A physiology lesson

Weird title for a blog about our trip yesterday, right?  Oh no, totally relevant and I will explain everything.  So this is how the day went...

5:30am - Dave and I wake up and take turns getting ready.  In a perfect world, we'd wake Ian up at 6:45, get him dressed and in his carseat before he even fully work up, and hit the road at 7, with a pitstop at Sonic on the way.   In reality, Ian woke up at 6:15.  We gave him the rest of the blueberries in the fridge to tide him over.  Again, the theory was that eating in the car would kill some of the 2 hour drive and then with a full belly, he'd fall asleep.

7:15am - get to Sonic, order breakfast.  7:30 - on the interstate.  Did Ian eat the french toast sticks, the ONLY reason we specifically went to Sonic?  NO!  He ate the tater tots that came with my combo.  Oh well.  Can't wait for him to be able to just tell us what he wants - it sure would save money.  Anyway, he fell asleep 20 minutes before we got to the airport.

9:20 - get to KCI, find parking, get on shuttle to terminal.  Feeling confident - we can do this!  It won't be that bad!  Millions of people fly with small children - we can too!  We check in and I told the nice, helpful checker-inner that we have an infant in arms.  She goes through our info and ask us if the gun is in our luggage.  We look at her like she's lost her mind.  She says "didn't you say you were armed?"  Um, not exactly, but some of Ian's diapers could be used as WMD.  Had a good laugh and he hands us our boarding passes.  Thank GOD I looked at them, because she had checked our luggage to La Guardia but we only had boarding passes to get to Milwaukee.  Got that straightened out and we were not having to spend the week in Wisconsin, though I do love cheese.

Wait for flight, keep Ian occupied with walking him from one end of the terminal section to the other.  Let him climb on unoccupied seats.  Stare out the window.  Buy a grapes and cheese snack and a milk for the plane.  Finally, time to board!  The 6lbs of trail mix was nixed in favor of the grapes and cheese.  Big hit!  He munched his way through the hour flight.  Taking his beloved baba was a smart decision too - he wasn't bothered at all during takeoff and landing because he was so thrilled that I was letting him have unlimited access to his favorite drink in his favorite drinking vessel.  iPad games ignored, but flipping the screen back and forth for 20 minutes?  Total entertainment.

Get to Milwaukee, change diaper, find lunch.  Mostly for Dave and I, since our little chowhound had pretty much eaten for an entire hour.  We went to Johnny Rockets and it was the worst JR that I've ever been to.  Oh well, it's in an airport - they have a captive audience.  Back to terminal, and whereas before there had been no one, there were now 76 million people that we were going to have to share a plane with for 2 hours.  Oh goody.  Thankfully, we went to a gate that had no one in it and were able to let him play until it was time to board.  Also thankfully, all the grapes, cheese, and tots exited BEFORE we got on the plane.  Have I mentioned that I love my diaper-demon of a husband?  That diaper was so bad it left a vapor trail as he carried Ian to the bathroom.

I should mention at this point that when we first walked past the 76 million waiting to board, there was a guy playing a ukulele.  As time went on, that progressed into him playing his ukulele and another guy pulling out a guitar and singing.  At the gate.  Also, another flight landed and 3 women of questionable fashion sense (5 inch heels, skintight jeans, sunglasses in the Milwaukee airport) walked past us and all stopped to tell us how cute Ian is.  Oh goody - my son attracts hookers.  At least they were nice hookers, right?  We bought another milk for the plane.

We board the completely full plane.  It's warm.  This is gonna be fun.  Ian is exhausted because so far, all he's had is a 20 minute nap.  It's 2pm now.  Praying that he'd go to sleep, I gave him his baba for takeoff.  The plane has direct TV for $6.  Credit card swiped without hesitation.  Ian drinks his milk, watches a little TV and then wonder of wonders, miracle of miracles, falls asleep!  Woo hoo!!  Visions of a peaceful hour and a half remainder of the flight dance in my head.  But, after about 45 minutes, I screwed up.  I had to adjust him one too many times.  But my legs were going numb and my back was killing me because we were in the row in front of the exit row - so they didn't recline and I was slumping, trying to recreate the human recliner.  Oh well.  More baba, some puffs, and TV actually made the rest of the flight amazingly good.  And then, in the last 10 minutes or so, Dave uttered those fateful words...does he feel wet to you?

