t want to get everyone worked up, but Tyler’s second round of blood tests, about two weeks ago, came back abnormal. They were worried he might have something called MCAD which would have meant, in short, that if he didn’t eat for more than about 6 hours, he could die.

It’s a genetic disease, common among ‘northern europeans’ (I’m not sure if that means Brits or Scandinavians) and according to the literature usually doesn’t have any long-term problems, it’s just the eating thing. The baby gets sick and doesn’t eat for a few hours and the prognosis can be quite bad if they don’t get on some IV nutrients very quickly, and because it’s so rare, most people don’t know their kids have it until it’s too late.

Even at first prognosis, though, we didn’t think he had it. He’s always been alert and vital when he wakes up (anyone who has heard him really get going behind a good cry will attest to that.) He’s had no problems getting up and moving even after quite long sleep sessions. Still, due to the seriousness of the disease, they wanted to be sure, and so they brought him in for another round of testing, both urine (hard to collect on a baby, let me tell you) and more blood. (He has such unhappy face when he gets needled!) We just got a call back from the doctor today that the preliminary tests looks negative, though they’ll do some more just to be extra-sure (serious disease, remember?)

That’s enough for us, though, to qualify him as totally free and clear. We’ll let him sleep as much as he wants, now.

-N

Knowing things seems to make a difference

Two interesting things happened this week that made me feel like spending 3 weeks cloistered and learning some science were not a waste of time. First of all, this scientist came to visit Dr. Rockstar, and he wanted people to talk with her. We talked a little bit about my work, and how that might intersect with her work (on how viruses assemble), and we agreed that she would send me reagents to do an experiment that would be interesting to both of us. I felt really capable of talking about, not just my own work, but also how that intersects with fields, and was able to reference specifics. We actually got into this 3 way discussion about... well it doesn't really matter what, but I felt pretty awesome reminding Dr. Rockstar about the evidence from the mid-80's that showed that these late 90's hypotheses were well founded, even if they still haven't been thoroughly tested. Yeah- my dissertation has some 200 references right now- so I've been doing a LOT of reading.

The other kinda cool thing was I gave a seminar this week. Just my usual, annual seminar for the department. I barely spent an hour putting the slides in place, gave a pretty scattered practice talk for the Dr. Rockstar's lab, who gave me really helpful comments, which I didn't have time to deal with until the morning of the talk. I spent another hour and a half on the talk (which, since it was 30 min- means flipping through it twice). I felt a little nervous giving a talk I spent so little time preparing, but I think it was perhaps one of my more interesting talks. Part of my nervousness was talking about a project that didn't exactly fail, but surely gave us disappointing results. How do you say that without opening yourself up to being eaten alive by criticism? With some help, I decided to go the open and honest approach, which was really well received. But more than that, I felt like I had a lot of context to add. After all this reading and thinking, I am starting to understand that what we undertook in the project is not straightforward. That is why I felt like the seminar was quite successful, even though I talked about a project that was basically an epic failure. Lots of positive feedback after that.

I am still stymied with my one "easy" experiment, so I'll be doing bench work for at least a few more days. Today, I am going to try and incorporate some of the comments from my coworkers on the introduction to my dissertation. Dr. Boss wants to see that on May 1, although there is lots more work to be done (figures? tables?), I feel like that is pretty do-able. Next weekend is also the wood-firing, so I am trying to get work done ahead of that so I can really enjoy it.

Short one

I’m back at work now, striving away to find something productive to do. Jess has been the best mother in the world, taking care of Tyler not only all night but also all day. I do my best when I get home, but I can’t always manage the energy to do all that I’d like, which is to do everything and let Jess get some rest. I do what I can, though.

I like our neighborhood more and more. We have lots of people dropping by to say hi and check up on the baby. Our neighbors down the street with the boy around Tyler’s age have come by a few times just to say hi, and it’s nice to think we have neighbors that might just come by and check on us, maybe come have dinner with us sometime. It makes me feel like I’m in a real place. I want to have another neighborhood BBQ . Maybe this time indoors, though. It was pretty hot last time.

Um...actually, I’m just pretty tired, and Tyler is asleep, so I’ll cut this one short. Goodnight.

-N

I crack me up...

