Really, how are you? I've been quiet. I haven't been able to read my whole blogroll in a while. So, if something megabig happened in your life, I might not know.

Nothing megabig has happened here. Elsie is a busy busy busy little bee and I am frequently exhausted. My dissertation is moving (somewhat) steadily along. I spend to much time on facebook.

We are getting away this weekend for a nice visit with friends and to go to the NJ pride festival in Asbury Park. We bought Elsie this shirt, but instead of her name under the rainbow, it says queerspawn. One day soon she will dictate whether or not we are allowed to buy such things, so we're getting while the getting is good. I promise pictures.

I thought I might have some fantastically witty post in my head for you this morning but apparently it fell out of my ear, I guess the cat ate it because I don't see it anywhere on the floor.

It is time for a word count - because Elsie Jane is saying more things every day, and soon I won't be able to keep up. I want to document what she is saying now so we know how many words she had at this age. I suspect she is on the verge of a big language explosion.

kitty cat
dog
miaow (cat miaow)
RAAAR (lion roar)
ruff (dog bark)
baaa (sheep)
hoo hoo (owl)
water
cracker
nana (banana)
pool
eat
ride
write
rooommm (car)
ball
bubble
balloon
bump it (to ask for a fist bump, you know, like a gangsta, she will give high and low fives as well.)
jump
wash
teeth
knee
eye
hi
bye bye
mine
no
cookie
yay
whoa!
oww!
snack
back
mama
mommy
elmo (I know, I know. That little red monster is unavoidable.)
Baba
Cait (her babysitter)
Teddy (the other baby at her babysitter)
fish
juice
snort (like a pig - not the actual word)
shoe
baby
uh oh
Min min (minerva, the stripey cat she is always laying on in the pictures)
tissue
pickle
egg
mouse
wheeeee! (might be swing, but we aren't sure cause she says it other times.)
cheese
duck
boat
yeah

She seems to sometimes be saying 2 word sentences, but they are pretty unclear - like "read it" "that mine" "want that" and "cook it." It is hard to tell though, because she babbles constantly, so we might be imagining it.

She will point to most bodyparts if asked. She will bring you something if you ask for it (if she feels like it.) She knows it is Baba getting home when she hears a key in the lock. She pretends to feed her babies, animals, and stuffed Elmo any snack she is eating as well as her pretend food. She pretends to nurse her babies. She pretends to talk on her toy phone and says "Baba, HI!" She shuts the babygate for us, and turns off or on lightswitches if asked.

She climbs up to the top of slides on the playground, and knows to sit on her bottom or lay down to go down safely. She tries to climb up slides like the big kids. She tries to climb EVERYTHING, actually. She is very friendly to other kids, almost dangerously so to tiny babies. We have to protect them or she tries to give them all sorts of things - like food and sticks. She had a great time running around in a moonbounce at a recent party. She is absolutely fearless and unstoppable and adorable.

She slays old ladies with her cuteness and big smiles. Following her around all day is exhausting but tons of fun.

I haven't really been posting. Things have been rather ugly. I am ok.

Here is a list in no specific order of what has kept me from posting:

1. Elsie is cutting molars (at least 2), but she is still adorable.



2. I have been in The Bad Place.

3. I have realized that badness of the Bad Place is very related to my menstrual cycle. I never used to have much noticeable PMS but OH LORDIE I sure do now. I got my period wednesday and it was like the sun suddenly broke through the clouds, angels began to sing, and sparkly fairy dust of happiness fell softly onto my heart.

4. I am on the last breastfeeding-safe psych med to try. I have no plans to wean at this juncture, so we are going to try and scrape together the $$ for me to get some acupuncture and hope that between that and the spring things get better.

5. My dissertation is not anywhere near finished, so I am not graduating until August. I am totally ok with this, as anything to delay being a Real Grownup with a Job is probably a good thing.

6. We are owned by the world's most tolerant cat. See below.

Seriously. I just read the decision and the language is just so solid, so fantastic. Makes the decisions from MD, WA, NY, and NM look like complete idiocy.

Go read it, it is short and not full of ridiculous legalese: http://www.judicial.state.ia.us/wfData/files/Varnum/40209Varnumsummary.pdf

That is how long I have until the university's dissertation deadline. If I want to graduate this semester, my dissertation must be written, defended, printed, and bound for the library with all signatures by that date.

Holy cats I have to get to work.

