Category: life events

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Meg’s Word List

"To you, Chicken, I say 'bah, bah, bah.'"

As first-time parents, I assume it’s expected that we should be surprised with the level of language comprehension and execution that our 17 month old has.  To be fair, neither Brooke nor I have much experience with children of this age, so we don’t really know what Meg is supposed to be doing, aside from walking and playing.  That said, it’s astounding to me the number of words Meg seems to know already.  My Mom has marveled at this fact in the past, and her general feeling is that Meg wasn’t walking for so long that her language skills developed sooner instead (we’re convinced it was because of the ear infections, messing with her balance: she was walking within 4 days of getting ear tubes put in).

With all this in mind, I figured I should recount the words Meg knows.  We aren’t really keeping much of a “baby book,” in favor of taking a ridiculous number of photos and videos, and writing things down on this blog, instead.  Bear in mind that these are all words that Meg appears to know, most of which she can say, though it may not sound like we know it (and I have included her phrasing in parenthesis after each word).  At the bottom, I’m also listing a series of body parts Meg knows.  So far as we’ve read, this part is quite impressive, as she’s not really supposed to be able to do this for another year or so.  She can only say a few of them, but she can point to each one reliably.

Words:

  • Mom (“Mama”)
  • Dad (“Da”)
  • Meg (“Mee”)
  • Edie (“Dih-di”)
  • Banana (“Nana”)
  • Apple (“Appo”)
  • Juice (“Ju”)
  • Car (“Doh”)
  • Chicken (“Ba ba ba”)
  • Sheep (“Bah”)
  • Cow (“Mmm”)
  • Outside (“Outside”)
  • Elmo (“Emmo”)
  • Abby (“Abbee”)
  • That (“Da”)  — [Note: This is what she says when she points at something…]
  • Shirt (“Sit”)
  • Shoes (“Soos”)
  • No (“No”) —  [Note: As in, “I don’t want to do that”]
  • No? (“No no”) — [Note: As in, “I know I shouldn’t do this but I want to do it anyway…”  :-)]
  • Goodnight (“Night night”)
  • Hi (“Hi”)
  • Hello (“Ello”)
  • Goodbye (“Buh bye”)
  • Hat (“Hatta”)
  • Star (“Tar”)
  • Ball (“Bah”)
  • More (“Mo”)
  • Cat (“Didee”)
  • Good morning (“Minning”)
  • Uh oh (“oh-ohhh”)
  • Whoa (“whoa”)
  • Help, please (“Hep-eez”)
  • Baby (“bee-bee”)
  • All done (“aw done”)
  • Close door (“ah doh”)

Body Parts:

  • Nose (“no”)
  • Eyes (“ay”)
  • Ears
  • Teeth
  • Cheeks
  • Knees (“Nee”)
  • Feet
  • Toes (“Dohs”)
  • Belly
  • Hair
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Our New Reality

As some of you may have heard by now, my position at the University of Iowa is, unfortunately, coming to an end sooner than planned.  I had hoped it would last into 2012, but alas, funding shortages are moving the schedule up to the point where I can probably only stay here into October (though no specific date has been set).  While this, obviously, isn’t the greatest of news, I’m trying to take it in stride and view it as an opportunity to move on to bigger and better things.

Sadly, there isn’t much up in our area for my education and training level, so far as teaching or industry prospects go.  Therefore, we’ll be making the move back to St. Louis.  Luckily, Brooke was able to secure a position at her old job, Bridges Community Support Services, practically the same day I told her the news.  They are more than happy to get her back, as they’re going through the Survey process again like they do every few years (effectively, it’s a State audit of their services and records).  She has frequently commented about how she missed working there, so she’s excited to get back to work with those individuals!

As a part of this situation, we made the decision for Brooke to go ahead and start at Bridges as soon as she could.  Therefore, she started on July 18th.  Basically, this means that we’ll be living apart for the near future.  She’ll still return to Iowa on Thursdays, or we’ll meet up in Hannibal occasionally for the weekend, as that’s the half-way point.  Brooke will be staying with her sister, who also works in the area.  Meg will be staying with me here in Iowa, as daycare is substantially cheaper here than it is in St. Louis.  My Mom was kind enough to come visit for this week to help transition me into “semi-single parent” mode, and Meg will stay with Brooke’s parents for a few days next week before starting at daycare again.