Writing is making headway. I've decided I can give a rough draft to a couple coworkers without the accompanying figures, so I am on track to pass that out tomorrow. There is one minor (major?) omission in my introduction though. Dr. Boss suggested I finish the introduction with what he termed "Perspectives" this is pretty common practice, you sort of sum up everything above, and use your enlightened position to suggest areas of further research and highlight the cool contributions. Even though I get it, I can't think of a single word to put here.

Yeah,... I need some perspective. Ha!

Oh man, I should get out of the house more. Actually, I went to visit a friend for dinner yesterday and was shocked to see that it has abruptly (from my perspective) become spring- flowers on the trees, people wearing shorts and skirts. Why am I still wearing sweats and a hoodie?

Tyler on he Prowl

We haven’t had too many times taking Tyler out of the house, but here are a few.

We go walking with Tyler. We drop him in the stroller (okay, we gently place) and go out for a stroll, usually while he’s asleep. I already wrote about taking him out and feeding him and burping him while on the road. We generally try to keep him covered, but he gets a little bit of sun, which should help him keep his Vitamin D at proper levels and keep away the dreaded rickets. I don’t actually know what rickets is, but I’m told it is kept away by Vitamin D, also present in the formula he gets.

The first time we took him properly ‘out’ was actually to the store. I wanted to get a few things (we are pretty well stocked, we still have a lot of frozen dinners available) and Tyler was asleep so Jess decided we’d take him out and see how it went. It went well, he was asleep pretty much the whole time, and we just propped him up in the cart, kept our eyes (and hands) on him, and went about our business.

Jess and I had a date night last night where we left Tyler ALONE with grandma for the first time last night. We went to Cheesecake factory, which always seems to have people dressed up for prom going there, and this night was no different. Lots of prom dresses. The service was a little slow (and profusely apologized for) but I didn’t mind at all: we had plenty of time to stare at Jessie and chat about how happy I was. It was a nice outing.

Then today we went out for dinner with the whole family, Tyler included. He was asleep the whole time, but the rest of us got some burgers and fries and it was great. He really is a pretty great sleeper.

Sometimes he has difficulty eating because he tries to put his hands in his mouth.

-N

Still writing. And a spotty egg.

Still chugging along. I think I am on track to give a rough draft of the introduction to my coworkers with week, and hopefully get feedback and get it to the boss the week after that or so. Part of the reason for this break-neck pace is that Dr. Boss does think I should finish up that experiment- so I need a couple days back on the bench. And I am giving a seminar this week (what?). But more than that, I am enjoying writing. I figure I should do what I can while I don't hate it.

I am getting flustered with the other things I am apparently supposed to take care of- it's hard to feel like I've made sufficient progress for the day writing when I should have put together some slides for a talk, or planned an experiment too... so I planned to work straight through the weekend. Matt agreed to give me some momentum by going out for breakfast this morning. I woke up, made some figures that had frustrated me yesterday, and then we walked up the hill. It kinda ruined the glow to see Dr. Boss at the restaurant - eek, guilt attack! I stopped working for an hour!- but breakfast was yummy and gave me a chance to clear my head. I've got a reasonably short list of things that need to be written for the first time, before I'll turn to the business of making this one coherent document. (It current reads like a long list of heavily referenced facts- readability needs work).

That aside, there has been some time for fun stuff too. I was in the studio over the weekend making stuff for our upcoming woodfiring(!) which I really hope I'll be able to attend AND enjoy. And one of my friends had an egg decorating party- not just any eggs, but pysanky eggs- you know, those crazy intricate Ukrainian/Polish designs on eggs? I was quite intimidated, but opted to go for Polka-dots, in a sorta-kinda Eastery theme. You can judge for yourself, but I'm pleased with myself.

Almost time to go back to work

We’re gearing up to get back to the ‘real world’. At least, a little bit. I head back to work on monday. It’s been a great two weeks, hanging out with Tyler and watching him grow up bit by bit. We’ve been putting him on his stomach every once in a while to let him get some neck-cersise. He doesn’t like it that much, though: he gets frustrated that everything is so heavy in that position. I reward him with pinkies to chew on when he gets frustrated.

Other random baby highlights:

Putting Tyler to bed and taking my pinkie out of his mouth. I watched him continue sucking on his own tongue for another minute in his sleep before he realized the finger was gone.