Things are still not so great around here, but I am on new meds and seeing an allergist next week to try and figure out wtf I have been sick constantly for weeks on end, cuminating in a bronchitis like thing the entire last week complete with serious asthma bullshit.

However, we have megacuteness occurring in our home. Minerva is officially the best cat ever.

Witness:

Brain will eat me.

So tired. So so so so tired.

I can't believe my baby has been here for a whole year.

Elsie is doing so much now, it is just crazy. She is full-on walking, even trying to run, she took her first steps around 10.5 mths so she has been walking for a while. She dances when music plays, even if she is sitting or being held, she has a cute little bounce. She loves to bang things together, and has a bin of music toys that she L O V E S. She has gotten much better about taking naps during the day and so is better rested and very cheery most of the time. We go to a couple different regular playgroups and she runs all over the other kids there.

She is still a wee peanut, around the 20th percentile for both height and weight at her 12 mth appointment. Unfortunatly, she is also still anemic (her hemogloblin was low at her 9 mth appt), we have been bad about giving her the iron supplements and her CBC and other iron levels are actually lower now than they were at 9 months so we've got to get better about that. I was anemic until very recently so I'm worried that she hasn't gotten enough through my breastmilk. Anyway, it isn't severe, but the pediatrician wants to test her for hemopathologies anyway just to make sure there isn't something more serious going on. She is a pretty picky eater, so that is not helping the situation. She would live on breastmilk, bread, & fruit if we allowed it. She will also willingly eat dairy products, hummus (sometimes), and most pureed veggies and beans. Pureeing things is a pain in the ass though, so I hope she gets over it soon. Every once in a while she will eat a tiny speck of chicken or turkey but will have nothing to do with other meat. She still nurses 3-4 times a day, at least, and I am content with keeping on nursing as much as she likes for the time being. Night-weaning made the situation more reasonable for me. She sleeps through the night (from 6:30 pm to 5 am) pretty consistently now. We are working on her sleeping past 5am, cause that is getting very old.

She uses the following signs consistently:
milk
more
eat
all done

She uses the following signs occasionally:
fish
banana
drink
book
bath

She says kitty cat all the time, overgeneralizing it to refer to all animals and occasionally other small children. She nods her head and says yeah. She whines and throws things that she doesn't want. She is a constant joy and challenge, and I wish I didn't feel as if my depression were causing me to miss half of her life, and causing her to have to work hard sometimes to get my full attention. Sigh.

Things are hard right now.

I have not been sleeping well for the last oh, YEAR and I think it has really caught up to me. I've been having nausea, dizziness, & lightheadedness off and on since a week or so before Christmas. I finally got to the doctor last week, and there is nothing wrong with me. I'm not even anemic anymore. I know this is good news, really, but it just makes me feel so hopeless. I don't know how to fix the sleep problem. I'm just exhausted all the time. This weekend, I've been really on edge and feeling very impulsive and unsafe. Ezra is home on a 4-day weekend, and it could not have come at a more necessary time.

So. At the moment I am surviving and that is about it. I'm having a very hard time dealing with the everyday difficulties involved with having a toddler.

I can't really think of anything else to say except that I am tired, I am sad, and I don't know what to do.

Today is my daughter's first birthday. A year ago today I gave her a big push out into this world. She is quite the little firecracker, my wee redhead, therefore, I am too tired to write much.

Here, this ought to give you an idea of my lil'one's personality:


Big post forthcoming regarding me, my health, and my dissertation.

Today, I had my first "OMG my kid ate something stupid and is going to DIE" moment, followed by my first phone call to the poison control hotline.

Elsie picked plaster and paint off the wall beside our kitchen where the babygate messed it up and ate some of it. Actually, she did not manage to swallow any of the paint. I got it out of her mouth, then I pieced together all the chips like a puzzle and there were no empty spaces. I'm pretty sure she swallowed plaster though. So I called the poison control hotline. Apparently, 99% of plaster is clay and is no big deal. If she had eaten a ton of it she might throw up, but she really ate less than 1/2 a teaspoon.

She is running around now like a maniac, yelling her head off, indicating to me that it is time for bath and bed.

It was pretty fricking scary though when I thought she'd swallowed paint chips off the wall of our building, which was built in the 1940s, and where lead abatement has not been performed.

