12.31.16 - December joy statuses

12.25.16 - Christmas Joy Inventory

I have not had time to blog about the many pleasant things happening this Christmas trip, but at least at the end of the day today I made a list so I would remember.

--I slept in until I was ready to get up.
--Don & Merlene made an amazing egg bacon casserole and blueberry muffins for breakfast.
--I laughed to myself a lot while taking screen shots from last night's Secret Santa.

--Mom got Clara some very cool new bath toys (so cool her older cousins Zoey and Malcolm were delighted to try them out right away - Clara was mostly into chasing Abigail).
--Julie and I got to give Mom her grandkids' Christmas craft.

--Jack got me a new copy of Good Omens (a favorite book of mine I foolishly lent out and never got back). He even included a funny poem inside the cover and underlined his favorite part of the book on page 341, which made the gift very personal.
--Mom made a fantastic lasagna for lunch. My siblings and I ate it while laughing pretty hard at Mad Libs about Captain Zoom ("They threw pogo sticks at him out of respect...and terror!")

This is actually from playing 5 crowns, also fun.

--While we enjoyed that, Mom managed to get Clara to take a very long afternoon nap.
--Neil had a really good playlist going in the background throughout most of this.
--Back at the in-laws, we had a dinner that involved about 10 different dishes, including deviled eggs and scalloped pineapples.
--Clara even ate a bunch of quinoa (taking after her very health-conscious Mimi, perhaps?)
--Katie and I got to give Don & Merlene their grandkids' Christmas craft.
--Dave got Clara a pretty sweet Blues shirt. And he got me pretty sweet striped knee high socks.

Clara wearing her Blues shirt as a hat.

--Per tradition, Don & Merlene filled out stockings with fruit and candy and other little treats.
--We all exchanged our Christmas letters, which our generally both touching and funny, and this year was no different.
--Also Don & Merlene write letters to Clara (and now Jane), which I think is very sweet. I'll save the letters for when they are both older.
--We all played Quiplash for hours and laughed hysterically. We mostly only stopped to eat dessert (including a chocolate pudding dish with cherries and chocolate no bake cookies).
--Jack got to feel Jane kick.

I hope everyone else had as nice of a day as I did. Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night. :)

12.24.16 - Santa!

12.21.17 - Christmas decor

12.20.17 - Jemaine in Moana

Jack and I saw Moana last night. One of the songs is sung by Jemaine Clement, and it reminded me how hilarious I think he and Bret are.

12.18.16 - Julie's Paint Party

Originally for Julie's birthday she was going to host a paint party where the guests painted pencil outlines she had made of scenes she loves and then the paintings were our gifts to her and she could hang them around her house. However, due to stress from work and being generally very busy, Julie decided a few days before the party to call it off and just have people over for snacks and wine.

But Denny was having none of it. He secretly messaged Mom and the other siblings and arranged for us to have the paint party after all. Because Denny himself can't sketch the scenes Julie would want painted, he ordered paint-by-number kits for the guests instead. He then bought a bunch of delicious snack food and secretly invited more people over to arrive and surprise her. He even arranged their basement to be set up for painting, and as a cover story he told Julie he needed to set it up that way to work indoors on the transmission.

Julie knew I was coming over with Clara (and Jack) because she and I had planned (also secretly) to create a painted grand kid footprint craft for Mom for Christmas. We invited Ellen along too just to hang out. This worked out well because when Ellen and Clara and I arrived it created no suspicion. We went in the basement and Zoey very excitedly showed Clara how she can jump from Julie and Denny's bed to the over-sized red cushion. Clara thought it was hilarious.

As we were getting set up for the footprint craft. Mel and Elizabeth also showed up. But I guess they do show up from time to time, since they are Denny's family, so while Julie seemed pleasantly surprised she still didn't seem suspicious. But when our cousin Becky, her husband Matt, and their boy Damien also showed up, she got skeptical. She asked Denny if he had planned this all along and, grinning happily, he admitted he had.