Going on walks with Jessie and Tyler. We put Tyler in the stroller and see how far along we can get before Jess tires out. We managed to do a good hour-and-a-half of walking yesterday, because Jess wanted to make sure she got to the end of the trail. Low energy at the end, but she definitely made it back home. Tyler seems to like being in the stroller, even on rough terrain, but we usually time it so that he’s asleep while we’re walking. Last time, though, we were out for so long that we fed and burped him while on the trail.

Jess let me get a new laptop. It should arrive sometime next month. She’s the best wife in the world. She’s *also* taken over nightime baby duties, and I’m in charge of the morning. I feel bad that I can’t help, but it’s literally my least favorite thing (so far) about parenting: when Tyler gets all fussy and there’s no reason for it, or when you spend all the time trying to get him to sleep and by the time he goes down, he’s only down for an hour before he gets hungry again. I’m hoping that I’ll be able to take care of him a little bit in the morning before I go to work if the timing works out, just to help Jess out, but we’ll have to see if that works. In exchange, I’m pretty much indentured to Jess for whatever she wants me to do, be it dishes, handyman work, or playing with Tyler during the day while she naps. More than fair, if you ask me.

Still no Judo or derby yet, but give it time.

-N

Yesterday sucked. Today I made up for it.

Yesterday I actually had to go in to work, which made the day not so good. For starters, I had to go there because I had non-writing things to deal with, so the day was inherently less productive than I wanted it to be. I had an abbreviated talk with Dr. Boss about the fate of manuscript 1 (now he is really worried about getting it out on time, arg) that made me feel good about the writing, but kinda crappy about the timing of everything else. He won't be able to pay me unless I commit to TAing in the fall, which I don't think will give me enough flexibility to find and take a job, so the end is really in sight now.

Then I had to run up the hill to get some drugs from a transplant surgeon for some experiments I had planned. He works in my field, and if he weren't such a nice guy, I would consider him a major competitor. Which is why it totally shatter my confidence when he seemed slightly worried and confused about why I had bothered doing all the experiments I've done on my project, and the conclusions I'm going to be able to draw from them... ("But do you have some other side project besides those two screens that didn't work? Something else to talk about at your defense?" "Uh, no. That's pretty much 5 years of work in an egg shell...") And then I tried to get some work done at my desk, but people kept coming by with weird questions, that given my seniority I am supposed to answer. It makes me feel like a jerk to be so irritable (Really? You want to know where the alcohol waste goes, and you thought because I have my headphones in and haven't looked up for 20 minutes I would want to tell you about that?), so the best solution for me is to work from home. For me and everyone else. But when I got home (late), I didn't have any energy to do anything but whine about how I haven't found a job to Matt. Ick, what a lame day.

But today, I decided I don't have time for sucky days. I am hoping to get ahead of my writing schedule, and get back into the lab for a couple of days and finish up the easy experiment for manuscript 1 (since we are worried about the timeline now). I got up, took my breakfast in front of my computer and decided I have so much to do, I can write whatever I feel like, stop whenever I get stuck, but just keep writing (I think I am better at editing than first writes). Yesterday, I had barely 6 pages of "content" and 23 references. Right now I have 15 pages, 1 figure, 2 tables and 70 references. I am kinda feeling like a rockstar right now. And I do mean unshowered.

Unfortunately, I am going back in to work tomorrow, so I expect less progress, but hopefully I can clear up a few things with Dr. Boss- like this table that I have running on to a second page, how will I know when to stop? And is the figure a bad idea? And should I try to get back in to do that experiment? And if so, do I really need to keep coming in 3 days a week for all these meetings? Wish me luck.

Working on a system

One of the things I've started to improve while writing is my system for organizing papers electronically. Since so much is available online, I have maybe half of the papers I read downloaded, and many of them I just view online (Pub Med Central- how did people learn anything before this??). Just to give you a sense, I am still on a the first couple pages of this document, and I have 30 references- and LOADS more to fill in for just those pages. I knew that dealing with references was going to be A THING.

I didn't quite realize that my plan was going to be so lame. I usually have open my email and RSS feed, and then the next couple tabs of my browser are papers I'm looking at, or looked at. Well, the part of my paper I am writing now is about the history of this feild, so I am ILL'ing things from the library( one tab for library login, one tab for journal search, another tab for updating my ILL requests) and when I find papers, I don't want to lose them to the cloud- so they stay open. I decided this was all getting out of control yesterday and broke it into 3 windows. One for the library- log in, search, request, each have a separate tab. One for the papers I am finding via pubmed- one search, and already half a dozen papers I am half done with. And finally one for my email, RSS feed, pandora and yeah, pictures of Tyler. He's still got his own tab open so I can browse photos while I imagine what the rest of my family is up to.

