Christmas Morning

Nora had a great time opening and inspecting all of her gifts this morning.  I should've known that her serious baby face would dominate Christmas morning, but she still spent plenty of time laughing and playing.  Maybe by next year, I'll take the time to figure out how to adjust my camera to different lighting situations, but if you can overlook that problem, these are pretty cute!

Now, hopefully she won't notice that several of these gifts will disappear until later in the year.  She can't play with this many toys now, so we plan to stagger their appearance so she can enjoy them all.

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas from our house to yours!

We hope that for all of our friends and family, Christmas day brings the culmination of the best things the season has to offer.  We feel fortunate that we're able to see both sides of Billy's family on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, and as Nora grows, we look forward to establishing our own family traditions. The happiness and family togetherness we enjoy at Christmastime also makes me even more aware of the sadness I feel about the absence of the family members who are no longer with us.  I miss my dad terribly, I wish I could be with my California family to endure our first Christmas together since losing Papa, and I'd like to be with my Oregon family to enjoy the arrival of baby Everett.  But since I can't, please know that I am thinking of you all, loving you from afar, and counting down the days until I get to see you again.

For our little family, Christmas is about family, tradition, and kindness to others-- but most of all it is about love.  Thank you for making us feel so loved at Christmastime and throughout the year.  I am who I am because of the people who love me, and I carry each of you in my heart and mind all the time.  Thank you for keeping up with me here in this space, for offering me your interest, support, and encouragement, and for wishing our family well in all the ways you do.

 

These two pictures, taken one year apart, help me to see that over the course of one year so much can change and yet so much can stay the same.  At 30 years old, I'm aware that I've lost more than I ever expected to lose by this age... but I've also gained so much more than I ever hoped to gain.  It is so wonderful to be human, especially at Christmastime, when our humanity is on display.

Welcome, Everett James!

My nephew Everett arrived Thursday!  He arrived on his scheduled due date, but not before putting his mom and dad through the childbirth ringer.  As I understand it, he was born about 38 hours after Ashley first started feeling contractions strong enough to keep her awake and about 17 hours after they arrived at the hospital.  You certainly wouldn't know it from this picture his proud papa took of mama and baby moments after the birth!

Everett James weighed 7 lbs 5 oz, is 20 1/2 oz long, and has quite a bit of cute blonde hair.  I have spent the past several days more thankful than ever for camera phone technology, which has allowed me to see for myself through plenty of pictures and two video chat sessions that Everett and his parents are all happy, healthy, and enjoying the chance to get to know one another.  I am so proud of Nate and Ashley for keeping calm throughout her extended labor and trust that this final "test" of pregnancy will serve them well as preparation for being parents of a newborn.  I suspect they needed this lesson less than I did, since they tend to "go with the flow" better than I do, and since Ashley has plenty of experience with littles.  But if they did need a reminder of how to manage stressful circumstances where you feel like everything is out of your control, and all you can do is wait until things change, they got a good one!

Selfishly, I am quite excited to have a new little baby in my life!  Seeing Everett's pictures and hearing about how he's doing gives me a chance to reminisce about when Nora was an itty bitty baby, and it is easy to be nostalgic about that time now that Nora sleeps 12 uninterrupted hours a night, makes nursing a soothing experience, goes down for naps instantly, can stay in the same clothes all day long, and is almost always pleasant and content.  : )  It will be so much fun to see and hear about Everett's development along the way.  I am also very excited to watch my brother continue to embrace being a dad.  It has been fun for me to see how Nate has grown, changed, and come into his own as Ashley's partner.  It's also been a pleasure to find out what a positive influence she is in his life and how they've learned to balance one another out to make such a strong, happy pair.  I can only imagine it will be even more enjoyable to see the ways baby Everett enhances their family and changes their outlooks on life.  Everett is so fortunate to have parents who are so loving and devoted to one another and to him.