We have started our holidays and it has (so far) been quite nice. We opened presents with Elsie's special Uncle last weekend while he was here and Elsie was as appreciative as an 11 month old can be of such things. We got packages from his folks and my parents last week, and opened those this weekend for Yule. I am happy to say that my parents sent nice stuff, and nothing bizarre and/or inappropriate. They don't have the best track record, one year, for example, my dad sent us matching gold heart earrings. That is bizarre on so many levels (have you met E? Can YOU imagine her in gold heart earring?) not to mention the fact that I am allergic to gold jewelry. You'd think my dad would remember this, but anyway, I digress. Then yesterday we spent some time with friends then headed to Baltimore to do our Yule/Christmas/American Winter Gift-giving Fest shopping for each other. Why did we go to Baltimore, you ask? Well, our friend owns a fantastic little shop and we needed a few things. :)

Then we had dinner with E's sister and bf, headed home, put the baby to bed, and well... you can imagine. Or maybe you can't, or don't want to...

Anyway, the holidays are just getting started and I hope yours have (so far) been as nice as ours. Last week was full of massively stressful drama with a few students questioning my grading of their exams and essentially begging me to "round-up" and change their grades (um. no. You earned the grade you got, sorry you blew off the homework. This is not my problem.)I have decided that my dissertation can wait until the new year for me to dive headfirst into data analysis. I need a REAL BREAK from school. I haven't had one since the first 3 weeks of Elsie's life, and even then I had to do some prep for the coming semester. So, no dissertating or other school shit will take place around here until Jan 5. Woo hoo. My brain can rest.

Elsie is teething. I had to finish my grades. I felt insane yesterday, but I am done with my grading, and am officially taking a break from all things school until after the holidays (don't tell my advisor.) So today is better than yesterday.

It is time for an Elsie update. She is 11 months old, and started walking just after Thanksgiving when she was 10.5 mths. She is pretty much all over the place now. She says ki ka (kitty cat) and uck (duck). She is unstoppable and adorable and frustrating and turning rapidly from baby into toddler.



Thanks to onecrazymother for the shirt!

Today is very hard.

That is all.

My meeting went well. My committee was awesome. The only issues they had were actually ones I had brought up with my advisor, who thought they weren't a big deal. HA HA HA, thank all relevant deities that I have folks on my committee who know more about this stuff than I do, and than my advisor. This is because my dissertation really straddles the fence between developmental psychology and special education. My advisor is a research psychologist who knows a lot about early education and school readiness, and a lot about child development, especially stuff about language. Therefore, he knows not as much about special education, I know more than him, but of course he does not like to admit that. ANYWAY, I was vindicated, but refrained from pointing that out during my meeting.

Also, the woman on my committee from the special ed dept who I had not met til yesterday is totally family (another lesbian mom, no less) so that was super cool. In addition to that, she lives near us in Maryland and I need to have more meetings with just her and we can have them at a nearby coffeeshop rather than on campus. My commute to campus BITES, so this is a total SCORE.

So, now I just have to do the data analysis and write the sucker up. I can without a doubt do this next semester, so yes Virginia, I am going to graduate in May.

As the icing on the cake, at dinner afterwards with my advisor and other members of my lab, my advisor told me that he does have money for me next semester, so we aren't going to be as broke as we thought! Yay!

I will be defending my dissertation proposal.

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Sorry, I just needed to scream. I am ready. I know I am, I did a "mock defense" last week in my lab meeting and it went well. Of course, other grad students (and honor program undergrads) ask TOTALLY different questions than my committee will, and that is what I am afraid of. However, I have been thinking about this stuff for nearly 6 years, so by golly I can bullshit the hell out of it.

Anyway, my stress is heightened by the fact that Elsie is really still to sick to go to her babysitters, so Ezra is staying home. Which is all well and good (and actually will probably be easier than spending the morning with the baby while attempting to get ready, schlepping her and all her crap to the babysitter then finishing getting ready on my own), but I don't like plans changing.

In any case, if you think of me during that time, send me calming don't-get-defensive vibes, cause I could really use them.

This is a interesting test of how well you recognize familiar tunes, and whethe or not you can tell if they are played correctly. The mistakes were really glaring to me, but then, even though I can't say that I'm a professional musician now I do have extensive musical training since early childhood.

Anyway it is pretty cool and kind of fun.

Go try it: http://www.nidcd.nih.gov/tunetest/

And why am I in his lap?

That, while I thankful for family and all that I have, I am so fucking tired of being so fucking tired. I am sick as hell of having headaches. I am mad at the universe for being mean to my friends and I just want to go home and pet my cats.

So, while I am surrounded by E's family all so happy, I just want to go to bed and read, BUT I CAN'T, because we are in the same room with the baby and she is already asleep.