Our apartment complex has a chronic problem with people leaving their boxes by the dumpsters instead of flattening them and putting them inside the dumpsters designated for boxes. It looks tacky and it's also the first thing that people see when they drive into the community. I don't see why adults in graduate school can't seem to be responsible enough to take care of their boxes properly. I think the apartment manager has just started putting the boxes in because the garbage/recycling collectors won't collect the boxes if they're piled up like that. The pile is always quite impressive right after Christmas.

I'd love to tape this note on all the front doors of the buildings, but I don't think I can bring myself to actually do it.

The quiet book pages are finished. There were other pages that I wanted to do, but I can make them later and add them onto the book if I feel like it. I ended up with eight pages.

I had to laugh tonight when I was finishing off the pages. I was sewing around the edges of the very last page to finish it off, and I ran out of bobbin thread two inches from the end. (Isn't it funny how often that seems to happen?) I was not about to take the time to wind up the bobbin for two inches of stitching, so I decided the page was done and wrapped them up to put them under the tree.

I'm really proud of how the pages turned out. I will try to post pictures of each of them later.

favorite ornaments

The kids have been very interested in the ornaments. Kevin's favorites are two small metal trumpets which he loves to blow on (most likely mixing his spit with the spit of all of Ryan's siblings as well as many of Kevin's cousins' spit--yummy!). When we got the trumpet ornaments out he held them and kept saying excitedly, "I'm so happy! I'm so excited about the trumpets!" Magical.

Heidi's favorite ornaments are these tiny wooden dolls (shaped like the nesting Russian dolls, except they're all the same size and don't nest) and of course a little stuffed bear that she likes to snuggle while lying down on the floor. It's so sweet to see her get one of the wooden dolls off the tree and happily walk around holding it and showing everyone.

The kids also love the two jingle bells.

I am getting closer to having the Christmas gifts done. Yesterday I finished the bean bags. I ended up with 20, which is a ton once you look at them. I cut out rectangles, folded them in half to make a square, and sewed around the edges, leaving some space, then turned them inside out. Then I filled them with rice and sewed them shut. It was a fairly easy project. The quiet book has been more work. So far I have five pages done, and I was hoping to make eight. We'll see how far I get. I'm getting pretty good at sewing buttonholes now. I'm not even scared of them anymore. I'm still trying to decide how to divide the pages up, since I wanted it to be a gift the kids would share, but I want them to both get to open some of them. Sometimes I am amazed at what my old sewing machine manages to pull off. A few days ago when I was making the buckle page, the sewing machine sewed those buckles down with no protest at all. A lot of pins got bent in the process of making the bean bags, though.

Enjoying the Magic

In past years I have been somewhat uptight about Christmas. We didn't even get a tree the past two years because I didn't want to deal with Kevin knocking it down and breaking ornaments and biting lights. But this year I have been feeling like I need to just let them enjoy the magic of Christmas. Our friend Teresa left us their artificial tree last year before they moved away, so we set that up and put lights on it soon after finals were over. (By the way, a benefit of an artificial tree is that if it gets pulled over you don't have to worry about water spilled all over the floor.) (Why yes, Heidi did almost pull the tree on top of herself and it scared her to death.) The kids were so excited and fascinated with the lights. It was slightly stressful but I made myself step back and see things from their perspective and I could see how magical it was for them. Then today I finally got out the ornaments and the nativity sets and we put those out. The kids love to look at the nativity sets, and I let them look at my nativity set on the floor for a while before I got nervous and put it up high. As we got the ornaments out I realized that we really only have a couple of ornaments that I would be nervous would shatter. Most of the rest are made of wood or cloth or metal. So at least we don't have to worry about stepping on broken ornament glass. I really like that I can let the kids take the ornaments on and off if they want to, except a few that are purposely at the top of the tree. This year we are going to enjoy the magic.

research project

I thought I'd share a brief synopsis of the research project I did this semester.