I am also excited to find out what it's like to be an aunt.  I perceive my responsibilities to include offering all the support and encouragement I can while also withholding any and all "advice" unless it is specifically solicited.  I have more than one year of round-the-clock on-the-job training, so I know a lot of things now that I wish I'd known when I was in their shoes, but I think the best way for them to figure everything out on their own.  How things work for them and their little guy won't be the same as how things have worked for me, Billy, and Nora.  At the same time, Nate and Ashley, I hope you know you are not in this alone, that I'm more than happy to act as a sounding board for any questions or problems you might have, and we'd love to help if there's anything we can do to make the road easier for you.  I love you guys, and I love your little guy, and I can't wait to see you all in a few weeks!!

And now for the photos.  Here's the first picture I saw, with Nate holding Everett, where I could really make out his face.

When we woke up in the morning, Nate had posted this one of Everett's first bath.  I showed it to Nora after telling her that her cousin had been born while she slept.  She said "HIIIII!" and pointed at Everett's face.  When I asked her, "Do you see the baby?" she started saying "Bayybeee!  Bayyybeee!"

Later that day, we got a chance to video chat with the little guy and his parents.  Everett was even awake!

Mom was at the hospital when Everett was born and got to see him shortly after birth!

And here is a photobomb of other adorable pics!!

The only minor drawback of Everett's arrival is that it's really made me feel like Nora is not a baby anymore.  She's still a little thing, but she walks so well, has so much hair, and has a smile so full of teeth that she definitely seems like she's in a whole different category than her little cousin.  Oh well... time marches on!

Little Miss Chatty

Nora is getting very vocal these days!  She is saying more words with regularity and copying every sound we make.  She has been babbling for quite a while, but her ability to correctly associate words with objects is fairly new.  Since I was home with her all day today, I tried to catch a few videos of her new skills.

One of her best words is "ball."  The other day I tried to sneak this ball in the cart behind her at Target, but she saw me do it, so she kept shouting "ball! ball!" as I pushed her around until I finally gave in, wiped it down, and handed it to her.  She and Oscar have been fighting over it ever since.


She has also been singing "eee-iiii-eee-iiii" along with Old MacDonald for a while now, but recently she has gotten good at understanding when during the song she is supposed to sing it.

Nora's Last Day of School

Friday was Nora's last day of school.  We have had a universally positive experience with the child care providers we chose this summer, but the school was just too far from our home.  Though we know switching schools is the best decision for our family, we were really sorry to take Nora out of her current class.  Her teachers have taken such good care of her that she warmed up to them very quickly. They were also very sympathetic and understanding with me as I made the adjustment to leaving her.  Nora may have "only" been there for a little over four months, but in the scheme of her life, that's a long time!  When she started there, she couldn't crawl well, and now she is running all over the place.  I will miss getting the chance to see her interact with her classmates, as well.  At first, they really had no idea what to do with one another, but recently they really started playing.  They could hug one another, hand one another toys, walk over to see what one another were doing, and the like.  I am thankful that she was there for picture day so that someday I can show her this group shot of her first class!  I need to write a little description of each one on the back so I can tell her about each of them.

I was already feeling emotional when I went to get Nora on Friday as a result of the Connecticut school shooting.  When I picked her up I just hugged her as tight as I could until she gave me a look like "Geez, Mama, what??"  After I gave her teachers their thank you/holiday baskets, we made the rounds to give cookies to the other staff members who have also helped make her comfortable there.  I don't know if they knew about the shooting yet, but I was thankful to have an excuse to hug all of these women, too, because the news heightened my attention to the fact that the people who choose to look after our children in this country are some of our greatest resources.  I'm not be surprised when teachers sacrifice themselves to protect their students, because I know that most teachers sacrifice a little bit of themselves for their students every single day.

It was also nice to see Nora say "thank you" to each of these women in her own way.  I could tell how much time everyone spends with her by the way she would lean toward them to be held or walk up and hug their legs.  Obviously she had no idea what was going on, but she was quite thrilled to be the center of attention.  I was also surprised to see teachers I'd never met coming out of their classrooms to say goodbye to her and say nice things to me about her personality and habits.  It would've been a lot easier to leave her behind on that first day if I could've somehow seen the future to know that her "goodbye" would be this heartwarming.  I knew I trusted the staff when I picked the school, and I have watched as it became evident that Nora enjoys her time there, but saying goodbye put all of that in relief and helped eliminate some of the residual guilt I had about putting her in full time daycare.