So then the women all got set up to paint and the men took the kids upstairs to get them out of the way. That was so nice - it was very relaxing to be able to sit on the floor with paints all around and not worry about the kids getting everything everywhere. Denny kept coming downstairs with more and more food - he had a lot of wine and some beer, some really great flavored pita chips and dip, pizza, and, above all (in my mind) mozzarella sticks. Mmmmm.

Julie had done two sketches before she had surrendered the paint party idea: Hogwarts and the Golden Gate Bridge. She painted the bridge and I worked on Hogwarts. Meanwhile Ellen, Becky, and Mel & Elizabeth (combined) worked on three of the paint-by-numbers kits, which were far more beautiful and elaborate than any of us had anticipated. I was picturing children's 8x11" sets, pretty basic, but these were more like maybe 2'x18" and very very detailed. Even after nearly 3 hours of working on them, none were even a fifth done. But that's okay, because there's no hurry and they will be gorgeous when finished.

Not too long after we'd gotten going, Mom arrived too. She worked on Ellen's painting with her. We all listened to a jazzy Christmas station in the background.

I got decently far on my Hogwarts painting, though nowhere near finished, alas. Eventually, after Becky and Mel and Elizabeth had gone home, the kids were allowed back downstairs. Clara and Malcolm played with different toys and trikes, and Zoey sat next to me and did her own painting (sun, sky, tree, stick figure). She looked pretty cute in her little apron too.

Overall it was a very delicious and enjoyable and creative time, and I am really glad Denny pushed through and made it happen.

12.16.16 - Jane always with me

I’m so glad to know the baby is a girl and to be able to refer to her as Jane now. Pregnancy has many drawbacks but one of the bonuses is knowing the baby is always with you, always warm enough, fed, safe. When we flew into MO yesterday I was thinking about how much easier it is to keep Jane comfortable compared to Clara. :-P Now I’m at Mid Rivers BreadCo, half-absorbed in working on a manuscript for my internship, and every now and then I think about how Jane is with me the whole time, just hanging out. In some senses it’s a lot less effort than once they’re born. I’m thinking a lot more now about how small she is (7 inches at the larger end) compared to Clara.

12.14.16 - a week of good news

This week has already been great and it's only Wednesday night. Highlights:

My internship at the lab is ending, which is unfortunate. But on Monday one of the analysts (also a friend of mine) suggested I find out if I can continue to come in just once a week as a volunteer in order to stay connected. I asked the DNA unit supervisor and she liked the idea, so I will be able to keep up that connection for the foreseeable future. It's good for me because (a) it's a good professional connection and good resume builder, (b) it gets me out of the apartment and socializing with other adults besides Jack on a regular basis, and (c) there's another small project I could work on that might be worth a technical note in a peer-reviewed publication. So all good things. :)

A friend of mine was having some pretty serious problems with some bullies, essentially, and Ellen and I were able to play a role in making those people back off. That was an extremely satisfying victory.

I had an interview yesterday for a potential contract job with the local university as an editor. My ex-writing instructor and boss hooked me up with it. The interview went really well--the work sounds right up my alley--and even better, they agreed to the hourly rate I quoted without trying to negotiate it down. I had picked something I thought was a little high so I'd have negotiating room and instead they just gave it to me! The job won't start until February, probably, but it will certainly help to make up for the loss of the internship income, and I will probably enjoy the work more, really.

This pregnancy my plan has been to do one bet per trimester with my dad in order to keep my weight under better control. Today was the last day of our 2nd trimester bet. The whole thing has been very successful for me in terms of not gaining too much weight too fast, and as a huge bonus, my dad called today to tell me he couldn't keep up his end. I never actually expected that, as he is extremely competitive, but for whatever reason it didn't work out this time, which means I get an unexpected and very helpful chunk of money this month! So that was awesome.

And the big one: this morning Jack and I went to our 20 week (really 18 week and 6 days) ultrasound. We got to spend half an hour "seeing" our baby. I had to lie there for quite awhile because they have to take a lot of images at this ultrasound, and Jack sat at the edge of the bed (?) and rubbed my shins and feet while he watched. At the end we found out we are having another little girl! Jane Autumn Jackson. I posted the ultrasound on FB when we got home and have been enjoying everyone's congrats the rest of the day.

