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Fin

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Yesterday was a long time coming. 13 years of primary and secondary education, 5 years of undergraduate education, and 5 years of graduate education…and now I’m done: Ph.D. achieved.

Different graduate programs carry out their various processes in different ways, but the way ours works is that you complete a Preliminary Dissertation (e.g. “comps”) after 2 years in the program, then you carry out your research, write up a Dissertation, and then defend it. In the Pharmacological and Physiological Science Department at SLU, you have a “Private Defense” between you and your Committee, the individuals that have been evaluating you since the Prelim to determine when you’re ready to be done. The meeting was scheduled for 11:00 am and, while it started a little late, it only ended up lasting an hour. After completion of the Private Defense, we moved on to the “Public Defense.” This one was a separate presentation of, essentially, the “story” my Dissertation told. Anyone is allowed to attend this presentation and ask any questions they want, although typically, there aren’t that many questions asked. I had a few and answered them accordingly. After all this, the ballots allowing my graduation were signed by the Committee and I was then granted the Doctor of Philosophy.

After the Defense(s), we had a lovely reception in the main conference room of the department. Food was eaten, beers drunken(?), presents given, and memories remembered. All in all, it was a great experience. I’m certainly sorry to leave SLU, and I’ll miss all the friends I’ve made over the last 5 years. However, it’s time to move on to the next stage of life.

Now that I’m out of school, after 22 years, one could argue that I’m finally ready to join the “real world.”

And I get to join the real world as Andrew J. Linsenbardt, Ph.D. 🙂

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Still Truckin’

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We’ve been doing pretty well these last few weeks, although things have gotten noticeably more hectic. As you can see in the picture above, we’re slowly packing stuff away, getting rid of furniture, and preparing for the move on April 30th (thanks, Baumanns, for all the help on Sunday!). We’re thinking a 14 ft truck will give us plenty of space, but don’t have all the boxes packed, it’s kinda hard to tell. We’ve got a pretty good start, though, and I’m carrying a few packed boxes downstairs every night.

Meg is doing well, and for the most part, she’s letting us get stuff done. She’s been sleeping 5-6 hours straight every night for the last few weeks, but these last few nights, she’s gone 7 to 7.5 hours without waking up. We’re told that’s pretty good for a 5-week-old! This means, however, that she tends to be a bit more active during the day, on average, which makes it difficult to do much packing or dissertating. Meg is getting baptized on Sunday, so we picked out music for the service…which also happens to be our last Sunday at Webster Hills. I think we picked some pretty good tunes for this one – should go out with a bang!

Speaking of “dissertating,” I handed out the “final” copies of the dissertation to my committee yesterday. In less than a week, I’ll be defending it and, hopefully, a Ph.D. 🙂 Way too much stuff to do over the next week! I’m not doing all that much studying yet, but I’ll be doing some reading over the next few days to help prepare.

Either way, we’re flying the the seat of our collective pants. Craziness!

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The Stage is Set

As discussed a few months ago, we’re moving to Iowa City, IA for a postdoctoral fellowship I scored in the College of Pharmacy at the University of Iowa. Up until last week, we weren’t entirely sure what the exact plans were, so far as where we’d be living or when we’d be leaving.

Well. Now we know. 🙂

I talked with my new boss, Dr. Doorn, last Wednesday and worked out various details of my employment in his lab. We had a lengthy conversation about all kinds of details, of course, and settled upon my start date being May 3rd. We opted to shoot for the beginning of May rather than June for a few reasons, one of which being that Brooke already told her current boss that they should have her replacement ready for the beginning of May, but also because the health insurance benefits in Iowa would save us some cash pretty immediately. My position will technically start May 3rd, but I won’t really go into work until May 10th, giving me some “adjustment time.” We’ll be back down on May 13th for my graduation, of course!

Therefore, we’ll be moving out of our apartment in Soulard on April 30th and moving in to our new place in Iowa on May 1st.