Oh no.  At first I said no.  Dave showed me the wet spot on his jeans.  I felt around and realized that he had sprung a leak in the vicinity of his left buttcheek.  But hey, we're landing, right?  We made plans with military precision - Dave would take Ian and the diaper bag and find a bathroom.  I would take the rest of our bags, get the stroller from gate-check, and we would rendezvous at carousel 2 to get luggage. Ok, we can do this - we're so close.  And then...the pilot stopped 20 feet short of the gate, so we had to be towed.  Then they had to adjust the jetbridge 3 times.  All of this adding up to an additional 20 minutes on the plane with a wet spot spreading over the back of Ian's jeans, my jeans getting wetter by the second and some guy in the back who thought screaming "let us off the plane" would hurry things up.  Finally, realizing that Ian's diaper was about to burst with the force of the Hoover Dam, he asked the guy next to him to stand up so that we could change him.  The guy was really nice and jumped up, and we changed Ian on the plane, in the seat.  We didn't put his wet jeans on, so our son had to cruise through La Guardia pantsless.  At least he's 1 and this is still socially acceptable, although I could hear his thoughts alternating between "I don't know where we are, but if I don't have to wear pants while I'm here, cool" and "Oh geez, mom, I can't impress the NY ladies when I'm in a t-shirt and diaper!"  Dave wanted me to hand the diaper to the flight crew and thank them for their landing ability, but I refrained.  Sean picked us up and the drive to their house was uneventful, thankfully.  Welcome to NY!!

Oh yeah, that physiology lesson?  Liquid in = liquid out.  Our son's kidneys work.  We're thinking overnite diapers for the flight back.

Vacation is FUN...when you get there

We are in NY, but this post is about the prep yesterday that went into getting ready.  Because having fun is hard work.

It started at 7am, when I biked to Sarah's to drop off a check and then to work.  I was darn proud of myself - 3.5 miles in about 20 minutes!  I was channelling my colleague, a botanist, who is a total badass on a bike.  Got to work, graded midterms.  Difficult because it was a lot of opinion-based stuff and it's hard to grade people's opinions.  Especially when you don't like them.  And you can't really write "you're an idiot" in red pen across people's answers.  Ok, I guess I could, but you're probably not supposed to.  It's probably in a faculty handbook somewhere.  Anyway, got together some stuff to work on while I'm up here, sent myself some files, and decided to go home.  And then realized that the weatherpeople LIED.  It was not 75 degrees out.  It was 60 and raining.  And I'm not ready to tackle biking in that, so Dave and Ian picked me up - in the car.  I got a sweatshirt, Dave drove me back to the office and I biked home.  Silly me - I should have known never to leave home without my sweatshirt.  In May.

Anyway, I had solicited advice from my FB friends on flying with a 15 month old that didn't involve duct tape or putting him in a pet carrier and checking him like luggage.  Lots of great suggestions - one of them was Benedryl.  I never knew you could just use it recreationally for babies - well, you know what I mean.  Anyway, called our ped to ask about it and get a dosage and he was cool with it.  Yay!! Visions of a perfectly behaved, sleeping child on the longer flight from Milwaukee to La Guardia filled my head!  This was going to be awesome! Yeah, I was warned to try it out first because it could make him crazy instead of sleepy and God knows we don't want to unleash the crazy at 40,000 feet.  So, chock full of hope, we gave Ian a test dose.  The nurse said it would take about 30 minutes to kick in.  We felt like we were conducting an experiment.  We noted the time of dose and monitored his behavior with respect to time.  Was he getting sleepy?  Did he seem a little less coordinated, kinda like we'd slipped him a mickey?  At 30 minutes. we put him in his crib.  He fell asleep.  Success!! This crap works on our kid!! And 20 minutes later...he was wide awake.  Not nuts, thankfully, but we concluded that at this age, he is immune to benedryl.  If he'd been a mouse, I would've tried a larger dose the next day, but since he can't sign IRB paperwork yet, I decided not to experiment with dosage.  We'd have to do this the old-fashioned way.  With new games for the iPad.