Getting forgetful

All I can say in my defense is that when I get focused on writing projects (which involve burying my nose in a book and thinking about 60 years worth of literature), I tend to become impervious to social cues. Last week, Dr. Boss gave me the green light to write full time, which I've been doing. So I was a little miffed when he stopped by my desk yesterday to ask me about some experiments we have planned for the summer- like namely what I was doing about them. First I had to return to reality land to engage in conversation, and why are we talking about this anyway? I'll deal with it in July, right?

I confided this to my coworker who at first was equally confused. Does Dr. Boss not want you to be writing? Or maybe he just wanted you to volunteer some clues about how it is going. Have you told him how it's going? Well, no, actually. I didn't feel like I had anything to say yet because there is a lot of work to be done, and I know what I need to do right now. But he works really hard at not putting pressure on by asking "how's the writing going?" (which would probably make my head implode), so maybe I could help him by giving him some clues that I am on track. Or asking for the help that I want. Something so he doesn't worry I've just taken a vacation for the next couple months.

I suppose from his perspective, I just stopped coming in to lab, which doesn't look any different from when I do go on vacation. I've sent a couple emails today to give him some clues that I am working, and still really committed to this project, and interested in having it succeed so he doesn't worry I am just going to cut out once I have my degree.

And in case these seem like really obvious and normal interactions to have, and you are not sure why I am being so intentional about it, yesterday my foggy brain actually responded "Oo, fun!" to a friend who told me she had been at the doctors. So yeah, the social interaction center of my brain is clearly on sabbatical until the think about science part of my brain gets this thing under control.

My Application for Superdad Status

Name: Noel Preecs
Duration of Dadhood: One week, 5 days
Reason for Superdad Status: Managed to calm a baby by allowing him to suck on the pinky of my right hand while *simultaneously* giving my wife a massage with my left hand. Baby was comforted to sleep, and so was mom.

Application Status: Approved! *Ker-Stamp*

Very little that qualifies as ‘news’ happens around here. Did you know that Tyler continues to be hungry, poopy, and tired in a pseudorandom order pretty much all the time? His sleep has been pretty phenomenal, so far, actually. He slept for 5 or 6 hours in a row the last two nights. He always wakes up very hungry (and often in serious need of a new diaper) after those sessions, but it’s great for mom and Dad to recharge their batteries. Normally we all go to sleep together at about 8 or 9 and whenever Tyler wakes up, both parents get up and give him a feeding and use the milk pump. That’s usually his 5 hour span, right there. Then they’ll be some more random wake-ups for a while, then usually a few more 4 hour sleep stints, usually lasting until 11 or so in the morning. It can be a little rough at times but believe me, I appreciate how good we have it on the ‘restful baby o-meter’.

His umbilical cord is about to fall off, so I’m dosing out the alcohol pretty regularly. It goes around the belly button, for people who don’t know. I’m definitely not going to rush it, but it’s hanging on by an ever-decreasing thread. And once it heals up, bath time will be a lot more fun, I think.

Speaking of which, we gave Tyler a bath today, and his hair is soft and full of body once again. He likes the actual bathing but dislikes having to get out of the tub into the cold air.

We have also acquired an ever-expanding repertoire of baby-soothing techniques including:

-Walking Around
-The Pinky Finger
-Running water in the sink (this one works the best)
-’Dancing Baby’ (The words go: “Dancing Baby loves to dance”)

More News as it Develops.

-N

Conquering the Night

I like this ‘midnight blog’ thing. Could become a trend.

The last few nights have been battles between Tyler’s unpredictability and his more reasonable nature as we try to figure out what a newborn sleep schedule might actually look like. Three and two nights ago were rough, with nice, solid, 4 hour sleep blocks surrounding a stretch of 4 hours in the middle of the night when Tyler was up and crying much of the time. I blame most of it on formula experiments. Last night was great. We put him to bed at 9, fed him every four hours, and he was pretty much asleep other than that. We’re trying again tonight, but so far Tyler hasn’t seen fit to actually go to sleep yet.

