A rare shot of the boy and his mama

Thanks to Dada, who shot this Friday night when we were all outside for the daily evening Wear-Isaac's-Batteries-Out time.

More playground hijinks

Today Isaac and I did a circuit of the neighborhood playgrounds. He no longer fears entering the Snaky Tube of Mystery:





He can also now support himself to ride on the large-spring supported horse/race-car contraptions, meaning he holds on and I help him wobble back and forth, though he is capable of rocking himself back and forth as well. He does need my help to get on, being a novice climber. Picture the "Mama..?" that went along with this shot, if you will:

Sweltering Seattle & His First Big Tumble

This past week was hot hot hot here -- Friday it got up in the 90s. This reminded us of one reason why we must leave Seattle, as Seattleites for some unknown reason don't believe in air conditioning. I had Isaac running around clad in only a smile to help with the heat:



Later we were goofing around outside our apartment, which is surrounded by these evil concrete stairs that have been the bane of all babies' existence who live nearby. When Isaac was still camping out in his bouncer outside, we witnessed Ella, then of course much younger, miss the bottom step and collide face-first with the unforgiving concrete. More recently, Claudia took a nose-dive down her set of stairs, and ended up with some horrific scabs covering her nose. We are always super-careful with Isaac around the stairs -- he waits at the top of the stairs for help, and then holds on to the hands of a grown-up to walk down. He and I were sitting on the bottom stair, minding our own business, sharing a sippy-cup full o' juice, when he dropped the sippy-cup onto the aforementioned unforgiving concrete below. He reached down to pick it up, but surprised himself (and his poor ma) by being too top-heavy, and instead of landing on his hands landed square on the side of his forehead:



You can see the healed remnants of the awful bruise in the playground pix I took today -- it's almost gone, meaning I will no longer have to endure those horrible Deadbeat Mom glares from passers-by.

A standing evening playdate

Every evening after Isaac's dinner he and I venture outside for playtime. This time lasts as long as humanly possible, usually from when he finishes with dinner (5:30 or 6) till nearly 8. This time outside has a two-fold purpose: socialization with Isaac's girlfriend Claudia:



...and wearing his precious little butt out, which we have come to realize is the secret to getting him to sleep. Here he is after pushing Claudia's car up a hill and doing a lap around a playground -- and he isn't even close to done:



So, after nearly 14 months of quiet (well, occasionally not so quiet) suffering, of begging, pleading, and admittedly screaming at him (and of course, him screaming at us), the magical Isaac Sleep Recipe has been revealed. It is really quite simple. All this time, our little rambunctious boy has simply had too much pent-up energy to spend an entire night listless and sleeping. Now that he can walk, and almost run, and daily goes strolling along sidewalks, climbing up hills, chasing Claudia, cat-brother, Dada, and me, now that his copious buddha-belly and thigh-rolls are beginning to melt away, NOW he sleeps through the night. Let me share with you the joy that has been this past week:

Wednesday night -- down at 8:30, up at 3, down again until 7:30.
Thursdday night -- down at 8:30, up at 4, down again until 7:30.
Friday night -- down at 8:30, up at 5, down again until 7:30.
Saturday night (a relapse of sorts) -- down at 8:30, up at 4, down again until 7:30.
Sunday night -- down at 8:30, up at 6(!!!!), down again until 7:30.

Tell me you aren't seeing a pattern here.

I'm tagged, and, therefore, cool

Some fellow mommy-bloggers are playing a tag game: one blogger answers some q's and then "tags" 5 others, who are required (REQUIRED, I tell you!) to do the same. Erin tagged me, which means I am popular, and probably also means she thinks I should get off my tired, sick patootie and blog for once.

1) Total number of films I own on DVD/Video: 35, counting TV series box sets
2) Last film I bought: Finding Nemo -- it's for Dada for Father's Day SHHHHHHH
3) Last film I watched: Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events, which Dada wanted to buy without having ever seen it before. I liked it, but I found it rather gruesome for something billed as a "family film"
4) Five films that I watch a lot or that mean a lot to me: Dada makes me watch a lot of cartoons and westerns --
*Simpsons Season 5
*Monsters, Inc
*The Incredibles
*Fistful of Dollars
Lessee....surely I can conjure up a movie that means a lot to me...probably...
*The Princess Bride, because I remember watching it repeatedly with my little bro when we were in elementary school. I also remember he picked it out from the video store and I told him it looked stupid and I whined that I didn't want to get it. I guess I ate those words.

Now who shall I tag? I apologize if you've been tagged 50 times already, because I suck and don't read that many blogs yet. How's about
Mrs. Flinger
Jelly Belly
Madeline Monkey
and, though she also just got tagged, it was with a different prompt:
Brandon's Mom

Yes, that's not five, but I don't know any other people with blogs who read my blog. Except Dana, and she tackles more serious topics on her blog. Unless she is also up to the challenge?