Me staying up here a bit longer will also ensure we actually get something out of that garden we’ve worked so hard on!

Hopefully this transition won’t take too long.  Believe me, this strategy isn’t the ideal way to carry this out, but we’re going to make the best of it.  Again, this wasn’t exactly “The Plan,” but we’re looking at it as an opportunity to return to the friends we made over the 5 years we lived there, and to be closer to family that want to see their granddaughter/niece more often!  I’ve applied to various positions in the St. Louis area and have some contacts across the city that are keeping their eyes and ears open for me.  I should start hearing back on the first crop of applications in the next week or so, I hope.  Certainly, all your thoughts and prayers are appreciated.

Thus, we’ll probably post some updates here over the coming weeks (hopefully not months…).  We see this as “fate,” of sorts, as many of our close friends are moving back to the St. Louis area and things are aligning relatively well for our return…with the notable exception of me having a job, of course.

So, this is our “New Reality” for the time being.  Certainly not a perfect situation, but one we know we have support in dealing with.

What point could there be troubling?
Head down wondering what will become of me?
Why concern we cannot see
But no reason to abandon it
The time is short but that’s all right
Maybe I’ll go in the middle of the night
Take your hands from your eyes, my love
All good things must come to an end some time
But don’t burn the day away
Don’t burn the day away.

— “Pig;”  Dave Matthews Band

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Big Day

Meg’s ear appointment was supposed to be last Wednesday, but somehow, the hospital over-booked and we were bumped to today.  If you recall, we were getting ear tubes put in to help limit or eliminate her countless ear infections, hopefully spurring her to start walking and put on some more weight (she’s skinny!).  The procedure is outpatient surgery, something neither Brooke nor I have really had much experience with, so the whole thing was rather interesting.

We got a call yesterday afternoon that instructed us to have Meg here at 7:00 am.  So, Brooke and I got up at 5:30, got everything ready, then woke Meg up and hopped in the car by 6:15 to head down to Iowa City.  We got here a bit early, but got checked in pretty quickly and was moved back to the pre-op area.  All the nurses and doctors were very impressed with Meg’s demeanor, as she was being shockingly good compared with the other toddlers that they usually see.  Honestly, I was pretty surprised too, as Meg couldn’t have anything but clear liquids before going into surgery…and she could only have those clear liquids 2 hours prior to the surgery.  Therefore, Meg hadn’t actually ate or drank anything since 7:00 pm the night before.  That, and to get her there on time, we had to wake her up a good hour before she would normally wake up.  All things considered, she was very happy.

We had to keep her entertained for 30-45 min before they took her back for surgery.  She got her oxygen levels checked on her toe and her blood pressure done on her leg, all while I tried distracting her with a book.  Worked pretty well, really.  Meg did not want to be weighed, and wasn’t a fan of having a stethoscope on her chest.  Other than that, she did alright while being poked and prodded.

…but she was pretty upset when the doctors had to take her to surgery.  Unfortunately, we couldn’t accompany her back there unless one of us got dressed up in a surgical gown, etc., so we just let the doctors do their work.  Brooke and I had to sit in the waiting room for another 30 min or so while the work was being done, then the doctor called us in to talk about things.  Meg did quite well, apparently.  Tubes put in, went under anesthesia just fine, and seemed to be coming out of it well, too.  After Meg was awake, the doctors brought her in to a post-op recovery room where we had to sit while we waited for her to be allowed to leave.  They had to do the same oxygen, heart rate, etc. tests again, but nothing was different.  In the picture above, you can see the cotton balls in her ear, but we removed those shortly thereafter.

Oh, and Meg was very thirsty.  As in, 20 oz of apple juice in about 15 min thirsty.  And she liked the hospital graham crackers very much.  🙂

Because Meg was so good, the nurses brought in a few stuffed animals for her to choose between.  While I would have chosen the blue, furry monster, Meg went with the smaller, less interesting yellow bear (?) with sunglasses.  She didn’t ask me, though.  Oh well.

