RBOC

• It’s weird when you finish up one deadline and it’s a while before your next, and you think you have some time off, all the little things you’ve been neglecting or that you “should do someday” end up filling up all that space and then some.
• Our mortgage interest may be only 6K/year, but when you add that to the state tax deduction, that puts us over the standard deduction and thus makes any additional charity donations deductible.
• Hint:  None of your colleagues want to hear about your emotions.  That’s what friends, therapists, and family are for.  (Corollary:  nobody wants to hear about your toe fungus except maybe your doctor.  Possibly also your elderly relatives.)
• So, um… what does it mean when the entire chain of command in your department quits (slash “retires”) over the course of a week?  As in, your chair, other departments’ chairs, associate dean, and dean.  Along with many many of the admin staff in the dean’s office?  What just happened?!?
• Have you ever met anyone native from the Pacific Northwest who isn’t a flake obsessed with some superficial version of finding meaning?  No, I’m seriously curious about this.  Also, I’m not sure if Seattle counts… I could imagine that people from Seattle aren’t flaky, but I don’t know!
• I am old enough that I can wear a younger-style haircut.  Yay!
• If you wait long enough to discuss a controversial post, nobody notices the two are linked.  Which is a good reason to have a long queue if one wants to be secretly snarky.
• If you write an offensive post, and someone tells you that the post is offensive (you know, straight out says, “this is an offensive post,” not mincing words with softening “maybes, perhaps, I feel, etc.”)… then perhaps the reason it bothers you is not because the person commenting is a meanie-head, but that deep down you know it was an offensive post and you feel guilty.  DARVO.

RBOChildren

• I now understand why my parents let my sister tear up my stuff.  If tearing up the receipt that came with DC1′s library books keeps DC2 happily and safely entertained for 20 min, that’s worth the confetti and loss of a “bookmark”.
• This early potty training is AWESOME.  Seriously guys, I cannot tell you how absolutely cool it is do to this part-time pottying with diapers the rest of the time.  DC2 prefers pooing in the potty and we prefer dumping it out of the potty to cleaning it off hir rear.  It is SO much easier getting started than it was with a 15 month old who had already been diaper-trained.  Just like the book said it would be.  Wish we’d had the book when DC1 was 6 months old.  If you have a baby who can sit-up, get a potty and just try putting your baby on it as soon as ze gets up in the morning (or after a nap).  It is addicting and totally awesome.  (Also saves diapers and lessens the ick factor.)
• I think we discovered one of the anti-perfectionism tactics that DC1′s first grade teacher used last year.  Last year when DC1 got a problem wrong and we’d ask hir about it when the homework came home, ze would shrug and say, “Yeah, the reason I got that wrong was [this silly reason], I know it’s [correct answer] now.”  This weekend I wanted to discuss a comment hir teacher had left on a math problem, saying that DC1 should have rewritten the (Saxon math) problem and done borrowing, which DC1 had done one of the Singapore math ways in hir head instead (and gotten incorrect).  DC1 said ze had never looked at the homework and never looks at hir returned homework(!)  So ze has had no clue about what ze has gotten wrong or right or why (except on spelling tests, for some reason).  And it isn’t discussed in a growth mindset way, but is treated as a fixed mindset thing– you do the work and it’s done and that’s it.  So I guess we’re going to start going through homeworks to talk about and to demonstrate learning from mistakes.
• DC2 waves hello and bye bye.  It is SO CUTE!  Update:  and claps!  Update:  first word [older sibling's name]  Ze also sounds like a happy little puppy when ze gets excited.  *pantpantpant*
• DH said, “It wasn’t so much an accident as an out of potty experience.”  Then he started talking about the pottygeist.  He tried to make a joke about the excretionist, but it failed.  DC2 thought it was hilarious, but who can trust what the potty gallery thinks?

RBOC

• Portlandia is REAL.
• verbing nouns weirds language
• Women faculty are not the same as faculty wives.  If you’re going to invite the wives of male faculty, then it is not appropriate to invite the women faculty unless male faculty and partner/spouses of the women faculty are also invited.  No offense to the lovely SAHW that my colleagues have, but if I have to socialize for work, then the men damn well better have to too.
• Dear Authors,  I should have rejected your manuscript to begin with.  It was a really lousy paper (ex.  did not say whether results were significant), but I thought it had promise and I guided you through a number of steps that turned it from an idea into a reasonably decent paper (also:  it was for a crappy journal).  In return, you have refused to do much of the work and you’re being an asshole about it.  You have taught me not to be generous.   Perhaps the true lesson here is to stop accepting referee assignments from crappy journals.
• hopefully a guy will fix my keyboard in the next hour, or else it will have to be tomorrow and i will remain shiftless
• Re: crazy people on the internet:  I wish they weren’t on so many people’s blogrolls.  You click on the tantalizing headline and it turns out to be a waste of time (because of the crazy).
• DC2 can whistle.  I have never seen anything like it.  And then I’ll whistle too and then ze’ll smile and ze won’t be able to whistle anymore which will make hir upset, so ze’ll stop smiling, but then ze’ll be able to whistle again, so then I whistle too, which makes hir smile…  Anyhow, it’s super cute.