Now Nora's stuck with me for about a month until she starts at the new center closer to our house and gets to meet a whole new set of people.  I know that will be another transition for her, but I think it will be much easier than it was the first time.  She knows how to handle being away from us, she enjoys interacting with other people, and she likes the additional stimulation she gets in a social learning environment.  I'll have the option to take her for full days, but since my workload won't be as intense, my plan is to spend more time with her in the mornings before dropping her off.  I'll also be able to keep her home more if she gets sick or overtired, so that will be nice as well.  I've finished my grading, so I'm looking forward to being a full time mom through the holidays and our visit west to meet her cousin Everett, who should be arriving any day now!

Teacher Conferences

Nora and I both had conferences with our teachers this week, and both went well!

I had lunch with my advisor to discuss how my exam went and what I should be thinking about as I begin working on my dissertation prospectus.  He congratulated me on the day of the exam, but it was nice to hear his more specific feedback.  It was also helpful to talk through where I see my project going from here.  Coming up with a plan for what I need to do next helped me put a bookmark in my brain for when I get back to serious work again after the holidays.

Nora's school is also on a "semester" schedule, so her teacher had us come in for a parent/teacher conference.  Billy and I both enjoyed hearing a "professional" opinion about her development, and it helped put into perspective just how much she has advanced since she started full time care.  The evaluation rubric was broken down into skill categories like cognitive, behavioral, social, motor, and then each individual skill was ranked as "never," "sometimes," or "always."  It was cool to hear which skills she demonstrates most frequently at school, like how much she loves turning the pages of books and playing with different sizes of balls.  She had "always" marks all the way down the line in the "motor skills" category, so I guess that is her most advanced skillset.  We even learned something new about her-- she knows how to say "bubble"!  This expands her list of "words" to bubble, hi, no, yes, Oscar, Mama, Dada, and ball.  She doesn't pronounce them perfectly, but she says them the same way every time.  She clearly knows what hi, no, yes, ball, and Oscar mean, as well.  In fact, we both think it's funny that she will exclaim her version of "Hi Oscar" when she sees him but does not clearly refer to us as "mama" or "dada" yet.

Oscar was also the first to receive kisses, which she started giving this week.  She puts her mouth on you, says "mmmm" and jerks her head away as she says "mmwah!"  It is way too cute.  We've also been working on blowing kisses, so sometimes when she gets going, we can get her to put her hand up to her mouth and say "mmmwah!"

She does love her books.  She does not care for reading pages in order, sometimes "reads" the pages with her mouth, and often peruses two books at the same time.  On account of these things, I have decided she has a postmodernist sensibility.

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(That's her contribution to this blog post.  She likes to hit the caps lock key repeatedly to make the light on it go on and off.)

On Being "Super"

There are a lot of reasons I continue to keep this blog, but one of them is that I care very much about the visibility of what I'm trying to do.  I don't want to get too theoretically complicated here, but one of the critical theorists I find most useful is Jacques Ranciere.  He has this theory about how artworks function in the community, and once I figured it out, it seemed like common sense.  Artworks (aestheticized objects) can make new ideas (or ways of being) visible to the community. When the artwork succeeds at making a new idea visible, it changes the way the community functions forever after by changing what the community recognizes and imagines as possible.  Ranciere calls this process the "redistribution of the sensible" -- that which is available to be sensed is re-arranged.  I'm not creating artworks, but the blog can function in a similar way.  As a woman trying to juggle the responsibilities of academia and motherhood, whenever I'm able to share my experiences in a way that allows others to perceive them, it changes the stakes for other women who want to consider juggling these responsibilities in the future.  

Trying to establish visibility for what it's like to be me is difficult, though, because it puts me in something of a double bind.  On the one hand, there is the impulse to focus on my successes and my capability for managing both motherhood and academics at once.  Doing this strengthens the argument that women can do both, and it proves that women who want to have babies and have academic careers should not be treated like delusional stepchildren.  It gets harder for professors to claim a woman can't have a baby in graduate school and maintain suitable progress every time one of us does it.