All in all, the whole morning went very well. I was still able to make it to the lab by 10:00 am to get some work done, and Brooke took Meg home, still in her pajamas.  We have some ear drops to use for the next week or two, and she should only need Tylenol today, but we’re told she should be mostly back to normal by this evening, already.

Hopefully she’ll sleep well.  She had a big day.  And did great.  🙂

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“…it’s a series of tubes.”

We’ve been fighting Meg’s various ear infections since, oh, last November or so. We think it started around the time she came down with strep, and thereafter, it just seemed like she had a (likely unrelated…) string of ear infections that just…wouldn’t…go…away… We tried at least 4 different antibiotics, nebulizer treatments, and once we hit Spring, even some allergy medication. None of them would ever, truly, get rid of the infections. Sure, while on antibiotics, she would improve, but a week or so later, she’d be back to her ear infected ways.

We didn’t even notice at first.  She went in for a regular check-up and they told us she had an ear infection.  She had been sleeping alright (relatively speaking…), never had a fever, no discernible hearing difficulties, and wasn’t pulling on her ears or anything: Meg wasn’t presenting with any of the typical signs, so we hadn’t even noticed.  Since then, we’ve paid a bit more attention and can usually tell when it’s getting worse.  Then, we make the appointment, get some more (or different) antibiotics, she gets better for a week or so, and then it gets worse again.

Finally, over a month ago, we scheduled the appointment with the otolaryngology department here at the University to check her out.  Took that long to get her in…  Yesterday, at the appointment, Meg did remarkably well!  The doc said she had some fluid in one of her ears, but definitely no infection in the other one.  In the end, she recommended going with ear tubes for sure, then if they pop out too soon (i.e. less than 6 mo; they can stay in up to 3 years), or the infection comes back, then consider “shaving back” the adenoids.  Others had told us that tonsillectomy could be in the picture, but this doctor didn’t think her tonsils were bad or anything (w00t!).

Now, what are these tubes going to do? Here’s the description and diagram:

Ventilation tubes allow fluid to drain out of the middle ear space and allow air to reenter. The risk of recurring ear infections is greatly reduced. Hearing returns to normal with the tube in place and speech development can get back on track.

So after this is done, and assuming it works, we’re hopeful that Meg will put on some more weight and start walking, as we think her whole system has been messed up, slowing her development.  She’s cruising just fine, can stand, and has even taken a step or two, but it just seems like her balance is off and is affected by the ears.  For example, she only seems to try taking steps when she’s only a day or two out from beginning a round of antibiotics.  Sure, correlative, but balance in a biped is greatly affected by the situation of your ears (specifically, the semicircular canal, a component of your inner ear).  So far as speech development goes, she’s making attempts at repeating words you say, and frequently she succeeds, but at 15 mo old, she probably should have been doing this more a few months ago.

Meg isn’t too far behind, but we’re hoping that getting tubes in will help her out.  Then she can start running around and terrorizing the chickens and her mother.  🙂

Oh yeah, and the title comes from the late, great Senator Ted Stevens…who described the internet as a “series of tubes.”

Sigh.

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Hootie Was Right

Last Wednesday night, Meg went to bed as she normally does: takes a milk bottle (8 oz, usually), goes to sleep within 15-20 min, and we are out of the room within 30 min.  She woke up around 10:30 and had more milk, and had to be rocked to sleep again.  If I remember correctly, she woke up again in the 1:00 hour and had to be rocked to sleep yet again.

3:30 am rolls around, and she won’t go back down.  She will fall asleep, but we can’t lay her back in the crib without her waking up.  We finally bring her to bed with us, causing me to stay in bed and skip an hour of work.  Brooke, luckily, was on spring break, so she didn’t have to be at work at 7:30 am.