Jess, too, is coming along. We use the ‘walk’ as a metric of her progress. Today we bundled up Tyler, put him in the stroller and walked down the street to the park, and then back. Last time, Jess didn’t quite make it all the way, so progress, yes? Also, we saw a good 4 or 5 neighbors, all of whom we knew, and all of whom were all excited to see Tyler. It makes us feel good to think we’ve got some roots down here, tenuous as they might be, at times.

Speaking of metrics, we have a unit of measure around here called ‘The Cat’. It’s a measure of how much stuff you have on your lap that keeps you from getting up, easily. It’s used when someone needs to go do something, the one with fewer ‘cats’ usually has to get up and do it. Here are some equivalent cat measures, just in case you feel like adopting this system as your own.

1 Cat = 1 Cat
Being a little pregnant = 1 Cat
Being a lot pregnant = 3 Cats
Holding a Baby = 2 Cats
Holding a sleeping baby = 3 Cats
Using a Laptop = 0 Cats
Eating = .5 Cats
Having a Cesarean in the past 3 days or less = All the Cats
Having a Cesarean in the past week or less = Approx 1 Cat, depending on painkiller levels
Husband modifier = Approx 1 cat

-N

Dissertation Writing

Step 1) Spill your hot tea across all your accumulated documents and turn your post it notes to a sponge...

Yeah, this isn't going as smoothly as I'd like. I need to get myself some distance from work to get things done. I've done the reading I wanted to do before I get too committed to my outline, and developing that is today's project. Sadly, while I have most of my papers at work, I don't think I'll be very productive at my desk- I'd rather chat with my coworkers, I get asked for advice... and I really just need to be selfish and efficient right now. I still need to go to work 3-4 days a week due to meetings, but I need to find a way to be productive despite all the distractions. Sitting at home in the spare room having the cat force his way onto my computer and spilling my tea isn't seeming like much of an improvement.

My project for the next bit is to turn my (now soggy) notes into a more coherent outline, and maybe commit some words to paper. Don't be surprised if this turns out a bit like Noel's liveblogging- I'll have lots to say at the start, and then it'll get crazy, and I won't want to spend an extra second on my keyboard and then we'll just say- graduated! Party!

I have no idea what time it is

One year in college, for spring break, I decided to stay in my apartment for a whole week and do nothing but play video games and eat pizza. I would stay up as late as I wanted, sleep in as much as I wanted, and pretty much fill my days with recreational video game playing.

It was a lot of fun, I really enjoyed the solitary time, and it was my first time having a PS2 (borrowed) that I could play all the cool new games on. But the sleeping...that was a lot of fun. I stayed up until 2 in the morning the first night, then later and later, until I was staying up until the sun came up, sleeping all day, and going out at night to pick up frozen pizzas. Eventually I ended up succumbing to the standard sleep cycle, but a good time was had by all.

And I’m reminded by this, now, because my sleep schedule has gotten all borked up, but it still a lot of fun. It’s 1:30 in the morning when I’m writing this, and I got a good 6 hours of sleep earlier...yesterday. I went to bed at 4 and slept until 10 thanks to the kind baby-watching skills of Mom.S and Jessie. It was great, but when you wake up from that, at that time of night...what do you do? Am I supposed to have breakfast at midnight? Because I just did. Tuna sandwich. I don’t know...when is cereal an appropriate food in these circumstances?

But really, I’m fully enjoying the wonkiness. Once Tyler gets to sleep, as he so often does, and I’m in charge, and Jessie is out and getting good rest on the couch next to me, and Mom.S is recharging her batteries upstairs, I get the whole house to myself. It’s quiet, is solitary, and as long as I don’t actually have anywhere to be or anything to do tomorrow, I don’t even have to worry about how weird all of this is. It’s fun, in a strange way.

I’ve been peed on twice, now. Not in the more traditional ‘fountain’ style. I’ve been holding him and reading to him, and noticing how cute he is, and how sweet his face is, and how budgy his arms are, and how warm his back is, and how warm...uh...and wet...oh. Time to go change some diapers.

Tyler has been doing some impromptu smiles. I’m not sure he even knows he is doing it, but it just *melts* the heart.

Tyler has been a real sport about getting his day-night cycle in check. He’s eating about every 4 hours at night, now, and while he does wake up pretty periodically, the restful stretches are getting more and more established. Good for him. And us.

