Baby's First...

...Illness.

We have reached this unhappy milestone, and Emerald has a cold. I guess we lasted three whole weeks at daycare before she got sick. It's not the most awful thing imaginable, but she wakes up super congested and very unhappy.  Then there is me trying to get the congestion out (yes, with a snot sucker, gross) before I try and give her a bottle.  But then she gets mad because she HATES the snot sucker AND she's hungry.  So after about 20 minutes of wrestling  and coughing and snorting in the morning then getting the vaporizer refilled, she gets fed and happy and goes back to bed.  I feel bad for her, and it's sad because we usually play in the mornings and she is not having that for sure.

I also have a cold, but whatever illness I have is certainly secondary to whatever she has.  The upside to having a sick baby is that I barely notice that I have a cold too.  At least I can take decongestants. 

Chillin' with the vaporizer.

"Employee of the Month" is a real thing!

Someone I know is "Employee of the Month"!! Turns out it is a real thing that happens at *real jobs!

JOY is employee of the month for the psychiatry department for January!  Of course, she just found out today, and there are only 1.5 days left in January.  I'm guessing tomorrow she might wear a tiara to go out with a bang.  Joy got a nice letter from the chairman (chairperson?) of our department outlining exactly why she was chosen, etc.  The main reason is because she cleaned out all the chemicals (mostly unlabeled waste sitting in nonfunctional fume hoods) from the 10th floor of Sparks, where I used to work. I happen to know for a fact that the 10th floor was a complete disaster, and we passed all our inspections by finding someone to flirt with the inspector.  Anyway.  Among her adventures in helping to vacate the 10th floor for remodeling, she found 

a) lots and lots of cyanide.  Like, really, it could be Jonestown all over again.

b) dehydrated whale sperm. This is a real thing both in the ocean and in "science".

c) cocaine.

d) tons of various anesthesias.

She ended up with 1800 bottles of waste, most if it unknown.  It took her about a month of constant work to get this accomplished.  

And today, to celebrate, Joy was presented with an engraved clock (maybe it's a hint to get back to work?), and there was cake and champagne.  But don't tell anyone about the champagne, since officially it was sparkling white grape juice.  I certainly did NOT have too much champagne sparkly juice and cake for lunch.  And Joy certainly did NOT have mac and cheese with champagne sparkly juice for lunch and cake for dessert.

The man in the suit standing with the scientists makes me think of,

"One of these things is not like the others..."

Also, now Joy will always know what time it is.

 Best Monday Ever.

*"post-doc" might or might not be a "real job", but Joy's job is real for sure.

In which I applaud the vigilance of the Birmingham Police Department

When I was growing up, my mother would REFUSE to take the car out of "park" until everyone in the vehicle had their seatbelt on.  I remember getting in trouble more than once for taking off my seatbelt while driving in the car.  It was the most important rule in our house, just ahead of that "do your homework before you watch TV" one.  My mom should consider this a major success, because the result of that indoctrination is that I ALWAYS wear my seatbelt.  Sometimes I get in the car to clean the dash and inadvertently put on my seatbelt.  Thats dedication.

So.  We recently replaced the battery and got the leaky tire fixed in the mustang.  And we put in the car seat base, so I am back in business with my superfun car.  I forgot how much I love driving it :) The problem is that I'm a short person, and the seats in the mustang are pretty low, even though the driver's side one is fully adjustable.  You can't see my shoulders above the window.

Yesterday, I was driving to work.  It was a FREAKING GORGEOUS day.  70 and sunny.  I had the windows down and I imagined that my hair looked quite luxurious blowing in the wind (it was just my imagination...). I was wearing my seatbelt, but obviously the officer that pulled me over couldn't see that.  And then I spent the next 20 minutes of my life convincing him that I had been wearing my seatbelt, I didn't just put it on real quick when he pulled me over.  It was the hardest I've ever had to work to get out of getting a ticket, seriously. But I didn't get a ticket and I did get a good story about how there are real criminals out there and the Birmingham PD is ON IT, bitches.

Also, as promised, here are some new pictures of the gremlin.

That irresistible smile is an easy distraction from any work or house cleaning.

The easiest solution to sleep sacks that ride up, leaving legs exposed and chilly?

Baby leg warmers.  Adorbs.

It no longer looks a lot like Christmas

We have finally removed the Holiday Botanical from our living room.  The ornaments are lovingly wrapped individually in tissue paper for next year later this year, and everything is boxed up. Nevermind the fact that I still have shopping to do, because there are at least 6 members of the family that we haven't "done Christmas" with yet.  Geez it's never-ending this year!

It's nice to have that space in my living room!

We took the gremlin to Target yesterday and picked out some Bose speakers for her bedroom so she can have the very best when she listens to Baby Einstein's classical music lullabies.  Spoiled, much?