We went to Hannibal this past Sunday for Brooke’s Mom’s choir performance (very nice, Diana!), so Brooke stayed in Hannibal with Meg while I went ahead up to Iowa City to look for places to live. Brooke did an excellent job checking out practically every house on Craig’s List, so I visited a few of them and used the Flip Video to send some clips back to Brooke for her approval. I looked at a few properties, and investigated a variety of options, but eventually we settled on a farm house in Swisher, IA, about halfway between Cedar Rapids and Iowa City. It’s got 3 bedrooms, one bathroom, a cellar-like basement, a huge attic (i.e. plenty of storage space), a 3 vehicle carport, and appliances (but no fridge…we’ll have to get that…and no dishwasher…so I may have to hire one…). We are expecting the lease to arrive here in St. Louis sometime this week so we can sign off on it.

So yeah, we’ve got one month for me to graduate; for us to pack…everything; and for us to say “see you later” to quite a few friends down here in St. Louis.

Somehow, I expect this April is going to fly by!

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Cloth Diapering

This is yet another baby-related post. Since we’ve both pretty much been home for the past 3 weeks, we don’t have much else going on, but I’ve been listening to a lot of NPR while breastfeeding, so there will most likely be some other commentary coming soon! Also, I’m determined to see Hot Tub Time Machine sometime soon, so Andy will review that when we get around to giving Meg up to one of my sisters for a couple of hours!

We decided to use cloth diapers early on in pregnancy, mostly because we’re cheap and disposable diapers are super expensive, but the “green” aspect is also nice. I perused Amazon for reviews of different types of diapers and diapering systems and ordered a few sample packs of different types, including a couple of All-In-Ones and different types of covers and inserts. In the end, we decided to go mostly with prefold diaper inserts and Thirsty Duo covers, both for price and ease of use. We’ve had lots of questions about how cloth diapering is going (several people doubted we would actually stick with it, but we haven’t used a disposable since the hospital!), so here’s what we’re doing:

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The whole process needs a prefold diaper, a cover, and a Snappi.

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The prefold gets folded into thirds, which we do when we take them out of the laundry. Then the top part is sort of unfolded a little and goes around Meg’s back and the rubber Snappi is used to keep the diaper together the way pins used to be used.

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Not my best job, but when you’re dealing with a squirmy baby, sometimes you have to take the best you can get.

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Finish by covering the prefold with a cover!

So far, we’ve only had a couple of “blow outs” and are washing diapers about every 3 days. We put in a “doubler” liner at night when Meg sleeps longer and we don’t want to wake her up to change her to help prevent leaks. I think I might be able to make some more of those myself, just like the wipes I made. Otherwise, we won’t have to buy anything else until Meg weighs 18 pounds, so we should be set for awhile. I ended up finishing the rest of our supply of diapers and covers at Cotton Babies in South County and have been really pleased with their helpfulness and willingness to only sell you what you want and not a bunch of other stuff! Also, it seems that their in-store prices are quite a bit lower than their website (the Thirsty Duos are $12.75 in the store!), so unless I find a better source in Iowa, we might have to make a run back to St. Louis to restock when Meg is bigger!

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“(It’s been) One Week…”

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Well, we’ve been at home for just over a week, and Meg is 9 days old. Time certainly flies! And we want to thank everyone for all the well wishes and the visits over the last week!

So far, everything’s going shockingly well. We had Meg’s first pediatrician visit last Monday and she checked out just fine. All of her reflexes, color, etc. are within norms, if not above average. Meg’s also been kind enough to let us get a reasonable amount of sleep every night, with Brooke getting around 6 hrs every night and me getting closer to 8 hrs (Brooke has things to do over night, after all). Meg has been pretty good about sleeping through most of the morning, while we do our best to keep her awake over afternoon and into the evening.

On other fronts, I’ve had a cold for the last few days, likely induced by the horribly dry air at the hospital last week. I think my cough is starting to go away (finally), but it’s been bad enough that I slept in the other room for a few nights this week in order to limit my disruption of the baby and Brooke. Brooke has been sore for most of the week, but she’s to the point now where she can walk around without being in much pain.

Not too much scheduled this week, aside from the annual St. Patrick’s Day festivities in my department. We’re hoping to make a trip up to Louisiana, MO so Meg can meet her great-grandparents (Brooke’s side). It’ll be our first extended car trip, although we took a little field trip to Old Navy with Aunt Kristen on Saturday. So far, Meg’s been pretty happy in the car seat – let’s hope it stays that way!