Here is a map of the area I studied:

There was a master's student who graduated last year who did an extensive study of the chemistry of the soil in this region (at the spot marked "Sun's study site"). The results of the Strontium analysis were very interesting. Strontium has a few different isotopes (same element, but with different weights due to different number of neutrons), and one of the ways to determine the ages (and other characteristics) of rocks is to find out how many of each isotope there are in the rocks. So they take Strontium-87 and compare it to Strontium-86. In this area, you would expect the ratio of 87Sr to 86Sr to be low because it is in the coastal plain and the rocks are relatively young. But in Sun's project, the 87Sr/86Sr ratio was higher than expected--more comparable to the older rocks to the west. So my adviser came up with the idea of having me collect water samples from the area and then find the 87Sr/86/Sr ratios for all of those samples so we could compare the results and get some ideas for what's going on.

So I collected the water samples and separated the Strontium out, which I blogged about before, and then I put the Strontium on filaments to run in a mass spectrometer to measure the amounts of the different Sr isotopes. The results were that the four samples on the west and the three samples on the northeast had 87Sr/86Sr ratios that were about what you would expect--similar to the seawater and groundwater of the area. But interestingly, the three samples within the national forest (CF-C, GL, and HC) that are near Sun's Study site all had high ratios, although not as high as the ratios for the soil she studied. So now the question is where this area is getting 87Sr from, and there are a lot of possibilities.

The main thing I learned is that I still don't know very much. But I do feel excited that the numbers I got from the mass spectrometry make sense and have some meaning. I'm guessing I will be studying this some more next semester.

Fun in the Cupboard

This is one of Kevin and Heidi's favorite games. As you may have guessed, I am not currently doing a very good job of rotating my canned food storage.

a placebo

One of Kevin's newest phrases is, "This is called a _______."

"It's kinda good/kinda gross." (Generally in reference to food.)

"I'm not being naughty!"

"I want to do it . . . by myself." Or, "I want you to do it by yourself" (if he doesn't want to do something).

"I can't--I'm just . . . too busy." (I don't know where he got this from, because I really don't think I say this that often.)

"I want medicine sugar on my toast." (He means cinnamon sugar.)

Most-requested foods: Berry muffins (plain muffins with 2 cups of frozen berries) and pizza

He addresses people as sweetheart and honey. At least there's one positive thing I say that he is copying.

Kevin is finally getting to the point where I can "help" him say the right thing. I'll see if I can explain what I mean. I've always been really frustrated when I go to the park or a playdate and Kevin acts up and then there's this expectation that I teach him what to say, like, "Kevin, you need to say you're sorry. Say, 'I'm sorry, Sally.' " Or, "Kevin, you can't take the toys away. Say, 'Bobby, can I please have a turn using the shovel?' " I think it's great to help kids learn how to speak politely to their friends, but it only makes sense if they can actually speak. It's just dumb to try to get little kids to say long sentences like that when they can't even say their own name. So anyway, Kevin is finally to the point where it makes sense to teach him to say the right thing, and he's big enough that he can not only repeat it, but later on he does a better job of applying it. It's actually really nice. I appreciate that now that I've had him practice several times, he is starting to apologize to Heidi with just a little bit of prompting. Or if he demands something, I can respond by saying, "Please, Mommy, I would like ______," and then he remembers and asks again with better manners. Don't get me wrong, this kid has a lot of learning to do, but it's nice to occasionally get a sign that he actually is internalizing some of this stuff.

One Saturday morning Kevin came out of his room complaining he was sick and needed some medicine. He took one bite of Cheerios and moaned even more loudly that his tummy hurt and he needed some medicine. We were convinced that what his tummy needed was food, not medicine. Besides, Children's acetaminophen doesn't do much for tummy aches anyway. After unsuccessfully attempting to get Kevin to eat, Ryan pulled out the syringe and medicine cup and said, "Well, if we can't get him to eat and medicine won't help, I know something even more powerful than medicine. A placebo." He then mixed up a tablespoon of Country Time Lemonade in the medicine cup and gave it to Kevin by syringe. Kevin perked up quite a bit, but he still moaned occasionally and refused to eat anything. It turns out he really was sick, because a little while later he threw up a little on the couch. Then he was back to normal. But the placebo did help.

[The couch is fine, by the way. It's a magic couch and has miraculously cleaned up nicely after all sorts of messes, including multiple episodes with pens.]

Kevin likes to take pictures of suckers. He also likes to eat them.

A favorite game these days is to tip over the rocking chair, drape a blanket over it, and play underneath like it's a fort or a cave or a tent. Sometimes both kids will go in and play nicely for a couple of minutes.