So, we showed Hanna, our awesome house-sitter and my grad student, around, repeatedly uttering phrases like "we're going to clean this up".  After Hanna left, we got Ian to bed and cleaned like crazy so that she wouldn't be house-sitting in complete filth.  We also packed.  3 people, 1 suitcase, 48 pounds - beat that!  Ok, and 3 carryons containing a laptop, a Kindle, an iPad, a new coloring book and crayons, a doodle pad, some wooden toy puzzle-y thing, and 6 lbs of homemade "trail mix" that I made with puffs and cereal.  And a baba, as total bribery during the flights.

I'm tired, but stay tuned tomorrow for the thrilling conclusion  the Griswolds  Baileys go to Nanuet.  Night night.

Physics, schmysics...

Ah...tonight was fun.  It's warm out, and we'd bought a bunch of pool maintenance stuff, so we decided to try and clean the pool.  It's not perfectly level, and I have to admit that the imperfection scares me, but I think it's ultimately my paranoia and not anything seriously wrong with the pool.  We got a vacuum that you hook to a garden hose and somehow the water from the hose makes it suck stuff up.  Dave says it's the Venturi principle.  I say that I hated physics, swear I never learned about that particular principle in college, and prefer to think about it as the sucky-inny phenomenon.  Anyhoo, you know those things you did as a kid that you absolutely hated, but as an adult, you're kinda glad your parents made you do it?  Well, let's just say my pool vacuuming skills came back tonight like riding a bicycle.  Oh yeah, all those years of slave labor pool cleaning in FL were paying off.  Until Dave told me to hurry up. Because did you know that the garden hose attached to the vacuum was dumping water in the pool?  That never occurred to me - and we almost overflowed the pool.  I love being married to someone who is smarter than me paid attention in physics.  Not done with pool vacuuming - a big leaf clogged it up, unbeknownst to me, so the last part of my vacuuming did not involve the sucky-inny part.  Plus I'm a slow vacuumer - you don't rush a master.

BTW, we have a fish on our hands.  We let him play in the water while holding him over the side (still a little too cold in the water for him) and he went nuts!  I have the feeling summer evening entertainment will NOT be a problem this year.

Today we found out that Dave's class might not make this summer - the decision will be made on Thursday.  Bummer, because it's money.  Yay because it means he and Ian can go to NY!! I have to say, I will be thrilled if we all go.  We're definitely going to take the squirt into the city for a day to do something fun.  Of course there will be blogging, stories, and pictures.

On a final note, today was the first time I swung Ian in circles holding on to his arms. You know what I'm talking about, right?  We didn't go too fast.  I wouldn't do it before because I swear I read somewhere that it was easy to dislocate baby shoulders and for some reason tonight I just thought his joints could handle it.  Boy, did he (and I) love it!  We didn't even go for very long, but when I put him down I realized I was dizzy and started laughing.  Ian tried to sit, but looked like a drunken sailor and finally fell in the grass, laughing his head off.  Cool - he likes spinning as much as his mommy. :)

Week in review

Good Saturday afternoon.  The Rapture is supposed to happen in about 18 minutes, so I'll try to recap the week before the world ends.  Then again, if the world ends, it won't really matter that I didn't finish my post, now will it?

This week was fantastic.  Much needed.  Thanks to my friend and colleague, Brenda, I was able to play hooky from our team-taught course for this week and enjoy hanging out with my mom.  I have been looking forward to her visit for months!  All of you that live close to family, enjoy them.  I really, really wish my parents lived closer.  The Kansas-Florida commute is a long one and there are many times when I have wished that they lived up the street, not several states away.  We spent the week shopping, talking, playing with Ian, and eating good food.  Now I feel re-energized and ready to tackle monster amounts of histology.  Oh don't worry - I'll catch all of you up on my summer reading (Ross and Pawlina, LeBoffe's Photo Atlas of Histology, anyone?)