On the other hand, though, highlighting my successes at achieving this balance runs the risk of making other moms feel inadequate by comparison. I try to be as honest as possible about the struggles this balance involves because there are so many other things that make women feel inadequate as mothers. I don't want to be complicit in this problem.  There are already plenty of narratives about maternity that are pervasive to the point of silencing alternate experiences. We've all heard these:

I got pregnant on the first try!

I loved everything about being pregnant!

My maternal instincts kicked in right away.  I knew exactly what to do from the moment she was born!

They grow up so fast-- enjoy every moment!

I think the dominance of these narratives is damaging because it runs the risk of making pregnant women and new moms feel like they're alone and/or unusual when their experiences don't match up.  It took me twice as long as "average" to get pregnant, despite our precision of planning.  I found the experience of pregnancy largely difficult and unenjoyable despite my excitement about its end result. I suffered from a sometimes debilitating cluelessness about what to do with Nora when she was first born.  I did not enjoy every moment when Nora was tiny because caring for her was really hard.  None of this means I'm a bad person, or a bad mother, or that I don't love my daughter more than anything.  The more openly I talk about these things, the more I find that other women are willing to admit to some (or all) of these feelings, too... but at the time, I struggled to find voices that spoke the feelings I was feeling.

Although I've admitted all of these things on this blog, and it has resulted in the privilege of getting to talk more openly with other women about these issues, I still find myself stuck in this double bind of wanting to prove that what I'm doing is possible without making other people feel inadequate.  For the past four months or so I've continued to become increasingly aware that my successes sometimes make other graduate students and other moms feel insufficient.  They say things to me like, 

"You made the decorations for Nora's party yourself? Do you ever sleep?"  

"I could barely pass my qualifying exam, and the only person I had to take care of was myself."  

"I can't believe you have a kid; you always look so chic!"  

It's so easy for us, as moms, to believe in the idea of the "supermom" and measure ourselves as inadequate by comparison.  It's also easy for us, as graduate students, to believe in the idea of the "super student" and measure ourselves as inadequate by comparison.  But as someone who has these labels applied to her on an increasingly regular basis, I feel the need to clarify: the people who seem super are not so different from anyone else.  They have shortcuts, too.

Here's an example: There is another mom who picks her son up at day care around the same time I get Nora in the afternoons.  Her clothes are always flawless and perfectly pressed.  She shuttles her kid and all his stuff around with ease... while wearing heels.  Her makeup is simple but professional.  Her hair falls below her shoulders in perfectly tousled waves.  I found myself especially fixated on her flawless hair.  I couldn't get my hair to look like that even before I had Nora, and I have 20+ years of experience with managing unruly hair.  Then, one day when I was running a little late, I got to Nora's school at the same time this mom did.  Her hair was wet in a braid down her back, and her dry cleaning was hanging in the back window.  I could practically see the lightbulb appear above my head.  Wet hair, dry cleaning, and a later drop-off time.  When I had previously stood in awe of how she managed to look so flawless every day, the possibility of these shortcuts never even occurred to me.   

It's a bad idea to compare ourselves to others, full stop.  There's no way to do it straight.  If you take your weaknesses and pair them up with other peoples' perceived strengths, you're going to feel inadequate every time.  You just don't know enough about anyone else's life to make a fair comparison.

So in the interest of full disclosure, here are the shortcuts that help me seem more super than I am:

-My husband is amazing.  He is responsible for almost all the cleaning that has gone on in our home since Nora started day care.  He cleans up the kitchen and washes Nora's bottles every night.  He takes care of everything in the yard and does anything else I need him to do.  He is also exceptionally patient with me.  If I forget to do something he's asked, he either reminds me or does it himself.

