Toes are awesome

It's been a long time since I have blogged..since May in fact.  Luckily, John has been keeping up with posts recently, but I would like to get better at it since it's proving to be important for documenting Davis' development and sheer awesomeness.  So here's a small warmup to get me back in the swing of blogging. 


I don't think I've mentioned it here, but after I defended in May (and officially graduated in June), I began work as a postdoc, joint with my Ph.D. lab and a new lab.  I'm still working out what it all means with regards to where I am and when, but it's awfully comfy to stick around my old stomping grounds and work with the same people I have been working with for years.  The biggest change in my postdoc is that I am now doing biological experiments and very little computation.  It's been quite the change and an eye-opening experience.  I've been completely overwhelmed and it's been pretty hard to go from feeling like you know something to feeling like you know nothing.  I'm blessed with great colleagues who are happy to help me through the learning curve of experiments (and enough of them I can spread out the wealth of my ignorance among them all, decreasing the burden on any one of them, although some still get a pretty heavy dose of me).  I think I enjoy it.  In contrast to when I was doing fabrication, the experiments I'm doing go fast enough to keep me excited about them.  Fabrication work left me pretty unexcited about getting back into the lab, but it's proving to be a completely different mode and timescale (for reference, it was typically 6 months to a year of fabrication before you ever even got to sit down with a device to see if it did what you hoped it would).  One of the hardest transitions to this new way of life is scheduling my day.  I'm eating lunch at 2:30 in the afternoon, missing the gym, and coming home exhausted after a full day of standing and running between labs.  I think as time goes on and I get the hang of things, it will get better.


Davis is growing and changing by the day.  It's cliched, but.. It sure is amazing to see the world through the eyes of a newborn/baby/toddler.  For example, Davis loves the toe song.  You know the one that goes "This little piggy went to the market, this little piggy stayed home..."  When we take off his shoes and socks he looks at his feet and points and I sing the song.  He laughs in delight when the last little piggy runs home.  He usually points again and we sing again..then one more time usually, perhaps a few more times.


John and I are amazed by his capacity to pick new things up and even extend them.  For example, when we went to the water park, he picked up a stick.  When he saw other kids putting things like buckets in the water stream to catch water, he put his stick in it.  Then when a little girl showed him how to catch water with a bucket, he tried it.  The first time we went to the water park he splashed in the puddles on the perimeter.  The second time, he was running through the center where the water was pouring down.  Who knows what he will do next time.


Davis is certainly like his dad was, a "me do it meself" kind of guy.  He gets upset at mealtimes if we try and give him finger food a little at a time.  This morning breakfast went much better when we handed him the entire plate of eggs and toast along with a fork.  He's doing wonderful at feeding himself with a spoon and fork.  We just have to be on the watch for when he finishes in order to catch the plate before it hits the ground.   


We hoped to go camping this weekend, Davis even has his own sleeping bag!  (Davis fell asleep on my sleeping bag on the last trip and I was freezing all night long).  Unfortunately, it looks like thunderstorms will prevent our trip from happening this weekend. 

Congratulations Dr. Naegle

By the way..I graduated

It's a bit anticlimactic that I finally get around to blog-announcing the fact that I successfully defended my Ph.D. dissertation more than two weeks ago...but here it is.. I graduated!  The day couldn't have gone more smoothly.  I headed into campus so that John and my Mom and Dad could get there a little closer to the defense time, which was 11:15am.  I had some great friends who helped my family setup the snacks and coffee while I prepped the talk and then all of a sudden the next thing I know, I'm defending!  I was really surprised at how nervous I was when it started, I believe my use of a laser pointer created some motion sickness for a few people.  Eventually, I settled down and was able to roughly enjoy giving the talk.  Another surprising thing about the defense talk, versus any other talk I've given, is the diversity of audience and material.  When preparing it I had to consider the full range of listeners, from my parents and husband to my advisor and committee.  It was really intimidating.  In addition, it's the first time I have talked about more than one of three major pieces of my Ph.D. work.  Fitting it all into a coherent picture was quite the challenge.   I have a hard time judging how it went, other than to tell you that I passed, and as a former advisor of mine likes to say "I passed with flying colors...black and blue". 


If you are like any of the other dozen people I have talked to recently, you are sitting there wondering, "What's next?"  Well, I have a somewhat elusive answer for you.. a postdoc, for a bit, maybe.  I had already planned to stay here for the summer to finish up some aspects of my work for publication.  During my post-defense discussion with my committee, this was actually formalized to be a postdoc with a committee member.  This is a fantastic development since it means I get to do some experiments, which I've always been eager to do.  However, it's really ideal since I can choose to leave at the end of the summer, regardless of the state of the experiments.  If, however, things are going great and I really decide I want to stay in academics, there's a lot of other work I can do with this advisor, should we both wish it.  Right now, I'm going to take it one step at a time before I try and project any long-term outcome of this arrangement.  Luckily, John is very supportive with the idea of going with the flow for the next few months as I sort out some very convoluted feelings I have about my future career path.  I'm lucky to have friends who continue to challenge me about some of those feelings so that I have to think deeply about every option. 


I still have a hard time adjusting to the idea that I am done.  Commencement next week might make it feel more real and I had an email tonight that helped!  My advisor emailed someone a request on behalf of Dr. Naegle and others.  It felt quite official!