The pool is up, filled, sorta level, and the new pump is working.  Yay!  Now we just have to buy chemicals and wait for the sun to do its magic.  I think it's going to be awesome!  My new bike should be in on Monday or Tuesday, so I'm super excited for that.  I need to get moving on taking more pics of the beach cruiser and putting it on Craigslist and maybe our local paper.

I can't believe that in a week I'll be leaving for NY to see my sister, BIL, and new nephew!  Very excited to see Katie and Sean and to meet the little guy!  He looks so cute in pictures.  So far, Dave and Ian will be chilling at home.  Dave got offered a last-minute teaching gig that starts the week we'd be gone, and I was going to take Ian with me...until Dave and Mom pointed out that 2 flights and a 2.5 hour layover with a very active (but still not walking by himself) little boy would be a nightmare.  I told them that there was always Benedryl and duct tape, but after a test run of sorts yesterday, I tend to agree with them.  We went to Manhattan (about 1.5 hours drive) for lunch with Charlie + Lindsay, then hung out with Lin for a while, then a drive back that probably took close to 2 hours because we had to stop in Alma and buy amazing cheese.  All in all, a close simulation of what I'd be doing to take Ian to NY.  Let's just say that he was great - until the end.  And since he's not walking by himself and I'm not comfortable with him stimulating his immune system on the floor of the Milwaukee airport, I think he'll have much more fun with his daddy that week.

Ok, it's officially 5pm CDT and I'm not rapture-ized yet.  Oh well, guess we'll go to Walmart tonight after all.  We're also going to Allie's dance recital, which should be fun.  Unless, of course, the world does wind up ending.

Pools, graduation, and bike rides

It's been over a week - sorry about that.  I promise that this will be an extra-long post to make up for me dropping off the face of the earth.

First of all - the pool.  It's still a work in progress.  Let's just say that neither of us majored in physics.  In fact, I think I skipped the class where the prof talked about gravity, slopes, and 5000 gallons of water.  We got the pool set up with no problems.  We were so excited (ok, I was excited, Dave is still on the fence about pool ownership).  We filled that sucker up.  And then we saw:

Don't know if you can tell from this pic, but there is a shallow end...and a deep end...in a pool that is supposed to be one depth.  At first, we were in denial.  It's fine - so we have a shallow end and a deep end. Then I got on the manufacturer's website (gee, should we have read the directions first??) and read that having a pool on a slope is a BAD idea.  Like, the legs might collapse, the pool might collapse, serious bodily harm, etc.  I have to admit, the thought of ruining the new pool concerned me more than the threat of serious bodily harm.  But, concerned nonetheless, we emptied the pool.  Like all 4000 gallons of water.  Did I mention that the website said to fill it with 1 INCH of water and check the level then?  And to stop if it wasn't level at that point?  Well, hell, any amateur can collect data at 1 inch of water, but real scientists collect data after 2 days of filling the pool!

So, we've now relocated the pool to what we think is a more level spot.  Not perfect, but we think it will work.

Graduation - I went to ESU's graduation.  Which was outside.  In like, -30 degree weather.  Actually, it was probably in the 40's and "breezy".  Just for my friends who don't live here, when the chipper weatherpeople describe the weather as "breezy" in Kansas, they mean slightly less than hurricane-force winds.  Graduation - May 14, attire - pants, 2 camisoles, wool blend sweater, regalia that contains at least 70lbs of velvet.  Luckily, since I'm a chick, I got to keep my tam on.  My velvet beanie kept my head warm, although if I'd thought about it, I'd have sewn some earflaps on that sucker.  Big thumbs up to the dude at the UA bookstore who measured my head - I can now say that my tam can withstand 20mph winds without budging.  This graduation was kinda sentimental for me - my first class of A&P students at ESU graduated.  I know that I only taught them for 1 semester, but I felt like a proud mama.  When I met these students, they were in their first semester of nursing school, scared to death of the courseload, scared of my tests, hating the smell of cats, and stressed out in general.  I saw confident, happy nurses walk across that stage.  I also saw some of our grad students walk (none really mine, but I was close to them nonetheless),  two of my research students, Jill and Erik, and some of my advisees.  That's what this job is all about.  I absolutely love getting to know the students.  Erik was an absolute blast to work with and my only regret is that he didn't join the lab sooner.  He brought a lot of skill and a lot of humor to the lab.  He's going to make a wonderful doctor.