-Financially, Billy and I are very fortunate.  Money doesn't buy happiness, but it does buy ease.  The number of times I've forgotten my lunch and had to buy one on campus is embarrassing.  How is this possible given the fact that I have never once forgotten anything Nora needed for her schoolday? I must not prioritize myself because I don't have to.  Why does my hair almost always look "done" when I'm on campus?  Because I have top-of-the-line hair tools that dry and straighten my hair in minutes.  Why did I eventually stop crying all day about leaving my daughter at day care?  Because we can afford a very high quality of care.

-I don't cook very much.  Nora eats fresh, healthy meals, but Billy and I have always relied heavily on takeout and fast food.  Since Nora started eating, I have made a concentrated effort to cook at home more for us, too.  The end result?  This semester, I've probably averaged 3 home cooked meals per week, and nothing I make takes much longer than 30 minutes.  This leaves plenty of room for improvement.

-If you walked into my house at any given time, there's about a 90% chance that the dryer contains a load of clothes I've completely forgotten about.  I think the only thing that has been ironed in my house since the semester began was Nora's birthday party dress.
-You know how much I love running?  I ran once this entire semester.

-I plan ahead compulsively.  Those decorations for Nora's birthday party?  I made them in August.  How did I cover 104 texts in 12 weeks AND teach a stand-alone literature class?  My lesson plans were also done in August, before the semester began.

-Nora sleeps a lot and very well.  We started sleep training as early as possible, and the result is that by the time this semester began, Nora was a champion sleeper.  She was down in her bed without incident by 7pm every single night of my exam preparations.  On weekends, she took extra long naps to make up for her inability to sleep well at school.  

The list goes on from there, and I'm sure there are plenty of other "shortcuts" I'm not even aware of... but these are the things that I recognize as having helped me to balance graduate school and motherhood these past few months.  So please know this: it IS possible to succeed as a mom and an academic at the same time.  Nobody has a right to suggest that women can't do it.  But it takes a lot of advanced planning, it takes extra time, and it takes a village of people to help.  There is one thing that seems to separate out the "supers": the way we think of time.  People ask me this question on at least a weekly basis: "Where do you find the time?"  And I think to myself: Who "finds" time?  I make time for the things that really matter to me, everything else falls by the wayside until I get a chance to catch up, and the people I keep close to me are kind and generous enough to stick with me in the meantime.

Other graduate students and/or moms: what are your shortcuts?  How do you "make" extra time?  I'm also convinced that learning "tricks of the trade" from women in similar situations also helps us to be evermore efficient... and for me, efficiency is the name of the game.

(End note: How did Liz manage this long, introspective blog post?  She's been working on it since Saturday.  After hitting "publish" I noticed that the font is all messed up, but I can't be bothered to fix it.)

Nora's First Santa Visit

Yesterday we went to the mall with Billy's family to do a little Christmas shopping and take Nora to visit Santa.  We didn't take her last year because she was so young and colicky, but it was fun to see her taking in the whole experience this time around.  She loves running loose in big open areas, so walking around the mall appeared to be her favorite part of the experience.  I waited in line and eavesdropped as other people gushed over how adorable they found "that baby in the leopard print" and debated with one another about how old she might be.  "She's so small!" "But look at all that hair!"  When do you pipe into these conversations to say "Oh, she's mine, she's thirteen months old"?  The women in question this time were facing away from me, so saying something felt too awkward.  However, that just postponed the awkwardness until I reached the front of the line and Billy handed her over to me, at which point I assume they started wondering how much I had heard while they told me "You had the right idea keeping her out of line!"

Thankfully, Patti snapped a few photos.  Nora was excited by all the people in line, and although she left her own reindeer clip in her hair for a surprisingly long time, she helped out a little girl behind her by trying to pull out her ponytail.  She was mesmerized and amused by Santa until I set her on his lap, at which point she became quite unsure.  I was planning to fork over the ridiculous fee for the official picture, but as soon as the lady yelled Nora's name to get her attention, she burst into tears.  This seems like such a right of passage, though, that now I'm wondering if I should have gotten the picture anyway.

Comprehensive Qualifying Exam

I survived my exam on Tuesday!

When Vickie was little, she used to read these books about Cam Jansen, a girl who had a photographic memory.  Cam would look at something, blink her eyes, and say "click," and her brain would remember that image.  As a parent, I have been frequently been reminded of this scenario because there are so many moments where you want to freeze time, absorb the moment, and preserve it forever.