Home sick today

Isaac has been sick. So sick we went to the ER on Sunday, and I stayed home with him on Monday. More on that later, but he is 10,000% better now. This has not stopped him from passing on his infernal germs to his poor mom, who is staying home sick from work today because she can barely talk. In trying to find backups of 3-year-old gel scans from work here at home on illegibly-scrawled CD labels, I came across a CD of pictures from the surprise party my coworkers threw me when I was 8 months preggers with the Isaac-monster. Please indulge me reminiscing about when I was as big as a house:


Sigh. I miss those days, when I was completely forbidden from wearing socks because they made ugly indentions on my vastly swollen ankles, and was given medical permission to wear sandals in the winter. Have I mentioned how much I hate socks?

I think this is as good a time as any to announce that Dada and I are officially trying for Isaac v. 2.0.

Baby Rave

As if Isaac wasn't the subject of enough female attention today...

Every evening after dinner, if it's not raining, we indulge in some outside time. More often than not, we are joined by Claudia and her Dad and/or Mum, who live a building up from up. Claudia sees us outside all the time because her apartment leads right out into the swingset (this means that it is "her" swingset, of course, which she will tell anyone who should trespass there). This past week, her Mum taught her Isaac's name, and now whenever she sees him she freaks out: EYE-SACK, EYE-SACK!!!!!!!!!! Though Isaac cannot reciprocate with a "Claudia", he substitutes some loud and shrill baby glee-shrieks to let her know that she has been spotted and her attention is requested. The fact that they are so excited to see each other is absolutely hilarious, because their playtime usually consists of them playing right next to, but ignoring each other, or of Isaac stealing Claudia's toys (or pitching a ROYAL fit if it is suggested that he share), and Claudia screaming at the injustice of it all. But every day it starts anew, their interest in each other.

This evening they were joined by yet another buddy, Ella, who lives across the street and also comes to swing often. For your reference: Claudia (in the green pants) is 18 months, Ella is 22 months. Now that Isaac can join these highly mobile ladies, we were treated to a "Baby Rave". They all migrated over to some metal panels installed in the ground by the cable company, which, if you should stomp on them, sound hollow. WOW!










Then in their baby-rave frenzy, they tried to topple a bike ALA crazed post-Series Red Sox Fans:

Bye-bye, Baby Mullet-tude

Dada finally took a shears to Isaac's curly mullet:



It was getting quite out of control and hanging over his ears. People were mistaking him for a redneck. This isn't Indiana or anything, you know. We don't do NASCAR here in Seattle.

Here is a not-so-great shot of his new, clean look:


You can't see much, but he looks sharper and, dare I say it, cuter than ever before. It was also well-timed as Dada got a haircut a few days ago, so now I have two sharp-lookin' dudes in the house.

When Blogs Collide

I was just feeding the boy lunch, minding my own business and, sue me, checking my email, when what should I see in my inbox but an e-mail from Mrs. Flinger, who is in Seattle for the weekend with her family, saying she could be in the U-District area this afternoon if we wanted to get together. For those of you who don't know, Mrs. Flinger is a fellow mommy-blogger from Portland whom I have never met in person, but I know a bit about her and her 9-month-old daughter, LB, by faithfully reading her blog. You may have seen her comment not so infrequently here on Isaac's blog also.

To sum up: Isaac, Dada, and I went to the U-Village this afternoon to meet a chick I met on the internet. Oh yeah. Insert Urkel-snort here.

We went to the children's section in the U-Village Barnes & Noble, which has a killer Thomas the Tank Engine train set that Isaac is in love with. There, we found Mrs. Flinger and her excruciatingly smile-happy LB:



We could only get a few pictures where Isaac wasn't wandering off to hand a train to somebody else's Dada (a phenomenon detailed in a previous post), but I was lucky enough to capture the super-cute moment of Isaac pretending to give his train to LB:


(there's Mr. Flinger in the corner, also trying to get the shot)

...and then showing her what to do with said train:



Can I just say, Flinger Fam...how super-neato was that? Well, I certainly *can* say that:

1) LB is even cuter in person than in her pictures, which I didn't think could be humanly possible. This is mainly because she smiles at you, or anything, at the drop of a hat. And she GROWLS. I could tell in our brief meeting what a little firecracker she is, and though she was in sky-high spirits, that she is a more than tad frustrated with her immobile-ness, as her eyes got bright watching Isaac run back and forth handing stuffed animals ripped from shelves to random Dadas.