Meg really hadn’t slept through the night but for a handful of times since last November when she had strep.  Sometimes, she’d wake up once per night, sometimes two.  This past week or so, it had gone up to 3 or 4 times a night.  Wednesday night was the last straw.  3:30 am until 6:00 am is simply ridiculous when you have a one-year-old that doesn’t have an ear infection, and whose teeth aren’t causing that much pain: she’d been given Orajel and a few doses of Tylenol throughout the night.

Granted, Meg has battled various sicknesses and multiple ear infections, and the teething has been an issue more recently.  But to our knowledge, nothing was physically wrong with her now.  She was just escalating the times she’d wake up in the middle of the night, and simply would not go back to sleep on her own.

Brooke did some research, posted a plea for help on Facebook, and went to the library on Friday to see what books she could find.  She settled on “The Happiest Toddler On The Block,” by Harvey Karp.  Mostly, we used the book for the sleeping portion, although I’m sure Brooke will read the rest of it for other interesting tidbits.

Basically, there were a few possibilities outlined in the book to try with your kid, and I will briefly summarize them here:

  1. Immediately when your child starts crying, go into their room, pick them up, soothe them until they stop crying, and then put them down again in the crib.  If the start crying again, pick them up and do it again.  And again and again.  This can take 20-50 times when you first try it, though it will decrease each time you do it.
  2. Let your child cry for 3 minutes, then open their door, look to make sure they haven’t thrown up or injured themselves, then say “I love you, it is time for you to go to sleep, goodnight,” and then close the door again.  As they will undoubtably continue crying, go back in 5 minutes and do it again, then go back in 10 minutes and do it again, and finally go back every 15 minutes thereafter until they go to sleep, constantly reminding you that you’re there, even though they can’t see you. This method could take up to 5 nights, with the third night being the worst.  The crying could last an hour, easily, especially for the first few nights.

We chose the second option, as the first one never seemed to work in the past (or any portion of the method).

As we really didn’t want to risk a repeat of Wednesday night, we went ahead and decided to start Friday night.  We went out to dinner at the Starlight Room (very good!), and got ice cream at Dairy Queen.  We had a very pleasant Friday night, in preparation for what was to come…

Meg went down by 7:30 just as she normally does, and then she woke up around 10:30.  Brooke was already in bed, and as it was Friday night and I was staying up gaming anyway, I took the first shift.  I did exactly as the book prescribed, and used the stopwatch on my phone to make sure I went in at 3 min, 5 min, 10 min, etc.  Brooke stayed in bed and listened, just in case Meg started doing something unhealthy (aside from screaming at the tip-toppest of her lungs).  She also gave me a few pointers, as I wasn’t being “soothing enough” the first two times I poked my head in… 😛

It was around midnight when she finally stopped.  I think it was 11:45, the last time I actually went into the room, but I stayed up later to make sure she didn’t cry for the next 20-30 min.

She was likely tired out after that ordeal that she didn’t wake up again until around 4:00 am.  Brooke got up that time and went in, but she only had to once.  Meg fell asleep after Brooke went in and went through the routine.

Meg slept until 7:00 then.  Not bad for the first night!

The second night, Meg woke up multiple times, but never cried up until the 3 min line, so we never poked our heads in.  Never got up.  Not bad for the second night.

And last night?

Not a peep.

Not one, aside from a little coughing here and there.

Yes, on the third night, Meg slept from 7:00 pm until 7:00 am.  No crying.

Obviously, we’ll see how this translates into Night #4.  We’re off to a good start, certainly.  Because we have started this, we are also being more cognizant of giving her a sippy cup to use throughout the day, for both milk and apple juice.  It was good that we started this on a weekend so we could monitor how much she was drinking.  Yesterday, she had 4 sippy cups-worth of fluids, so she was certainly getting enough out of it.  Since she isn’t drinking as much (or at all) during the night, she transferred most of her fluids to the daytime.  So long as this continues while she’s at daycare, we should be good to go.

I’m sure we’ll still have some bad nights ahead of us, as the teething hasn’t stopped and she will surely get another ear infection or two, but at least now we have a plan and solid footing for a workable sleep schedule: for the whole family.

“Let Her Cry,” indeed.

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Chicks!