Finally, after this post I am going to start packing because we are leaving for Christmas vacation tomorrow! I already have lots of fun plans with friends and family. So looking forward to it. :)

12.11.16 - Christmas food and drink joys

12.10.16 - 3rd Annual Hot Chocolate Potluck

Throughout the morning I alternated between playing with Clara and straightening up the apartment. During the week I had picked up odds and ends for the party, including a holly-themed table cloth, which I set up. I took the veggie tray I'd gotten at Wal Mart the night before and rearranged the veggies like a Christmas tree on a Santa platter I'd picked up at the Dollar Tree.

I changed Clara into her "Daddy's Little Elf" shirt and I changed into the Santa "Believe" shirt I'd also just picked up. I set out the nonfat and Vitamin D milk, Nestle hot chocolate packets, Bacardi, peppermint, and cinnamon. I put on a Christmas playlist. Incidentally it was chilly and raining the whole morning - great weather for hot chocolate.

Luckily Clara had woken up early enough that she was ready for a nap before anyone started arriving. It probably would've been much harder to get her down once guests were there because (I think) she doesn't want to miss anything. I put her down for a nap about 20 minutes before we were supposed to start and then spent a few moments enjoying my unusually clean apartment, anticipating the potluck food, and trying to look up ideas for Christmas magazine collages on Pinterest.

Erin arrived just on time at 1pm. She even joked about how always is the first to arrive because she always shows up at the actual time. But as the hostess, I really like that, because I'm ready to start and have been looking forward to it! She brought her "world famous" Rolo chocolate cookies and we ate several and went ahead and started warming some milk (even though whipped cream and marshmallows hadn't arrived yet).

Not too long after, Rachel showed up, and she was wearing a Christmas sweater that included flashing Christmas lights!! I was pretty impressed. She brought some cinnamon nutmeg muffins that smelled (and tasted) wonderful. She also brought high quality dark chocolate mix. The three of us visited for awhile before anyone else showed up (pretty much everyone was driving up from the bay area in stormy weather). It was pretty nice having a smaller group visit. Eventually Clara woke up and she was super cuddly with me while we kept visiting.

Next to arrive were Henry and Kale, and they came with Triscuits and cheese and oranges and vanilla extract. I was especially happy about the cheese. Clara hid behind my skirt from Henry, but she doesn't take long to warm up and he's very good with her, very attentive and sweet. Kale and I hadn't seen each other in an especially long time, and we caught up on how his degree was going, how mine was done, how Fitzy was doing. That was nice.

It wasn't long before we started talking about politics, a favorite topic of ours, and that conversation absorbed me completely for probably a couple hours actually. Somewhere in the course of it Gennilyn and Shannon arrived (with whipped cream and marshmallows, pizza rolls and potato chips).

Shannon does some of her Crossfit moves with Clara.

They ended up with Rachel and Erin around the coffee table making Christmas cards, but Kale and I talked on and on with Henry listening and occasionally smiling or giving a brief interjection. I so enjoy talking to both of those guys about politics, because they won't pretend to agree but it rarely gets at all heated, and it's easier to readily admit what you don't know when you're talking to others who are doing the same.

Throughout most of this Jack was in his room studying, although he did come out to visit for a little while. He then retired again to nap before a very late night study session.

Also, the entire time we were talking Henry was keeping an eye on Clara and at one point even stopped her from pulling a dining room chair on herself. He also videotaped her a few times, a fact for which I'm grateful since it was the only video taken the whole night. I had even told Erin and Rachel I wanted to do a better job videotaping this year, and then I completely forgot because I was talking politics with Kale. Ha. Oh well.

After a (very long) while, we snapped out of it and mingled more with everyone else. I felt a little bad for having been so myopic with only a couple guests, but Erin told me later she enjoyed quietly listening in on what we were saying, and that made me feel better. We talked a bit about my pregnancy, Gennilyn's Harry Potter themed Howler cards, Shannon's Crossfit competition and upcoming qualifying exam for her PhD program, and Clara's dancing abilities. Erin, Rachel, and Gennilyn all made some pretty nice Christmas cards.

