Taking my life back...by the sweat of my brow

Ha ha, we are all sweaty here right now. I am obsessed with weather.com, hoping that by some miracle the low for the night might drop below 75 degrees. No such luck yet. I am also obsessed with tracking the tropical storms and hurricanes that are popping up just about every week now. I take a special interest in the model predictions for the storms, with the multicolored paths spelling potential destruction for any land masses in their way. We are crossing our fingers the storms stay clear of the Magic City.

So I'm trying to take my life back now, i.e. making more time for living. I am finally recovering from the whole PhD 'experience'. For the first time in years I managed to keep the home relatively clean the entire week (no small feat for a self-proclaimed slob), which is amazingly helpful for alleviating stress. I think a little order in the home makes for some order in the mind.

I am still basking in motherhood. I have thrown myself into the culinary art of baby food. It sounds like it would be kind of boring, steaming fruits and veggies and then pureeing them into mush. But I am finding a challenge in coming up with appetizing flavor combinations, and have also been playing around with making grain cereals from scratch. I made some millet for little N last week, and it was actually really good. Much better consistency than the dehydrated stuff. Little N is right on track on the development area, meaning he started crawling this week. This is quite distressing to the cat, who is now constantly pursued from one napping position to the next.

I have also had to update my wardrobe lately. I was wearing mostly scrubby clothes to the research station, but now that I am teaching I have to look professional and 'scholarly' (Ha!). It has been fun putting together looks that reflect 'professor'. I even have some glasses I wear for reading that I hope make me look more serious and less, well, young.

It's been really fun so far moving into a new life path.

Pulling my hair out

Starting to teach a class and go back to work in the same week, along with tutoring for biology finals was not a smart move. I almost had a panic attack last Friday when I couldn't find where we had stashed our unused books of checks (I figured out we actually don't have any empty books).

Since I last posted, I had a revelation. Baby N was just not able to sleep more than a couple of hours at night. It seemed like we were moving backwards instead of making progress in the sleeping department. So when I was in Iowa, Mom and I decided to give him some cereal before he went to bed. It worked like magic. He absolutely loves it, and now he usually sleeps 6-7 hours at night. I know starting him on cereal when he was even three months old may raise some eyebrows, but I think the poor kid was hungry all the time.

Now I am trying to be a time management superstar. Trying is the operative word here. Take last Thursday, for example. 7:45 am, run south and drop off baby N at daycare, then drive back North to school to teach at 9 am. This involved me freaking out in rush hour traffic that I would be late and trying to find an alternate route on the GPS option on my cellphone. I made it at 9am on the dot. Then at noon I had to drive back south again to work at TREC, and then pick up N at 6 pm. Then I intended to get home and make dinner, but dinner often doesn't happen because I am so darn tired.

Well, that's my life for now. I think the commuting is eating up a couple hours of my time each day. Boy will I be glad to move back to a smaller place, where you can get to work in 15 minutes vs. an hour and 15 minutes. I think that's why urbanites are so stressed out and rushing around all the time---they spend half of there lives just getting where they need to go.

The great thing is that I started teaching and it is really fun. It's stressful because I never feel 100% prepared (it must be the perfectionist in me), and I really, really, really want to do a good job. But I love interacting with my students. It is a small class with students from all walks of life, and the class atmosphere really breeds many questions and discussions.

Stuff, stuff and more stuff

Gone are the days of spontaneously deciding to go for an ice cream, coffee, movie, you name it. Now I have to take stuff with me everywhere. Not my stuff, but baby N stuff. The diaper bag has replaced my purse. A cool, gender-neutral, black diaper bag so that David is not ashamed to carry it. It's actually a really cool bag, with big and small pockets, a diaper changing mat, and a insulated pocket to keep a bottle cool.

The first time David took baby N in to the doctor by himself, he came home and sheepishly admitted that alas, he had forgotten the ever important bag at home. Of course it was not that big of a deal, a pediatrician's office surely has no shortage of extra diapers. And dads get a little more slack for things like that. I rolled my eyes and teased him a little. I should have held my tongue, however, because when my mom and I took N in for the next appointment, we sat down and looked around and realized that we too had forgotten the diaper bag! The lesson learned? Moms and grandmas are just as fallible as dads. And forgetting the diaper bag is not a tragedy.

My packing skill will soon be put to the test when N and I hop on a plane for the Midwest this Friday. I have to admit I am a little nervous about juggling luggage, security, and a baby. I am hoping he will be good on the plane and keep the screaming to a minimum. Or else I end up the punchline of someone's comedy routine (a la Jeffrey's mom from one of Cosby's classics).

One more thing. Aren't pacifiers amazing? For pacify they surely can. The crying stops, the eyes start to close. Amazing.