Jess went for a walk today with Mom.S. They put Tyler in the stroller (while I was sleeping) and went out to get some exercise. Jess did a few cul-de-sacks and was on the way to the park when her gas tank ran out. So they came back. But that’s a pretty impressive benchmark for a girl who had a hole in her abdomen just a short week ago.

Tyler is 1 week old, officially. Though wednesday was his ‘birthday’, it wasn’t until a few hours ago that we crossed the 1 week mark. We got him some formula to celebrate.

I’m glad jess is sleeping. She’s feeling a lot better than she has in the past, but I can tell the lack of sleep is not good for her. Lucky for both of us, I’ve got the energy to keep the house, and baby Tyler, well cared for in her absence. Sometimes she likes it when I’m big and strong and in charge, and sometimes she likes it when I don’t know what I’m doing. She says it makes her feel better that she can’t always calm him down either. He’s a baby, sometimes he just does stuff.

We’re getting some of our first visitors over the next few days. Local types. First is a lady from roller derby that let us come see her baby when she was just 4 days old. We also got a nice gift from our neighbors: diapers! Can’t go wrong with that.

I’ve signed up for Amazon Mom. I guess we get free Amazon Prime Shipping now? It didn’t cost anything. I figure they have to offset the cost by letting us know about baby stuff we can buy, but that’s a tradeoff I’m willing to make. You can also sign up for a subscription to diapers. They just show up at your door. We might try that later, but I’m hoping to try some G diapers or some cloth diapers soon. We’re going to have this kid for several years, and I’d like to try and keep the landfills at least a little bit clean, if I can. Experimental cloth diapers are on the way (thanks, amazon mom!) We’ll try them out and see what we think. But clearly there’s something to be said for the ease of disposables in the early going when you have no idea what you’re doing.

-N

It begins

If Noel is going to continue posting that life is returning to Normal in Texas, then I think it is safe for me to return to posting. I'll just skip to the point:

I did my last experiment today.

I usually like to be superstitiously cautious when it comes to saying things about results before they happened (ie. "That experiment totally worked"is never uttered until it's been repeated in triplicate and shown at lab meeting. Not, say, while I am waiting to read the results). Which is why, even though I sensed this would be the case Monday, I only whispered it to a coworker when we were well away from the experiments in question. And then waited for that to be confirmed by Dr. Boss. "Those are great results. Send them to the collaborator and let's be done wit this."

Awesome, manuscript 4 is set- from my end.

And yes, I've agreed to do more experiments for manuscript 1 (and I suspect 2 and 3 aren't far behind) this summer, I won't be a graduate student then, so it hardly seems like it counts. In fact, that's more like job security. In the meantime, it's time to write. Dr. Boss and I hashed out a timeline and outline for this document. I'm feeling mixed excitement and worry. Doing experiments I can do. I've been doing that for like a decade. Writing long but cohesive documents, using a complex word template and citation manager on a computer that has already been through thick and thin with me is a whole new adventure. It might suck- but the blessing is that I actually enjoy writing quite a bit. (That's why I've been looking for jobs in technical writing) And let's not forget that you only get to write this document when you are going to FINISH. And GRADUATE. AWESOME.

I'm going to try and figure out a system- write from home or work? read while writing or schedule blocks of time? And how do I keep to a deadline? At least while I am getting started, I am stuck by a couple personal limitations- I can't read anything first thing in the morning (it doesn't stick), and although I write really well at night, I can't sleep immediately after I think about my research. Editing or formatting and figures can fill in some of that gaps later, but for now I need to decide what goes into this document.

A Baby Vacation

We are so darn lucky. Tyler is just the best little baby. He’s easygoing, calm, easy to put to sleep, slow to fuss, and I’ve figured out all of his little cues for telling us how to stop him crying. It’s either food, diaper, burping (it’s usually this one), or he wants my pinky in his mouth. I’ve never met a fussy Tyler I couldn’t cure. It makes me feel like a freakin’ super-dad.

Recovery continues apace. We’re at home, now, trying to establish some routines. I try things out here and there, like different styles of formula (ready-made, super-easy to use, or the more bulk ‘concentrate’ that, evidently, I was supposed to keep in the fridge. Oops. We learn.) different bottles, different ways to play with Tyler. It’s all a big science experiment.