Gennilyn makes Howlers.

During all of this, Clara's approximately 2 hour Christmas youtube playlist was playing on repeat, setting a decent ambiance I guess. It's filled with videos like this:

We also took a few group photos using the timer on my phone, and I'm glad we went through the effort.

Then Rachel, Erin, and Gennilyn headed out. Shannon stayed and chatted with the rest of us about her PhD committee and what the defense would be like. Once she headed out, though, Kale and I (with, again, a listening Henry) had a particularly good conversation about abortion. The bottom line is he can understand what I'm saying and follow my thought process even if he doesn't agree with me, and that is so satisfying and refreshing. It makes me much more interested in discussing it than I normally would be. I so enjoyed the talk. He also told me that his conversations with me over the years have convinced him the topic is more complex than most people make it out to be, and I found that very encouraging and even flattering.

By the time Kale and Henry left they had been at my apartment for nearly 7 hours, and it flew by. After everyone was gone, Clara watched videos while I posted the pics on Facebook and ate allll the pizza rolls Gennilyn had left with us. And after I finally put Clara to bed, I enjoyed one last cup of hot chocolate (this time with whipped cream and marshmallows!) in the darkened living room with only our Christmas lights on. That was pretty nice.

12.9.16 - More Clara growing up

The other night I was sitting on our teal chair in the living room when Clara stopped playing and climbed into my lap. So I put the laptop aside to hang out with her. She put both hands on my shoulders and then gently dragged them down my arms a bit, almost like she was petting me, and then lean in and gave me a kiss and cuddled me for a second. Then she sat up and repeated the process 2 or 3 more times. It was heart-melting.

Lately when I drive to or from the meeting point with Beth (nanny), I play the "Clara" playlist on my iPod, which is mostly Disney songs with a few others (Wizard of Oz, for example) thrown in. I gravitate toward the songs she is most likely to try to sing along. Right now she tries pretty hard on the refrain "allllmooooost therrrre" from The Princess and the Frog's "Almost There." She also has tried with parts of "He's a Tramp" (Lady and the Tramp) and others. I usually can't watch her because, well, I'm driving, but I just sit up front and smile and smile listening to her, and sometimes I sing along too.

Happy girl at the nanny's today.

Sometimes I sit on the couch and she crawls up behind me and likes to stand behind me and lean her head over one of my shoulders or the other, grinning maniacally in anticipation and waiting for me to sloooowly turn my head (eyes first, head follows) to then suddenly look at her and say "HI!" She laughs so hard.

Sometimes I lay the Marauder's map blanket out on the living room floor and she gets really excited and runs onto it and then alternates between sprawling stomach down on it and standing and stomping around excitedly in circles.

She's been a little better the last 2-3 days about letting me brush her teeth, mostly because we have three snowmen ornaments hanging in the bathroom to distract her. I stand her on the bathroom counter, point to each one and count "1, 2, 3!" Then I say "get you get you get you get you" as I brush some part of her teeth, and repeat. We've done it enough now that she instinctively opens her mouth at the "3" although she also still instinctively chomps down on the tooth brush to try to suck all the toothpaste off. But at least she's not breaking down crying like she was before. I'll have to figure out a similar trip when we go on Christmas vacation and when we come back and put the Christmas decorations away.

She keeps climbing on the table to examine the Christmas tree.

She gets fussy (in an impatient way, not a serious one) often when I lay her on the changing table, so lately I've tried distracting her by asking her if she can say different words. I've noticed most of them are two syllables (Mama, JaMa, GPa, DaDa) and she'll just say "Baba!" and grin. The one exception is "Mimi" two which she replies "Beebee!" This has only happened 2-3x. Mostly she just listens quietly while I ask her to repeat words and only responds for "Woof woof woof!" ("Woo woo woo!") and sometimes "Choo choo!" ("ooooooo") and "Tweet tweet!" ("twee twee!")