RBOChild (bragging about)

Because if you can’t brag on an anonymous blog, all that’s left is the grandparents…

• Recently took DC2 on a trip.  Everywhere we went ze charmed folks.  Walking across/down the street we’d hear drivers or other pedestrians tell each other that babies like ours make them want one.
• DC2 has bright eyes.  Everyone says so.
• Lots of people guessed at how old DC2 was on our latest trip.  Most were shocked that they were off by 2-4 months.
• We got a lot of comments about how amazingly advanced it was that DC2 was doing assisted walking at this age… but ze has been doing it for at least two months now.  More if you count the time it was just newborn reflex walking.
• DC1 didn’t start solids until 8+ months.  DC2 started at 4 months.  Apparently this is ok because there was a pediatrics rule change, but we’ve just been going with the signs of readiness (baby wants food and doesn’t tongue thrust it out, baby can have food).  Whenever we eat food ze is totally demanding.  Especially ice cream.
• DC2 has been practicing the pincer grasp.  We’re a bit blown away by that.  But we hope it will decrease meal-time fussiness.
• DC2 recently realized that rolling over is a legit form of locomotion.  Ze can now travel a plane with a combination of rolling and turning in circles.  Ze still prefers assisted walking.
• DC2 can stand on hir own.
• DC2 has no fear.  But ze has recently been getting a little stranger anxiety.
• On the plane ride back DC2 discovered squealing and squeaking.  We really hope this phase passes quickly.

Join me… brag about your kid(s) and/or cat(s) here!  Say that stuff you complain about other people posting on facebook.  We promise we will only celebrate and not judge.  :D

RBOC

• HAPPY NEW YEAR!  (sorry, you’re hungover, I’ll stop shouting)
• Someone from #1′s university moved to #2′s university.  Ze says that #1 wins the smallest town with worst amenities battle but #2 wins the most limited resources at the university battle.  So… yay?
• Got a call from a head-hunter today.  Bizarre.
• Remember the bully dude?  He loudly offered me a cookie from his boxed lunch at the last faculty meeting (mine didn’t have one).  I accepted.  I’m guessing someone had a talk with him (or maybe he’s on new meds, I don’t know).  One of my junior colleagues made a comment about him offering a white flag in front of everybody to me later that day.  I agreed with hir.  I’m still keeping my documentation.
• Update:  He seems to have moved his target to a senior full professor woman, though he’s not screaming at her… more passive-aggressive and actively blocking anything she suggests no matter what it is.
• We’ve decided that if we start a new blog we’re going to pretend to be one guy.  And we’ll monetize the crap out of it.
• Why do some of my colleagues talk in paragraphs full of the same statement phrased different ways over and over and over and over again for minutes?  As in, why do they have to blather on once they’ve made their point?  Is the ability to state a sentence worth of information in a sentence so rare?  Or do they get some kind of benefit from all the extra hot air?  (Too much repetition in the classroom?  But even with teaching I thought repeating a point 3x was the sweet spot.)