We went in for the first doctor appointment today, and Tyler is already gaining weight (crap, he is going to be a football player after all.) This also marked our first jaunt out of the house with Tyler, and we were able to be pretty sparse with the diaper bag, at least this time. Tyler is, for the most part, pretty calm in the car, unless the sun gets in his eyes. Clean bill of health for Tyler, also, though oddly enough they measured him at 21 inches, not the previously reported 22. So it looks like the original weight AND height were off. Suspicious...maybe we got someone else's baby! (We did not get someone else's baby.) Tyler also made a habit of protesting loudly whenever we had to undress or unwrap him followed by a nearly immediate calming when given ‘the pinkie’. Tyler doesn’t like pacifiers much, but he LOVES pinkies. Many thanks to dad on that one. I owe you a...power tool of some sort, I guess. That’s the standard currency for Grandpa Preecs, yes?

Oh, by the way, if there are any special requests for titles, get them in now. Bappy, Grams, Ba-ba, uncle, chooma-shoom, whatever you like. I make no promises that Tyler won’t auto-generate a nickname even more cute for you on his own, but we can at least plant a seed if you want.

Mom Jessie is doing pretty well for a woman with a hole in her abdomen. She continues to move better every day, and is taking fewer and fewer painkillers, though I do have to keep on her to not take ‘none’. It’s a good thing we have our little baby timer.

Have I talked about the baby timer already? You know what, I don’t care. I’ll talk about it again anyway. I’m not even going to go bother to check the blog. I’m reckless!

It’s this neat android app called ‘baby esp’. It gives you different timers for how long since baby has either started or stopped feeding, sleeping, playing, diapers, or anything else you want. There’s even a setting for mom and dad that we use to keep track of some prescriptions, pumping times, and sleep times. Not that we really need to keep track of sleep, but there’s just so much data-mining capability in this thing. You can do plots of how much feeding or sleeping, or all sorts of stuff. I’m excited for Tyler to get older just so we can have more entries. It’s neat.

I’ve started reading to Tyler. We’re starting with ‘I Shall Wear Midnight’, which is nice because I haven’t read it either. I’m working on voices. Voices are important. We’re a chapter and a half in already. He seems to really like just listening to my voice, as long as he’s not gassy, which happens unfortunately often.

Tyler has been getting up every 1.5 hours at night to feed. I didn’t realize until today’s doctor’s appointment that this was as dire a problem as it actually seems to be. I get a couple of hours of sleep before evening hits, proper, and I can stay up for hours. Then Jess relieves me after a while and we alternate as the mood strikes us. As long as one of us takes charge, we can get some pretty decent sleep, just not contiguously. Like I said, Tyler is a pretty great baby. We’re supposed to be making him sleep more (read: eat less) at night, though, and be more awake during the day, so we’ve been advised to s---t---r---e---t---c---h out the time between feedings, which probably means listening to Tyler complain for a while. Never all that pleasant to hear, but at least he doesn’t have the lung power to knock out the serious dBs...yet.

So yeah, it’s all going very well, so far. Yay!

-N

Recoverwatch: days 1 and 2

So when we last left our heroes, they were starting to recover and doing quite well, individually. The next hurdle to get over was to get Jessie actually to see her baby. She had done all the work but only caught a few glimpses of Tyler while under the effects of some seriously groggy painkillers. This is thursday morning at this point, and Jess was coming down off the drugs and starting to be able to move around. We made a big production of her first standing up and going to the bathroom to do some checking on her, but after all that exertion, her fever caught back up with her again and they wanted to make sure it went down before they let her go see him.

I, lucky enough, got to go see him whenever I wanted. The nurses had been giving him formula because Jess wasn’t going to be able to feed him, so most times I went in to see him, he was sleeping and very cute and happy. I spent most of my time with Jess, though, she could barely move and really needed help with everything, like getting ice chips and juices as her intestines started to work again.

So Jess got some tylenol and that got her fever down by around three in the afternoon, and she was able to move around, and so we finally got to take Jess into the nursery, nearly a full day after the actual birth took place. There were some tears. I got video. It was a nice, nice moment.

After that, we did our best to get Jessie back into a feeding schedule with Tyler, but, unfortunately, he’d already gotten used to bottles, formula, and large volumes, as opposed to the nipples and ‘just a few drops’ you get from regular breast feeding before the milk comes in (takes 3 or 4 days). We went in for a few feedings and managed, just barely, to get him to latch on to Jessie and feed formula through a tiny tube, but it was a lot of work every time. He’d gotten spoiled by the formula and he’s been having trouble getting used to the breast ever since. We have a lot of patience to give, and a lot of support here at the hospital, so we’ve been doing little bits here and there to get better, but it’s still a chore. Still, given the choice between potential life-threatening infection and hard to breast-feed, I think I’ll take the latter.