Just the other day I bought her a little wooden puzzle from Once Upon a Child ($2.50 instead of $10 for the original!) It is just cutouts of a dog, cat, bird, fish, bunny, and butterfly. She takes one piece out at a time and hands it to me and I make the noise of the animal (for the bunny I just say "boing boing!" and for the fish I say "glub glub!" and for the butterfly I say nothing but make it flutter around.) Once she gives me all the pieces, she takes them all back which often takes awhile because she wants to hold all six at once but keeps dropping some. She's very patient as she keeps picking them up until she haphazardly has them all, and then she half-squats half-walks around and drops them somewhere, only to hand them each to me again. Today she just realized she can put them back in the puzzle board, although she's only successfully done it with the biggest piece, her favorite: the dog. But she is very proud.

12.9.16 - Kid snippets: Clara's great reorganization

Clara's great reorganization: all her puzzle pieces in the folded up stroller, all her fridge magnets and some hydrocortizone in the popcorn box of the pantry, a Christmas ornament among her shoes in the shoe rack, dried pasta in one of my shoes, and a wireless mouse in the other.

Pinecone crafts

12.4.16 - First weekend of December

This month is off to a great start. On December 1, I practiced my thesis presentation twice, including once for Jack, who had some good follow up questions. I felt pretty good about it. On December 2, I practiced twice more, and then Jack, Clara, and I all got dressed up and drove to Davis for the actual presentation.

Clara's fancy outfit.

We got to see Erin, Braden, Rachel, Shannon, and Julianna. It felt good that they all came to watch. I also got to introduce Clara to interim director Fred and program chair Kent, who thought she was adorable.

Jack, Clara, and me just before my presentation.

I was the first to give my presentation, and it went just fine. I actually really enjoy speaking in front of crowds and wouldn't have minded if there had been a larger crowd there. Either way I was proud of the presentation because I had intentionally tried to make it easy to follow even for people without much DNA background. Nearly every slide was mostly pictures more than data, and afterward a few people told me they enjoyed it, including people without much science background at all. I was pretty pleased about that. I only got two questions in the end and they were both very easy, and then that was it. I was done with the presentation and with my entire master's degree!

Screencap from the video of my presentation.

Jack and Clara made it through a good 75% of the presentation before Clara got too chatty and Jack had to take her in the hallway. Fortunately he'd already seen me practice so he wasn't missing much. I decided to go ahead and stay a bit after so I could have some of the delicious free dinner they always offer, including some fudgy brownies. Then we drove home and Jack and I got a chance to talk about how it all went and how good it is to be done. I can't believe writing the thesis, writing the manuscript, giving the presentation, and my overall master's degree are all finally off my to do list!

The next day (Saturday, December 3), Erin came over in the morning (bringing a hot chocolate for me) and we started making Christmas cards. Janice skyped with us for most of the time we were together--had to be at least 3-4 hours--while on her end she worked on table numbers for Erin's wedding reception next summer. It wasn't exactly the same as having Janice here in person but it was pretty close.

It may have been the most productive card-making session we've ever had. I made 10 cards in the time Erin was here, and I think she made about 7. It helped that I have all the more craft supplies now thanks to Sarah's generosity; she moved earlier this year and while cleaning out her stuff decided to send me a box of high quality craft supplies (card stock, new punches, ribbons, etc.) that she never really gets around to using. So that made it all the more fun.

Just some of the cards Erin and I made.

In the background we alternated between Clara's youtube Christmas playlist and my Spotify Christmas playlist.

One of the videos from Clara's Christmas playlist.

For the most part Clara did a great job keeping herself busy (Jack was shut in his room studying for a test Monday). She did sit with us at the table a few different times and examine the many objects we had on the table--it looked almost like the pages of an I Spy book. Eventually she finally went down for a nap and she was still asleep when Erin left.

A table like an I Spy book.

Now I have the hot chocolate potluck to look forward to next week! Love this season.

12.3.16 - Making Christmas cards

This is what Erin and I did today.

12.1.16 - A few more Christmas joys