2) The Flingers are even cooler than one would expect from reading their blog. And meeting was not at all weird or even nerdy, except for the fact that we are all nerds in real life. In retrospect, I feel kinda rude because I didn't really ask too much of Mr. Flinger, instead completely monopolizing the conversation with Mrs. Flinger. I hope he forgives, as I am a starved for chatty female company. If you guys are ever in the U-District again in the next few months, please oh please give us a ring.

And I need to get Mrs. Flinger's skirt. Boy, did that look comfortable.

**Update 5/17: Read about our meeting from the Flinger's point-of-view here

Doctor's visit

Isaac has his incredibly belated 12-month check-up tomorrow afternoon. Unlike his previous appointments, however, I am surprisingly without questions of my own. Well, I do have one, to be phrased like so:

If a kid in the toddler room at Isaac's daycare -- conveniently located down the hall from his room, a hall which Isaac now enjoys moseying down; a room full of kids who share the same outdoor play equipment as my Isaac -- has the *chicken pox*, how far in advance should I start stockpiling 1) calamine lotion and 2) favors from the hubs to stay home instead of me so I can finish my dissertation too?

The usual

Now that Isaac is mobile, it is much easier to enjoy parks without fear of splinters in his hands from crawling on the wood chips. Don't ask. We have been trying to frequent a playground near our house much more, and though it is fun, we must admit it is somewhat boring without our beloved Mindy and Clayton. Sigh. Playgrounds are good, but they are much more fun when mommies have other big people to talk to.

But we do have our fun. Especially now that there's the whole sandbox gig.


It has been raining, though, and today the sand was wet and sticky. At first it stuck in clumps in Isaac's hand when he picked it up, and this somehow gave him the brilliant idea that he should try to eat it. He plopped a big sand-nugget right in his mouth and immediately started screaming, like "MAAAAA! Get it OUT!" I ran him over to the stroller with the wipes, and he even stuck out his tongue when I started wiping his face to make sure I was really focusing on the problem areas.

Then we monkeyed around on the jungle gym. Not a wee jungle gym like the killer-awesome playground, but our standard:



A cute/heart-breaking anecdote -- we always find that we are the only ones at the playground without a ball, which is a complete disaster because Isaac has a kind of deep, mystical connection with balls of all kinds. More on that later. I beg and plead with him to throw the ball to me, and sometimes he complies, but rarely does he ever give me the ball to throw to him. This kind of "yes! play with me now!" behavior is exclusively reserved for Dada, AKA Lord of Fun. I am boring ol' Maw, although my presence is greatly preferred at mealtime, owie-time, or bedtime. Anyway, we're at the playground...I'm stalking Isaac and watching a gaggle of moms sitting in the grass and cackling, away from their older kids who are bouncing around like they should be. Suddenly, a DAD shows up, I must admit a rather rare sighting for this park, with his ~4 year old, and New Dad watches his kid play in the sandbox, sitting right on the edge as I prefer to do. As soon as Isaac notices this Dad-figure, Isaac walks directly to this complete stranger and hands him his ball, then walking a convenient throwing-distance away. It was completely clear that Isaac knew this dude was a Dad, and therefore assumed that he would be most suitable for playing pitch-and-catch. Forget that Mom character. I told our Dada this, and, poor guy, it made him sad.

So back to the "ball" topic -- why is it suddenly that every time the diaper is off, even for a second, his hand goes STRAIGHT for the frank & beans? I can't help but visualize the baby mental dialog: "Oh, thank GAWD that crazy woman let you fellas out for some air!" or "Ooooh, here's some loose skin -- let's pull on it!" It's made only worse by the fact that I change him on a lambskin rug. Let's hope I'm not driving him to posing in Playgirl.

Crazy-cool new park

Saturday Dada went on a field trip, which meant Isaac and I hit a snazzy park recommended to us by some neighbors. While the park is not "new", it is certainly new to us, and afforded Isaac his very first frolic in a sandbox:



Well, by frolic I mean sitting in one place without moving for a half-hour, but enjoying one's self nonetheless. I tried to explain to him how one shovels the sand, ala "Go Baby!", but prodding his lap with the shovel seemed to make more sense:



He preferred using his hands as little pudgy shovels instead, picking the sand up...and dumping it right back out. So magical...watching sand grains fall...



The coolest part about this park was the play equipment. As most Seattle parks, this one had multiple jungle-gym type structures with slides and steps and bridges and such. Unlike most Seattle parks, this one possesses such a structure that has been zapped with a shrink ray, such that the tallest walkable surface is about adult-waist-height -- highly appropriate for fledgling toddlers:

Your A/V moment of cuteness

Some of you may have wondered what has become of all of Isaac's movies. As my fellow mommy-bloggers know, hosting can sometimes be a major diaper rash, and the ever-generous University of Washington gives us a whopping 100 MB of free space associated with our accounts. This is for e-mail + web stuff, meaning with 10 Isaac movies up my e-mail was getting shut off every day. Unfortunately we don't have any alternative hosting solutions for the time being, so my brilliant idea was to just remove all the oldy-moldies and suggest that, if you want to see Isaac crawling around chasing cat-brother again, you simply shoot me an e-mail and prepare to receive a massive file.