When I walked out of my exam, Nora came running toward me for a hug and my advisor walked up to Billy, shook his hand, and told him I'd done a good job.  Then Billy gave me a big hug, too.  CLICK.  It doesn't get any better than that.

The whole day was a pleasure, really.  My exam didn't start until 2pm, which was a bit anxiety-inducing for me, since it meant waiting in anticipation for the whole day.  I wasn't nervous about it, I just wanted to get it over with.  I didn't feel like teaching my students, but at least that kept me somewhat occupied.  I did some final review because I was determined to remember the names of the characters from all the books.  The delayed start time also meant I got to spend the whole day accumulating messages of encouragement.  My friends and family called, sent messages through facebook, email, and texts, and sent packages, videos, and flowers.  I always feel well supported but it was overwhelming and touching to discover how many people committed to memory that the 27th was my exam date, made a point to wish me well, and reaffirmed their confidence in me.

There were only about five minutes of panic in the whole day.  As 2pm approached, I began to get kind of nervous, but I went to the conference room and waited.  At 2:03 I was still the only one in the room.  The combination of wanting so badly to get my exam underway and fearing that it might get postponed made me feel physically ill and I really thought, briefly, that I would vomit.  I made a mental note that if I ever have the privilege of serving as a professor on an exam committee in this capacity, I will arrive early and put the student's mind at ease.  Then one of my professors showed up and did precisely that.

From there on, it was smooth sailing.  I felt really good about my 20 minute opening presentation beforehand, and I delivered it pretty seamlessly.  My professors asked me questions about my specific interests for about 40 minutes, and I felt like I had something insightful to say for all of questions.  We took a brief break, after which my committee members asked me more general questions about the larger scope of the list.  Everyone tells you that if the exam is going well, it feels like a conversation among colleagues (rather than an interrogation), and you can actually start to enjoy it by the end.  I enjoyed the whole thing.  I enjoyed the aftermath even more.  After getting my hug from Billy and Nora, we talked briefly with Katie about how things went before heading home.  On the drive, I called my mom and told her I'd done well.  I called my brother and told him I'd done well.  I played Paul Simon's "Father and Daughter" and had a moment of sadness about not being able to call him.  Katie and I picked up the food and when we got home, Billy, Nora, Vickie, Tres, and Anne-Marie were waiting.  Billy put Nora to bed and the rest of us spent about two hours eating, talking about the test, marveling at Anne-Marie's baby bump, and generally catching up on the time we haven't been able to spend together as a result of my exam preparations.  It was wonderful to have a chance to celebrate with the people who reminded me during every minor and major freak-out that I was going to be fine.

Since then, I've done a lot of reflecting on the exam itself.  I feel like I have fully redeemed myself for my disaster of a capstone defense by demonstrating absolute command of the material and complete composure throughout.  My advisor, who has seen me tear up in meetings and full-on cry in that capstone defense, made a point to tell me how impressed he was with my composure.  I've been thinking about this after the fact, and I think there were several contributing factors.
1) I chose my committee with care.  I didn't pick any professors that I thought might be intentionally confrontational. So even when they pushed me farther on claims I'd made, or asked very specific questions, it felt like they were confident I'd have an answer.
2) I read every text on my list and prepared at least one thing to say about each of them.  This freed me from  experiencing any kind of underlying, foreboding fear that they might ask me something I absolutely couldn't answer.
3) The period of time since I defended my Master's capstone has included countless lessons in maintaining my composure.  I helped care for my dad while he was dying.  I managed his estate while carrying a baby and a full graduate courseload.  I spoke at his memorial service while so sick from pregnancy hormones that I was taking daily medication. I delivered a baby in posterior position without an epidural but had to accept that I couldn't do it completely medication-free.  I spent countless hours soothing a colicky infant.  I've spent over a year figuring out different ways to get her to stop crying, and I've persisted through things that needed to be done in spite of her tears.  I've endured the seemingly endless parade of questions and judgments that other people, even strangers, feel entitled to make toward pregnant women and new mothers.  I flew across the country with a baby at a moment's notice to say goodbye to my dying grandfather.  And, importantly, these things have forced me to learn when I need to ask for help, how to seek it, and who I can rely on to give me what I need.  I knew all of those people were in my corner, and the composure I'd developed from all those experiences was at my disposal.  So nobody was going to freak me out by asking a question about a book.
4) I knew that whatever happened, my husband and my daughter were going to be waiting for me when I walked out of there, my closest friends in the area were coming to my house that night, and nobody in my family cared whether I ended up crying or not.