I’ve talked about raising chickens for eggs for quite awhile now. We finally have the room, facilities, and time for me to be able to start this enterprise, so I’m REALLY excited! My dad had a flock of chickens when I was a kid that finally met their demise to some rampant dogs when I was in middle school. I never really had much to do with the chickens, but we love to eat eggs and this seems like one more step to the self-sufficient lifestyle that I want to lead. If I can manage to keep these ladies alive and well, and we stay in the house for awhile longer, a couple of milking goats are the next step!

I bought 15 chicks from Orscheln’s Farm and Home in Iowa City on March 9. One of our cars was being serviced, so I had to go pick up Andy from work in Iowa City anyway, so it seemed like a good time to go ahead and pick out my chicks. The flock is 5 Rhode Island Reds, 5 California Whites, and 5 Barred Plymouth Rocks. I’m hoping to end up with 12 laying hens when they’re grown up.

I had my spring break last week, so my goal was to use the time off (and Meg was still going to day care since we had to pay for the week whether we used it or not) to modify an outbuilding into a hen house.  My construction skills are not great and I, apparently, get frustrated really easily, so Andy helped me to finish up on Saturday.  We still need to finish the nesting boxes, roost, and the outdoor run, but the space is usable for the flock to be enclosed in a ring while they get big enough that they won’t be able to escape through the holes in the foundation of the building.  Until their move outside, they were living in a box on our back porch, which made the cat and dog more than a little nervous!

This is the building that I hodgepodged into a hen house.  I didn’t want to spend a lot of money, so I tried to use mostly found wood, but I had to buy most of the wood for the door.  The building has a really cool weather vane on top and a concrete slab to the side, perfect for an outdoor run.  I hope to be able to let the hens “free range” in our yard in the afternoons this summer, but I’ll need to secure the garden first, so they don’t eat our veggies before we get what we need.

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“Just Imagine The Audience Naked”

I don’t advise doing this, yet it is a common option for those with a fear of speech delivery.

Public speaking has never been something I considered to be a “strong suit” of mine.  There were things I did well growing up, and speaking in front of an audience certainly wasn’t one of them.  In high school, I hated answering questions in class.  I hated delivering speeches.  I didn’t like being singled out in front of the class.  Basically, I feared anything that would put me up in front of a group of my peers, or adults, and I avoided it like the plague.

With that in mind, I wanted to write up a blurb about my lectures last week and wanted to talk about them from the public speaking angle, so I checked into when it was that I last even mentioned “public speaking” on the blog.  Low and behold, I find that it was in a post dated January 8, 2006.  At the time, I was lamenting the fact that I had to deliver a presentation for the biomedical sciences program at SLU, in an event called a Colloquium.  As a graduate student at SLU, in the CORE biomedical sciences program, during your second semester in the program, you needed to pick an academic paper, research it, and present it in front of the rest of the people in the program, including four separate departments.  Usually, this group would involve other students and professors, typically never going above 50 people, but frequently only featuring 20+ people in attendance.  The scary part, of course, is that you were presenting this information in front of professors and they could ask you questions.

Tough questions.  Questions you knew you couldn’t answer, even though they thought you could, or should.

Unfortunately, looking back on that particular presentation, it wasn’t very pretty.  I had chosen a pretty boring paper and I didn’t present it well.  However, as a second-year in the program, you have to do another Colloquium presentation, in front of the same group, but by then you have a bit more knowledge and experience under your belt.  My second one was far better.

Over the intervening years (five of them…eeeeesh…), I  had quite a few opportunities to brush up on my public speaking skills.  I had to present papers in front of our department at SLU – a smaller group (up to 20), yet still including students and professors, still entirely capable of tearing you apart with their questions, making you look like an idiot.  Usually, I would over-prepare for these presentations, running through the talk over and over and over again for at least a week prior to its delivery.  And normally, the talks would go just fine.  Still nervous, though.

Looking back on a life of speaking opportunities, I can come up with a few instances when I wasn’t nervous.  One was Boy Scouts.  Another was teaching the undergrads at SLU in a non-major biology course we, the graduate students, ran.  And, most recently, to graduate students here at Iowa and Pharm.D. students last week.