Side note here - I am SO extremely proud to wear my regalia.  It's an honor and a privilege that I worked damn hard for the right to wear.  But for the love of God, why must I look like an oompa-loompa in it?  Seriously, someone design something more flattering!!

So lastly, for tonight anyway, an update on the bike.  I biked to school yesterday.  And didn't die, but my legs hurt this morning.  And I had a really hard time even making it up the slightest incline.  The lowest gear feels like a mid-gear on a road bike - and there are only 3 gears.  So, I think I might have to go check out the 21-speed Trek at the local bike shop.  I'd really like to pull Ian on it, and right now I can't even make it up the baby hills.  Updates on the bike saga as it unfolds. :)

Now, I'll leave you with a pic of Dave and Ian - it's just wrong that I had to put him in his winter coat to go outside and play in the middle of May - but he sure is cute!

 

Happy Mother's Day

Happy Mother's Day!  In the world of moms, I still consider myself a freshman.  Ian is 14 months old - we haven't even hit the terrible two's!  So, when I think about Mother's Day, I automatically think about my mom.  My mom is awesome.  My best friend, my support system, my cheerleader.  Between her and Dave, I feel like I can conquer the world!  Ian and Dave got me a very funny card, and my dad got me an Amazon gift card!  I was truly touched and surprised by this, but it was really sweet of him and the card will definitely get used, since I just got my Kindle.  My mom sent me an email that was so sweet it made me cry.  Great way to start the day!  So, to recap Mother's Day, I'd like to compare for a minute TV reality with real life...

In TV land, mom wakes up sometime around 9am to breakfast in bed presented by her smiling husband and already-dressed, angelically smiling child.  In my world, I didn't have the brain cells to shop for breakfast stuff for this morning, so after sleeping in until 7am, we all decided that some Sonic would be the thing.  I love Sonic.  In TV land, child has a nutritious, beautiful breakfast of OJ, cereal, eggs, and toast.  In reality, I had the bright idea of getting Ian his first real fast food breakfast because he had loudly and thoroughly rejected Dave's efforts to feed him his usual fruit, cereal, and yogurt breakfast.  So I got him french toast sticks, hold the syrup.  He loved them!  He devoured 2 of them!  And then they exited his body - it was a poop of epic proportions.  His gut, not used to so much fat in one meal, rebelled and let's just say that the smell was NOT pleasant.  Thank God for Dave, his diminished sense of smell, and his awesome diaper-changing ability, 'cause I picked Ian up, took a whiff and my eyes watered and I gagged.  Yup, they don't show you that on the commercials.

Ian took a nap, and Charlie and Lindsay helped us clean the pool and get it set up.  Pics tomorrow, when it's full.  It's going to be SO awesome!  Anyway, when he woke up, I decided to try making him his first PB&J.  We even used Jif, like the commercials.  In the commercials, the grateful child throws his arms around his mom or something like that because she made him a PB sandwich.  In my world, Ian looked at the sandwich distrustfully, then stuck his fingers in it.  After thoroughly dissecting the sandwich, he ate a few bites, then fed the rest to the dogs (who narrowly missed getting jelly in their fur), and polished off his sippy of milk.  Enter entire afternoon of trying to hone his furniture climbing skills.  He's almost able to climb on the couch by himself.  We Skyped with my parents and he climbed on the coffee table.  I'm getting that kid a helmet for Christmas.

Dinner was pretty uneventful.  Ian's in bed now, the pool is filling, Dave is working, and I'm blogging.  And I'm reflecting on today and how lucky I am to have my little marmoset in my life.  Oh yeah - we learned a new sound today.  We taught him what chickens say, since he eats so much of it - bok bok bok.  He was so cute repeating it!  We were also excited because he picked up one of his new mini- basketballs and said, very clearly, "hello ball."  Life isn't TV, it's even better.