RBOC

• DC2 is hitting gross motor milestones as early as or earlier than DC1, but we aren’t getting as much commenting on hir freakish nature.  I think that’s because DC2 is really big (90% height, 50-80% weight depending which month), and DC1 was tiny (settled at 20% weight and hir 80% height was mostly legs).  So random strangers would incredulously ask us how old DC1 is, but with DC2 I think they’re just assuming ze is an older child so we’re not having those conversations.  My mom says one of her brothers got in trouble a lot for that– people would complain to my grandma and she would say, “He’s only 5″ or what have you.
• Anonymous author, you keep saying, “to our knowledge we are the first”… but that is only because you did a crappy crappy literature review.  You would be much better off not saying that.  Especially since my simple google search has turned up tons of papers contradicting your claim in the first two pages.
• Also, just because you can conceive of no reason that the instrument is endogenous doesn’t mean that other, smarter, people cannot.  And it doesn’t take that much more intelligence.
• Got so tired of writing “CITE” on term papers that I got a stamp that says CITE.  *stamp* *stamp*
• I am amazed at the number of people who get to our blog because they’re trying to decide between marrying a friend and marrying a lover.  Hint:  if you can’t decide, don’t get married.  It’s like that friend of Anne Shirley’s who couldn’t decide which of two handsome wealthy suitors to choose until she fell head over heels in love with a poor ministry student and the choice was obvious.
• I gave my dataset a somewhat salacious name and now every time I work with it I get a song from Hair stuck in my head.
• Sent an email to my chair before the last meeting, asking him to please step in if I get attacked again.  No response.  Went to the faculty meeting anyway, even asked a question.  Did not get attacked (though the dean was in attendance, so maybe that’s why).  Went to another faculty meeting that the attacking guy didn’t attend– that meeting got out 30 min early!  We did what we needed to do and left.  It was awesome.
• DC1, in fact, did not cry when Matthew died (in the book).   Ze hardly seemed to be paying attention.  I feel a bit teary-eyed still.

RBOC

• My graduate alumni association interviewed me a few years back.  My undergrad just contacted me for an interview.  I don’t think my high school ever will, and rightly so!
• As I get older, it gets easier to fire people who aren’t worth my time (not to mention money, but it’s really the time that’s most important these days).
• I like doing simple data work, but it’s really the sort of thing I should be having an RA do.  Still, I like doing it.  So when my RAs can’t… well, I have fun with it even though I feel a bit guilty.
• It is so weird voting… instead of a Republican vs. a Democrat on most ballots, it is a Republican vs. a Libertarian.  Sometimes, just for kicks, there’s a random Green Party member.  I’m not sure what’s up with that.
• If you haven’t read Anne of Green Gables since you were a kid, as an adult it has layers of hilarity that probably went right above your head at the time.  I don’t remember laughing out loud quite so much when I was young.  (And DC1 has to ask why I’m laughing because it’s going over hir head.)  DC1 also complains that Anne talks too much.  Apparently ze can’t handle more than half a page of her talking without a pause.
• Sometimes I put off writing annoying emails and discover when I actually sit down to do them that it has taken no time at all.  Sometimes I answer emails right away and it takes much longer than expected.  Sometimes I put off writing the annoying email and the problem solves itself, but sometimes I should have just spent the 10 min figuring out which person to try next on the email list of “what’s up with this grant”?  Of course, sometimes the 10 min email also doesn’t get answered.  But sometimes they tell you you’ve had the grant for an entire month and it turns out they sent the information to the wrong person at your institution.
• Remember how I was concerned with potential pacifier overuse by DC2?  It was all for naught.  It turns out ze is a thumb person, but only other people’s thumbs.  Ze’s a wee bit of a cannibal.

RBOC

• It’s really disappointing reading wikipedia articles on REM songs.  They’re honest about why they wrote a song and what the meaning is (unlike, say, TMBG).  This leads to me finding out that songs I thought were really deep are really about one of them attempting to write the most inane lyrics he could come up with, or another coming up with a song because he was learning to play a musical instrument and it seemed to fit.  Urf.  Maybe they’re still deep but it’s just a subconscious deep.  We should all stand in the place where we are.
• We have no readers from Greenland.  At least not since wordpress started keeping track for us (Feb 25, 2012).
• We’ve been pondering why people around here are so curious about baby nocturnal habits.  My theory was that it was some cultural thing like how Midwesterners are always talking about the weather.  DH thinks it’s schadenfreude pure and simple.  He may be right!
• DH has been using the powerpoints of the previous 102 professor… with the new baby and teaching both 101 and 102 and him being a lame duck, he didn’t see much point in going all out.  Unfortunately, after going through an entire day’s worth of powerpoint, a student asked a question that showed that the entire day’s example was wrong.  And had been taught incorrectly for FIVE YEARS.  The students have been upfront about begging him to do his own notes (one of them even said, “You’re a better teacher than this”).  So he thinks he’ll have to make that change.
• I always seem to get rewarded for things I did ages ago rather than what I’m working on now.  I’m not sure if this is a good or a bad thing in terms of my emotions and well-being, getting rewarded with a 1-5 year delay.
• Related:  #2′s summaries of her work are always really down-playing her publications and excited about current and future work.   I think she should be upbeat about her pubs too.