It was such a great day.  I am so thankful to all of you who read this blog for taking an interest in my life and for finding a variety of ways to encourage and congratulate me.  I can't wait to someday tell Nora about this whole experience.  I want to make sure she understands that I was able to keep going because the 2ish hours I got to spend each day with her and Billy reminded me that no matter what happens academically, my life is rich and full in the most important ways.

In the week before the exam, Vickie dropped off a care package including this mug and polish, and Mom sent me flowers that have lasted over a week! My mom also sent me a tanktop that says "I am a mom; I can do anything" and a matching onesie for Nora. I believe this now more than ever!

Katie brought champagne to the celebration and Nate and Ashley had congratulatory flowers sent to to the house, which I got when I arrived home.  The florist had our neighbors sign for them, and since the congratulations card was visible, our German neighbor told Billy "We are proud of Liz, too, for whatever!" when he brought them over. :)

If ever wife was happy in a man, Compare with me, ye women, if you can.

Gonna try with a little help from my friends.

I also owe a special thank-you to my graduate school partner-in-crime, Katie, who was basically at my beck and call for two straight days.  She gave me feedback on my presentation, ran through sample questions with me, stopped in to check on me before the exam, kept Billy company while he and Nora waited for me to finish, and helped me return my rental car and pick up dinner before we all celebrated together.  Chalk another one up for Team Waitlist!

Festival of Trees

On Friday, we met up with the other side of Billy's family to take the kids to the Festival of Trees, a Christmas Bazaar at the Maryland State Fairgrounds.  Nora was a bit too young to enjoy all the special features they had for kids, but she liked looking at all the people and decorations!

Afterward we went to Mary and Gary's house for Thanksgiving leftovers and to let the kids play together.  Now that Nora is walking and used to being around other kids at day care, we really noticed a big difference in how much she was able to interact with her second cousins, Cash and Lily.  Here are some pictures of our afternoon, mostly courtesy of Jacelyn.

Cash was excited to show off his basketball "skills," and we all took a turn getting frustrated with his new car track set before Billy had the idea to give up and lay it flat on the floor.  At that point Cash said "All right! Now this is cool!"

Lily is 13 months older than Nora, so we spent last holiday season in disbelief that Nora would be toddling around by this time this year... but sure enough, here we are!  Lily has always been my little buddy, so it is extra fun for me to see them learning to interact with one another.  We can't wait to see them again soon!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving from our home to yours!

On Thanksgiving last year, Nora was at the peak of her bout with RSV and we had to call her doctor around 10pm that night to ask about the side effects of the albuterol we were using to help her breathe.  We had to skip Thanksgiving dinner and wouldn't have had anything to eat if Billy's family hadn't brought us leftovers.  We were exhausted from holding Nora around the clock so she could breathe and sleep.  To say this Thanksgiving is much better is a serious understatement!  After seeing how cranky Nora became after a few nebulizer treatments about a month ago, my expert medical opinion is that the albuterol was a key factor in turning our happy baby into a colicky one.  (If you're curious, I believe the other main culprit was overtiredness, since I didn't know a newborn shouldn't be awake for more than two hours at a time.)

To say that we are especially thankful for her good health this year is a serious understatement.  We're also fortunate to be looking forward to enjoying much more holiday cheer this year for several reasons.  We have a happy, adventurous toddler, we'll get to spend the holidays with Billy's family, we're looking forward to the arrival of Nate and Ashley's baby, and in January we'll get to go meet him.