In the meantime, I was alerted to the dead link to Isaac's official birthday song a loooooong time ago (thanks, Grandma Jane), but just now got my lazy butt around to fixing it. I have also been voraciously stalking the boy as he toddles around, trying to get a half-decent movie of him walking. Did I mention he's a professional? It only took about 23 million tries, but I think I finally got one. It is also hanging out down there next to the working link of birthday-song goodness. Enjoy.

Happy belated Mommy's Day

Happy Mother's Day, one day late, to all the mommies out there -- to our mommies and grandmommies, for whom we now have a sudden and surprising amount of sympathy...and also to the mommies who currently put in all that effort raising babies and still live to blog about it.

My boys treated me to a lovely day. First, of course, we went out to breakfast...



...to the same place they took me last Mother's Day:


Kind of different now, doncha think? Why don't I even remember him being that bitty anymore?

To continue our Mother's Day fun, interspersed between two Isaac naps we went to the U-Village for some strolling and iced-tea sipping. And, of course, fountain molesting:



Fox was also showing Return of the Jedi, which I was able to watch in its entirety with my precious snuggly boy sleeping on my chest. I thus spent most of the day with my face buried in his beautiful silky wonderful-smelling blonde hair, though my rib cage paid dearly for supporting Lord Fattington for three hours solid.

I told the boys to let me buy my own presents. I got two CDs and a book about making the transition to stay-at-home-mom-dom from Barnes & Noble. I also got a small potted plant, an English lavender, which Isaac 'made' for me at school -- it says "Happy Mother's Day 2005, Isaac". As soon as I got it, my first reaction: "I didn't realize how much I loved English lavender before." My second reaction: "I can never throw this away, can I..."

Glorious sunshine

Super-cute pictures I snapped of Isaac while trying to convince him to chase his ball for the camera:

1) The hat that could pay for itself in modeling contracts



2) The irresistible arm-chub

We're not worthy! We're not worthy!

Finishing up this Ph.D. thing is going to kill me. My undergrad slave joked with me this morning about his senioritis. He knows nothing of senioritis until he is less than three months away from defending his doctoral dissertation.

It is so dumb. I have marked how many days till my defense on my calendar at work, and you would think this would motivate me to write till my laptop keys fall off. But instead, I require that the hubs come pick me up a half-hour early each day because my thesis is making me...snnnnnnnnnnooooooooooooooorrre...Wha? Oh, sorry. Dozed off there just thinking about it.

I am a protein crystallographer, which means I grow crystals of proteins for the purpose of understanding what they look like. It is cool -- different proteins assume radically different shapes and sizes, depending on what they do. For the most part, form = function, which means you can come up with neat and occasionally revolutionary ideas from knowing the structure of a protein. For example, I published a bunch of structures in a paper that together helped unravel a bit about the manner in which cholera toxin (which causes cholera) becomes active. Here's the abstract to my paper, in a bit of shameless self-promotion. I have been doing this for the past four years, which is actually not so long in the scheme of Ph.D.s, and unfortunately this is the problem. Despite what I know is a reasonable body of work -- yon paper + a paper in submission to Science (score!) -- I now realize just how much I don't know, how much I never will know and, even worse, how much I never want to know. Compared to my colleagues, there are lots of things I never learned how to do, which makes me feel highly inadequate. Surely what I have done is not enough to qualify for (insert angelic sound here) a PHD (/angelic sound). For example, who even remotely cares about the manner in which cholera toxin becomes active?

My husband and I commiserate in a certainty we have learned as we both reach the end of our stint as grad students -- you will never feel stupider, or have your writing feel more useless, than when you are writing your thesis, mainly because you are required to synthesize so much information from literature that others have written into something relevant to your research. It is highly frustrating. Every day has to start and end with me bowing towards Delaware and chanting the name of my future position "Domestic coordinator" three times, or I will just curl up in a ball of futility and die.

All of this, plus attending our Monday morning meeting, has made me realize why I can never be in academics. My friend Jan quoted a famous protein crystallographer this morning: "If no crystals result, throw the samples in the sink and curse in the darkness." The quote is hilarious, but it really captures the solitude of it all. Because all of your progress relies on your work and only your work, it's all so lonely. At times your work is so arcane that nobody can understand what you do. And I think nobody can really understand this more than someone who is finishing up their doctorate, somebody who is supposed to be the world expert on this teeny tiny little aspect of science. Three more months, yo. Make it go fast.