RBOChildren

• DC1 has been having fun with blowing kisses.  Hir new thing:  teleporter hugs.  They’re hugs that teleport over a distance to the recipient.  They look like a mix of a normal hug and uh, a teleporter unit (which looks a bit like a shower, I guess).  Can you tell that DC1 has been introduced to Star Trek?
• After a year with only two yellows (last year), DC1 got in trouble the first week for talking when the Religion teacher was talking.  Oops.  In this grade they lose 5 min of recess for going from green to yellow.
• We are a little concerned that even though DC1 has technically skipped two grades at this point, ze is bringing home 100%s on almost everything.  We really hope it’s just beginning of the year review.
• Being forced to have an opinion seems to cause DC1 to have a melt-down.  Ze hates questions that ask about hir “favorite” thing.  We keep saying, “it doesn’t have to be your favorite, it could just be something you like” or “if you don’t have a favorite, just pick one.”  We’ve also stopped giving options at dinnertime.
• Related, we’ve had some troubles with hir having melt-downs at dinnertime.  We’ve traced this somewhat to hir not having a 3:30 snack, and have asked hir to make sure ze eats something as soon as after-school care starts.
• DC2 is still a tank, and still amazing with the gross motor skills, though hir rapid growth has made it more difficult to scoot forward (ze has been scooting to change direction though) or to completely support hir weight.  Ze has also started to demand walking practice.
• DC2 also does this adorable thing where when we’re nursing and I’m trying to get hir to open her mouth more I’ll say, “Say Ahhhhh,” and, still with hir mouth closed, ze’ll go “ahhhhh.”
• DC2 loves music, especially REM and apparently Nancy Sinatra.  Ze likes things that have a beat and are easy to bounce/walk to.
• It still irritates me when people ask if DC2 is sleeping through the night.  Grrrr.
• Speaking of which… DC2, like DC1, has recognized that the night makes excellent Daddy playtime.  Only DC2 is way less willing than DC1 to be bored to sleep… instead DC2 gets bored to tears and screaming.  We’re working on making hir have more interesting daytimes, which is difficult when it’s so easy to let hir snooze from 8:30 to 10:30pm (except then ze wants to play from 1:30 to 3:30 or later).  And sadly ze sleeps a lot for the mother’s helpers (on the other hand, our kitchen sparkles and our floors have never been so regularly cleaned.)

RBOC

• I was so excited when they told us our insurance would cover “maternity care” with us only having to pay one $30 copay.  Turns out it only covered the DOCTOR.  The HOSPITAL is still deductible (bigger this year!) + 30% coinsurance.  Apparently actually giving birth isn’t considered maternity, although the doctor being there to catch it is…  So unexpected bill for $1200.  Which is still less than what DC1 cost us 5 odd years back.  Another reason I’m glad we did natural childbirth (saw the cost of an epidural while I was trying to figure out why we were getting this bill) and only stayed one night instead of two.  However, if we’d known, I woulda been able to set up an FSA for a 25% discount.
• DC2 is so adorable.  I could totes gush.  Very bright eyes that we’re thankfully starting to see more of during the daytime (not just night).  Ze LOVES baths, especially getting hir hair wet.  Ze is a gross-motor junkie and still does the crawling reflex during tummy time.  Ze has also broken the family record on rolling over.  Ze is also way ahead on the pooing curve, but DH mainly has to deal with that.  Sploooort.
• DC1 has gotten over the doting grandparents being gone and is back to hir delightful regular helpful self.
• Apparently my breasts are a bit overactive this time around.  One side drips and the other side keeps going down the wrong tube for poor DC2.  DC2 is a bit of a chunk.
• Speaking of nursing and eating, I’m back to my pre-pregnancy weight after less than 3 weeks.  Hungry babies are awesome.
• Some people are just bad with money even though they make more than we do.  Hint:  if you make more than we do (and we make reasonable amounts if you include our partners’ incomes) and live in an area that costs less that where we live and haven’t had a major uninsured medical trauma or nasty divorce … we don’t want to hear your complaining about being broke.  Especially when you then also talk about the stupid purchases you’re continually making that are contributing to you not being able to pay down your high interest debt.  We don’t actually care if you’re in debt, we just want you to not complain about it if you’re not going to fix it.
• I had always wondered if it was true that sweet potatoes would explode in the oven or microwave if you failed to poke them (like with a fork) first, but was too afraid to try it out.  Turns out it is true, and partner had no idea you were supposed to poke them.  He knows now.  Although only 2/5 that he put in actually exploded.  Myth confirmed!
• There’s a new spamming system that keeps giving really awesome comments on our posts… until I realize they’re just copying things I’ve said and reposting them as their own.  Well, technically they’re still great comments, but they get deleted anyway because nobody here needs to buy silver.