So a couple of rough breast-feeding sessions later, Jess was required by the doctors to try and pee. This involved a lot of drinking of water, and then painful walking over to the toilet. I was told several times that my walking assistance made me the best husband in the world. Also, I’m really good at putting pillows behind her back because I can just grab her arm and lift her up, bodily. Muscles!

Anyway, we ended up with this marathon session where Jess had to stand and walk to the toilet (a serious challenge when your painkillers are starting to wear off) and tried to pee, but failed. Then we put her in a wheelchair and took her over for another rough breast feeding session, then we came back, got on the toilet and tried, and succeeded to pee, which took a lot of patience and some discomfort. And *then* Jess needed to take a shower (nurses orders) to clean herself off and take off the outer dressing for her stitches. That wasn’t fun either. And then after all of that, including some sharp pains in her side while trying to shower, she finally got to lay down on the bed and get arranged with all her pillows and all her blankets, and the nurse came in to give her her next dose of painkillers. Jess made one more trip to the bathroom, with a little less pain, and then really hunkered down in the bed. Pillows, blankets, warmth, eye shield, everything. An hour later when the nurse came in to check on how the painkillers were looking, she just peeked in the door and we both looked over to see Jessie *totally* passed out. We just nodded at each other and let her sleep.

So yesterday ‘ended’ about 1 in the morning when we decided to catch some sleep in between the nurses who came in to check on Jessie every hour or so. It’s imperfect, but I’ll be honest, *so far* it’s not so bad. I seem to get enough sleep to remain functional and active, if not capable of doing complex calculus, during the day. We’ll see if it lasts.

We woke up several times, but the last time was at about 7 or so, and mom Swanson brought us breakfast. We missed Tyler’s morning feeding but before too long he got discharged out of the NICU and is currently in the room with us. I’m sure you’re all thinking that this means there should be an orgy of skype calls and pictures, but, I don’t know if you know this, but we’re *busy*. Jessie is the machine that will turn food (and a lot of hopefully-supurfluous antibiotics) into milk, eventually. I’m in charge of everything else. Helping Jessie move around, cleaning breast pumps and checking diapers and swaddling and helping Tyler relax and everything.

Tyler, as a roomate, is pretty good. He’s incredibly easy to calm down. He gets worked up pretty easily, but a simple shushing and a little rocking has knocked him out (or dead to sleep) pretty much every time. The breast feeding has been a challenge, but we’re getting better at it, and the more we do it, the more Tyler will get used to it.

Fun breastfeeding story: Our first time trying to feed tyler on our own. It took some doing, but we eventually got him latched on, though a lot of superfluous equipment is required. He was munching away, and every once in a while we shake him to make sure he doesn’t fall asleep (he does sleep really easily). Usually I just start moving his arms and he’ll flex his small but manly little baby muscles and wake up and keep feeding. Well last time we would wake him up to make sure he was still eating, and it worked for a while, until he was done, and I mean *done*. I was moving his arms and his legs and his everything and the poor kid had just gone *limp*. Adorable.

This paragraph comes a little later, we’ve decided to shift our philosophy on feeding Tyler: we’re going to keep him on bottle formula until Jessie’s milk comes in and *then* we’ll either get him on breast milk in bottle or breast form. Trying to get all the gear set up to breastfeed him with formula is too dicy and finicky, especially when he wakes up and is already hungry and cranky. We do the best we can.

Anyway, there’s been other little steps here and there. We’ve gotten Tyler pretty well settled in and he’s quite comfortable, I’m getting better at reading his cues and figuring out his natural rhythm. When he wants to sleep, when he wants to eat...when he doesn’t want anything and I’m free to stare into his adorable little eyes and tell him all about the great big, wild world out there that we’ll be showing him soon (I’m trying to get an early start on english. :) Jess is doing okay, though her temperature is up again. We’d normally be out for sure tomorrow, sometime, but they like you to be fever-free for 24 hours before they let you go, so we may be here a little past saturday, potentially.

I went out to get hamburgers and shakes for dinner. Yum.

-N