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Another Lesson On Taking Things As They Come

My plan for pregnancy and labor was to treat the whole thing as a natural process, not as treatment for an illness. So, I was adamant that I didn’t want to be induced, didn’t want an epidural, didn’t want to spend very much time in the hospital, and so on. Then, Meg passed her due date by 10 days, my blood pressure shot up, and I started having regular contractions that weren’t productive, throwing all of my plans out the window. We went in to my doctor’s office last Thursday for another fetal nonstress test and amniotic fluid check, which looked fine, but my doctor was not all that excited about letting me go any further without at least having an induction time and date scheduled. So, he called the hospital and they were ready to get me started right then and there and we were quite anxious to get the show on the road, so across the street to St. Mary’s hospital we went!

We got checked in and set up with Pitocin around 1:30 pm on Thursday, at which point the regular, but not painful, contractions I was having became very painful and very regular, so away went the plan for no epidural. However, even though I was having regular contractions, they apparently weren’t really doing much to move things along, so I had to wait until after midnight to receive the epidural, then things sped up quite nicely. I started working on pushing about 4:30am Friday, then Meg was born at 8:57am, after the doctor threatened to get the forceps out if I couldn’t push her out in 10 more minutes.

There are many more gory details to be had, but I’ll save those for anyone who wants to know! I think I’ll choose to remember things as above for now!

All in all, I wouldn’t change a thing, even though pretty much every plan I had was changed. Meg is here and healthy, I feel pretty good, and now we can get back to other things “as planned!”

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Meet Meg

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Margaret Jean Linsenbardt (or “Meg,” as she’ll be called) was born at 8:57 am on Friday, March 5th. At birth, she weighed 6 lb 13 oz and measured 19.5″ tall.

I’ll leave all the details to Brooke, as she’s the one that actually endured the pregnancy. I’ll just say that it was more difficult than she’d originally anticipated, and it ended up being quite the ordeal! Albeit, a rewarding one. 🙂

There are more pictures available after the jump on our Picasa Web Album. I’ll be adding more to that album in the next few days, as we get to know our new daughter a bit better!

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We’re At The Hospital!

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We’ve been in this “waiting game,” of sorts, for the past few days. We had an appointment with the doctors last Thursday, and this past Monday, having “non-stress tests” done on the baby, and an ultrasound. Both turned out to be just fine (the baby’s heart beat was strong and regular, and the ultrasound showed enough fluid in the uterus, as well as a healthy placenta).

However, Brooke still hadn’t dilated all that far. Contractions have been increasing in frequency and intensity to the point where she “winces” most times when she has one, typically about every 5 minutes or so. Therefore, we had another appointment for today, having another ultrasound and another non-stress test. Again, everything looks good, but no increased dilation. The doctor said we could continue on, but now that we are 8 days past our due date, he’d be more wary of not scheduling another appointment until next Monday.

So, we’re inducing. Right now. And I have WiFi here at the hospital.

Could be tonight, could be tomorrow. Either way, very shortly, we should have a new addition to the family!

Also, it doesn’t escape me that Jim and Pam are scheduled to have their baby tonight. 😛

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“You were 2 ft away from Jon Foreman once, kiddo.”

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Brooke heard awhile back that loud music and subwoofers are good for helping “coax” your child out of your womb, so in looking into concerts coming to St. Louis, she found that Switchfoot was going to be putting on a show at The Pageant on February 15th. This is now the third time we’ve seen the band live – the first two were in outdoor settings, and we weren’t all that impressed (one concert was free), but this one was far and away the best of theirs we’ve seen, and amongst the best we’ve seen, period.

Interestingly, as the picture (from my cell phone…sorry about the poor quality…) above documents, their lead singer, Jon Foreman, came out into the crowd twice. On both occasions, he walked on the table directly in front of us while singing songs, so I think it’s safe to say this is the closest I’ve ever come to a famous person.

And, consequently, my baby girl already got close to a rock star. I’m not sure if I should be worried or not. 😛

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Thank you, Trader Joe’s lady

Friday night we took our “it’s Mardi Gras and we only have one car to use” trip to Trader Joe’s together and as we were checking out, the very friendly employee gave us this gem about the pig and the chicken:

“Sure, the chicken contributed to breakfast, but the pig really committed.”

Now, everyone go find a way to use this one in conversation this week!