The common thread that I find in these examples is somewhat cliche, but nonetheless important: confidence.  What I found was that, over the years, I was getting better at choosing when it was appropriate for me to speak in front of a group, and usually, it was appropriate when I felt like I knew more about the subject than the other people in the room did.  In the case of teaching undergrads at SLU, I was telling them about depressants and other neurological drugs.  This wasn’t a problem for me, as I knew deep down that there was no one in that room that knew more about the subject.  I would be able to answer any question they threw at me, and if I didn’t know the answer, I could fashion something workable and then get back to them with more details later. Even delivering my dissertation defense to complete the Ph.D., I was talking about the work I had done for 4+ years at SLU, and since I was the one that did the work, I was the most knowledgeable person in the room to talk about it.  The professors could ask me any question they wanted: I was in full control.

Which brings us to last week, when I spoke in front of, perhaps, the largest group I’ve ever had to: ~110 students.  These were pharmacy students here at the University of Iowa and I was talking to them about biotechnology.  Now, I am not well-versed in biotechnology, but it is material I’ve been taught before…years before…  Therefore, I was and still am no expert in the subject.  However, I still knew, deep down, that I knew more about it than they did, and I was imparting that knowledge to them in the most understandable way I could.  As usual, I still practiced the talks for over a week in advance, re-tooled various slides to ensure that they made sense.  I delivered the lectures, answered questions, and all the while, I didn’t get nervous.

So it may have taken 25+ years, but I think figured out public speaking.  It really doesn’t scare me anymore, at least not to the extent that it used to.  I still have to be somewhat choosy about the times where I want to put myself up in front of a group like that to talk about a subject, but at the very least, I think I have a system that I can work with.

Somewhat important if I plan on being a college-level teacher someday…

…when I grow up…  🙂

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Blizzkrieg 2011

We had a pretty good snow day here in good ol’ Iowa.  The blizzard warning, itself, was over around noon today, after which the wind died down considerably and the sun poked through occasionally.  Still, the high today was 9 F, so the snow isn’t going anywhere for awhile. In the end, Iowa City got 10″ of snow, Cedar Rapids closer to 9.5″, and Swisher got 10.7″.

Yesterday afternoon, the University cancelled classes for the evening and through tomorrow morning at 10:00 am.  I got ahold of my boss, who is also in charge of the class, and he and I decided to go ahead and cancel our 10:30 am class, as we figured very few people would be there anyway, and the fact that I probably wouldn’t be able to get there (and I would have been right).  Just before 8:00 am this morning, though, the University canceled class for the remainder of the day.  All was well in the world!

After Meg went down for a (short…) nap this morning, Brooke and I went outside and recorded the video above.  As you can see, there were quite a few snow drifts in our yard, a few of which coming to somewhere between 4 and 6 feet tall.  Needless to say, I’d never seen snow naturally piled to such heights, so it was quite a sight to see.  Unfortunately, it also seemed as if those snow drifts were covering our road to the extent that we wouldn’t be able to get out of here anytime soon.

Thankfully, however, while I was outside in the early afternoon starting to shovel some of the snow out of the way, a very large plow came through and made a route for us.  We took a drive into Swisher to collect Brooke’s car from our friend’s house in town and brought it back here, so now we’re good to go for tomorrow.

So yeah, we watched a few movies and generally stayed inside and stayed warm.  Not a bad Groundhog Day!

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Our Weekend, by the numbers

1 dinner out.
3 full nights of sleep.
10 gallons of beer brewed.
1 movie (in a theater).
1 snow storm driven through.
5 blog postings.
1 worn out baby.
2 worn out grandparents.
4 loaves of bread baked.
2 movies (at home).
15 baby meals cooked, pureed, and frozen.
1 bathtub scrubbed (it was gross).
10 yards of fabric tie-dyed orange.
$100 spent at Wal-Mart.
1 new television series started.
4 new baby shoes.
2 kitchen scales purchased.
1 kitchen scale returned.
14 cups of coffee.
9 hours of driving.