Birthday Recap

Well, the birthday week was definitely up and down, but the birthday overall was absolutely fantastic!  Sorry I haven't blogged in a week - the stuff that's happened this week has taken me awhile to process and I didn't want to write anything that I'd regret later.

So Monday I had whatever virus Ian had last week.  Fortunately, it was over in about 24 hours and then I felt much better.  Thank goodness, because being sick was definitely NOT on the birthday week agenda.

Tuesday, Dave's department had their weekly meeting, and scheduling for fall was discussed.  There's a possibility that Dave might be cut to half time in the fall.  This would NOT be good, but fortunately, thanks to a good friend, things might not be as bad as we thought.  This is a sore subject with us - we've been on a real rollercoaster since October over the status of Dave's contract for next year, and it's definitely getting old.  Say a prayer and cross your fingers that things are resolved for the better soon and once and for all.  To say this has been a source of stress this year would be a massive understatement.

Wednesday, my bike came in!! It came in a box, specifically, and it's taken a few days to put it together because it's been busy, but now she's ready for a ride.  I'm probably going to try it out tomorrow morning when there's no traffic, 'cause I'm chicken.  Isn't she pretty, though??

Thursday, my birthday, I took the day off and spent it at The Children's Clothesline sale.  Technically, I was volunteering, but really it was just a fun day hanging out with my friends.  Before I went there, I opened the present from my parents - a Kindle!  And a really pretty case.

When I got to the sale, Tara, Steph, and Becky had my regalia for the day ready - they surprised me with a tiara and a pin!  I seriously loved it!  I wore it all day during the sale, and I even wore it to the Physical Sciences picnic that night!

I left around 10 to get my hair did, and when I got back, they'd also gotten me flowers and a balloon.  I have great friends!

All day I felt the love through texts, phone calls, and FB.  Seriously made my day!  When I got back to school the next day, I had another surprise - flowers from Hanna, Brittany, and Betty!  SO pretty!

So, all in all, a really wonderful, fantastic birthday.  This weekend, Charlie and Lindsay are here and we're having a great time.  Charlie, Dave, and our friend Greg helped get a pool that I got for FREE from Amanda from her yard to ours.  I still can't believe it's free!  I'm excited to get it set up and cleaned tomorrow.  Pool pics to come.

OMG - seriously?

Time is flying at warp speed.  I need it to slow down for just a second.  Yeah, it's hitting me that there are 2 weeks left in the semester, 1 week of lectures, another abstract to submit to a conference, and have I mentioned that I'm teaching histology over the summer?  Yeah, I am.  Have I mentioned that it hasn't been taught in about 6 years?  Have I mentioned that I don't know what slides I have for lab or what the quality of those slides is like?  Um, yeah, these are the thoughts going through my head right now.  Well, there is a little bit more cursing involved.  In my head.  Because I swore that after spending a solid month reading an embryology textbook and prepping notes last summer that I wouldn't procrastinate about histology.  And now I have 6 weeks (2 of which will not be work weeks) to read the book, do my lectures, and organize the lab.  Anyone want to help??

In other news, the lab party was nice.  I hope everyone had a good time.  The food was fabulous and I enjoyed talking with everyone.  I definitely felt like an obligation to some - you know, that thing that you have to attend, but just for a little while and then you've made an appearance so you can go on to the better party.  Oh well.  :)  I used to be a student - I remember the "obligation" events.

This week is destined to be fabulous - 'cause it's my birthday Thursday.  Yup, I'm one of those obnoxious people that LOVES their birthday.  I don't try to forget it or pretend it doesn't happen.  I get ridiculously excited when the student secretaries put up signs all over the department saying "Happy Birthday Dr. Bailey!"  I have some in a desk drawer from every year I've been at ESU. I'm kinda celebrating all week.  Sometimes the party will be only in my head, but that's ok.  A present from my parents sits unopened in my dining room - so tempted, but I want to wait until the day.  My bike should be here Wednesday.  On my actual birthday I plan to spend it with friends and not doing anything I don't want to do.  'Cause it's my birthday.