Then we went to Dreamland for some BBQ, and I remembered the "dark days" in Rob's life when the smell of BBQ made me want to hurl.  Luckily that was only the first trimester.  Em loved Dreamland because of all the TV's.  The kid LOOOOVVVES TV.  Like, if I feed her in the living room, it ticks her off if the bottle gets in the way of her view.  Her favorite things are Baby Einstein "Bach" and football.  Of course.

And to the Pediatrician's Association:  Yes, I know your rule that babies are not supposed to see a TV until they are two years old at least.  But I want to know what mom in the world doesn't need 20 minutes to throw some dinner together?  Or...bathe?  So, Baby Einstein it is.

I've got some cute new pics of Gremlin that will be up soon.

It's Peanut Butter Jelly Time!

So.  I'm teaching a class called "Molecular Biology Methods" this semester.  It's my dream class, one that I designed from scratch.  It's all lab based, no exams, just lots of writing.  Lab reports make up the majority of the grades, and I do expect these lab reports to be awesome.  The college I teach at has a gap in the writing abilities of the students, so this is partially why I designed the course this way.  It's an upper-class course, and one of the goals is for the students to bring together the knowledge they gained in previous biology classes to write their reports and to complete the other assignments.  There are very few lectures, but you know, sometimes you can't avoid a lecture. And yesterday I had to lecture on how to write a (good) lab report.

Peanut Butter Jelly Time.

I made a powerpoint and everything, complete with abstract, hypothesis, experimental design (survey of what type of jelly people prefer on their PB/J sandwiches) short introduction (including types of jelly and history of peanut butter), results with a table and histogram, discussion, etc.  The point was to use something super easy (even childish and silly) to demonstrate how to write a lab report.  

For the methods section, I gave them some guidelines on how to write methods and the students worked in groups of 3 to write a methods section on making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.  They wrote in the correct "voice" for a methods section, and one group even made a figure using highlighters on a post-it.  It was to be brief, but detailed, including the brand of bread, PB, and J as well as how the "materials" for their experiment were stored.  

Then the groups exchanged papers and tried to follow each other's instructions using the bread, peanut butter, grape jelly, and utensils I picked up from Target on my way to class.

Hilariosity ensued, as some groups had forgotten to mention you have to remove the bread from the plastic package, some forgot to say which utensil to use (we had spoons, forks, and knives), some forgot to mention a plate or napkin, and some forgot to mention that you only put the jelly and peanut butter on ONE SIDE of the bread, among other things At then end they got to eat sandwiches, though, so everyone was happy.

They learned a lot about how skipping one (seemingly) inconsequential thing in your lab writeup is enough to ruin a potential experiment.

It was borderline genius. Can you imagine how boring my class would have been yesterday if I had simply lectured?  Even I would have been falling asleep!

This one turned out the best-but I don't know what people have against the crust!

This one ended up having PB and J on the inside as well as the outside...

Turns out that won't stop a college student from eating it.

One hour and fifty-seven minutes.

I went back to work last Monday.  I dropped Em off at daycare and made a complete blubbering fool of myself.  Turns out, she survived.  AND I got to talk to grownups, eat lunch whenever I wanted, plus no one puked in my hair until at least 6:30 p.m.  Woot!  And the next day it was easier, and so forth. I still miss my little girl while I'm at work, but that's probably a good thing.

You know what is NOT easier?  Getting out the door in the mornings. Even if I do all possible prepwork the night before, it is just ridiculous!  Anyway, the first day it took me 3 hours from the time I woke up to the time I walked in the door at work.  It doesn't help that because of Rob's schedule I have to do all daycare drop-offs and pickups. During the course of the week, this time frame shrank considerably, but I stopped eating breakfast and I had to buy my lunch.  

We have a kitchen in our lab, so this past weekend I bought groceries.  And guess what.  Today it only took me ONE HOUR AND FIFTY-SEVEN MINUTES.  This is great, unless you consider it used to take less than half that time, and I did a considerably better job on hair and makeup back in those days.  Oh well.

Baby gremlin is growing fast, 11 weeks old tomorrow.  I'm sure she will be asking to borrow the car any day now.  Speaking of which, I paid off my mustang, which is great, you know because it's so practical.  Truth is, the baby seat fits in it just fine, so we plan to keep the fun car for a while.

Tuckered out after day care:

Just a couple more weeks and this jumper will be perfect!

Being good in her high chair while Rob and I eat dinner/snap pictures.

Happy Tuesday!

Making a rubric from scratch is...

...harder than I anticipated.

...less delicious than it sounds.

A rubric is a grading sheet to allow students to have a copy of their expectations on an assignment, for those of you that don't know.