We just returned from Thanksgiving dinner with Billy's family at his aunt's house.  Nora loved sitting at the table with everyone almost as much as she liked eating her Thanksgiving feast.  Turkey, stuffing, sweet potatoes, rolls, and corn are among her favorite things, so she was quite thrilled about having them all at once!

  

I'm also happy to report that I've figured out the argument for my opening presentation during next week's exam.  There's no rest for the weary yet, but it's with a full heart and a full belly that I get back to work for the evening.

Wishing you all the very best, from our house to yours!  XO

104 down, 0 to go.

I've finished reading all the texts on my exam list!

As you can see, Nora took an interest in the stacks yesterday... but there they all are.  I finished my reading today, as planned, just over a week ahead of my exam on November 27.  This means I can take a bit of a break for the rest of the day before I begin preparing for the exam itself.

I guess this is as good a time as any to explain a little bit more about what the exam is like for those of you who are curious.  One week ahead of the exam, my advisor will send me the "questions" I'm supposed to answer in the exam.  There will probably be four, and they will be worded sort of like elaborate essay questions you might see on a final exam (if the reading material for the class was my exam list).  I'll get those tomorrow, which means I'll have about a week to review my notes, synthesize my ideas, work on my answers to the questions, and figure out other things I want to try to make sure to bring up in the exam.

The exam itself is a two hour oral exam.  It begins with me giving a 20 minute presentation from memory, in which I talk about my project by answering one of the exam questions.  For the remaining 100 minutes, my committee of four professors will ask me questions and I'll have to answer them.  Generally, the idea is that I'm supposed to meet two goals.  First, I'm supposed to prove that my list is comprehensive for my field (in this case, 20th Century American Lit) and that I have a firm understanding of all the texts on my list.  Second, my composure during the exam is supposed to demonstrate that I'm capable of thinking on my feet, taking questions seriously, and speaking authoritatively about my own original ideas (like one would be expected to do in a job interview).  How the exam goes seems to depend a lot on what approach your committee members take.  I expect the questions my professors give me to be difficult but fair.

Some of my classmates have stressed out about forgetting what they read, or having trouble thinking of answers, or feeling like their professors might dismiss their ideas.  I have two main fears.  First, I worry that I will not understand my professors' questions well enough to answer them.  I still struggle a lot with what I consider academic jargon, and especially since it's a high-pressure environment, I worry that I'll just blank out and have to ask them to rephrase their questions so much that it might make me look dumb.  I'm also terrified that I will cry.  I cried in my master's defense, and I have gotten choked up a few times while discussing my ideas with my advisor.  I care about this stuff a lot, I'm very invested in the work I've done, and especially now that it deals with gender oppression and procreation, some of it strikes very close to home.  Plus, this work is intimately tied up with the losses I've experienced since I began graduate school.  A few weeks ago, an envelope fell out of one of my books, on which my dad had been keeping score of the last game of crazy 8s we ever played together.  For me, the personal is definitely political, and vice versa. I absolutely cannot cry this time... but how do you practice "not crying"?

After the two hours are up, they ask you to step out of the room so they can briefly discuss your command of the material and your composure during the exam.  Then they bring you back in and usually tell you you've passed.  It's unusual for anyone to fail; more commonly, your advisor asks you to delay your exam if s/he thinks you're not ready to pass it.  Nobody has suggested that I should postpone my exam, but my committee has had a pretty hands-off approach all the way along, so I'm not sure any of them have a particularly clear idea of what I plan to talk about.  And people do periodically fail, though given the nature of that disappointment, I've never asked one of those people why they think they failed.  So I don't know how exactly that would play out.

My advisor, in particular, loves these exams and has quite a romanticized view of them.  He sees the exam as the moment when a student shows that her research and her ideas prove she is ready to make the transition from being a student to being a colleague.  But part of the reason I've been successful up to this point is that he has always treated my ideas as if they are worthy of serious consideration, so part of me just feels like all I have to do in my exam is prove him right.  In one of our meetings this semester, he told me "You're a mom.  You can do anything."

I am considering getting this printed on a tanktop to wear under my clothes for the exam. : )