and some other stuff

We got a new (to us) bubble tumbler at a yard sale for free. Kevin was really excited about it.

Kevin:

While I was peeling a boiled egg: "Mom, I want you to hatch an egg for me too, okay?"

Ryan introduced Kevin to the joys of Veggie Tales, mainly Silly Songs with Larry. I know, high quality music, right? But it's completely worth it because Kevin thinks they are hilarious and giggles the entire time he watches them. The Hairbrush Song is one we've been singing for years because the kids enjoy taking my hairbrush and leaving it places. The only difference is that I actually do have a lot of hair and I do need a hairbrush.

I bought a preschool workbook to work on with Kevin. The first time we got it out he was so nervous that the best he could manage was to color jerkily with a crayon in both hands. Now he is getting more comfortable and starting to color more purposefully. I'm trying to help him learn to follow the directions because I think it's a skill he will need to work on to be ready for school. He also needs some help with writing. He doesn't even want to trace the lines, and he has only recently started drawing humanoids. He's getting better and starting to enjoy it more. I'm trying to keep things low-pressure so that he will have positive associations with it all. I had to go back to the store to get Heidi a cheap coloring book, because she was feeling left out.

Heidi:

Heidi has decided to switch to a big girl bed. I wasn't really planning on it for a while, but the kids have been rough-housing too much on the top bunk lately, so I asked Ryan to take the top bed down and figure out a way to have two twin beds and a crib in the kids' room. Then Heidi just assumed that she was going to be sleeping in one of the twin beds, so we figured we'd give it a try. The first night she fell out of bed after a couple of hours, so we turned the bed around so that the rail goes all the way around her, and she's been doing just fine. She certainly looks little in that big bed, though! During nap time she still sleeps in the pack n play in our closet, and usually she goes to sleep with no objections, but sometimes she climbs out, so we'll see how long it works. Ryan took the crib apart since we weren't using it.

I am enjoying hearing the songs that Heidi sings in the pack n play when she wakes up from her naps. I've recognized The Wheels on the Bus and Row, Row, Row Your Boat ("Wo, wo, wo boat . . . stream! Meh, Meh, Meh . . . dream!")

Other stuff:

Ryan is getting ready for his prelims in July. He has made a lot of progress with his computer model, and now he is actually getting useful results, so he can start getting data and writing papers. He still keeps tweaking and fixing things with the model, but it's nice to feel like he's moving forward.

I tried selling a bunch of things at a multi-family yard sale on 5/25. I got a whopping $11.50, and then I spent $9. The people coming to the yard sale just weren't looking for the things I was trying to sell (mainly clothes). We're trying Craigslist, but if that doesn't work out I think I'll just donate the stuff because I'm tired of it, and I don't want to try to sort it out and put the clothes in the right boxes again. I came home with an awesome United States puzzle for the kids (which they love), three dresses for Heidi, and a bag for me.

I am gradually getting our bedroom cleaned up. In my dream house, there will be an office where we keep the computer and sewing things, and our bedroom will not be the storage room. I want a nice bedroom without clutter. But for now I am trying to come up with ways to organize papers and sewing projects so they aren't everywhere in our room.

trespassing

For our final in my field methods class we had another orienteering-type activity, where we were given GPS coordinates and pictures, and we had to find the thing in the picture and take strike/dip or trend/plunge, then plot it on a topographic map. Ryan and the kids came with me in the evening while I tried to find the first few places.

It was all going just fine for the first place (by the pond). Then I went to move on to the second place. Something strange happened in my brain as I was walking there, and I started thinking the top number on the GPS was the northing and the bottom was easting (it's actually the opposite). I don't know how that happened, because I was thinking the right way for the first location. I was about three yards away from the second place when my brain flipped and I started thinking I needed to be going a completely different direction. We ended up at a fence, and (in my flip-flopped thought process) my GPS was saying I needed to be on the other side of the fence. We went up and down the fence and couldn't find a place where it seemed to curve around. Ryan remarked that it seemed more like a deer fence, so finally I decided to climb over this gate and find my place on the other side. I left Ryan and the kids there. Kevin and Heidi apparently tried to follow me to get me to come back. Apparently they knew this was a bad idea.

I kept wandering and trying to get the GPS numbers right, and I ended up at a road. I followed the road and came to a brick building with a parking lot to the side. Then I realized the brick building looked sort of like a house, and someone was looking at me out the window. I turned and went around the house that definitely had a bunch of fences around it. After wandering for quite a distance I finally decided my GPS was having problems and I needed to go back, but by this point I had decided that this was definitely somebody's private property, so I didn't really want to go back past the house. I ended up getting disoriented, and then I found a broken part in the fence and went over. I was pretty obviously back on the frisbee golf course now, and I asked somebody to tell me how to get back to the pond, figuring if I could get back to the pond I could find Ryan and the kids.

I got back and found them, and by that point it was time to go home. I was really frustrated because I had to give the GPS back to my TA by 2:00 the next day, and I only had one out of the ten locations done.

Here's an interesting leaf Ryan saw while I was tromping through the forest.

The next day I went back to try again. I walked quite a ways and again decided my GPS must be having problems because I would walk in a straight line north (following my compass) and the numbers on the GPS for what I thought were northing would go up and down and up and down. That was when it finally hit me that I had flipped it in my head, and that really the top number was easting and the bottom number was northing. After that I got along much better. I found the places just fine and didn't have much trouble figuring out where they were on the topo map. The only issue I had was with the fourth place. I ended up standing at that same fence with the GPS telling me the spot I was looking for was about twenty feet away on the other side of the fence. I looked around on the not-private side of the fence and couldn't find the place in the picture. This time I decided there was no way I was climbing that fence again and I was just going to miss out on the points. (It turns out that was a good choice because when I mentioned it to my TA he said it wasn't on the other side of the fence.) Oh, and the whole time it was sprinkling just slightly so that my topo map was slightly damp, which meant if I tried to erase things I just got smudges.

Later on, after finals were over and grades were posted, I decided to figure out what that building was that I had seen in the evening when I hopped over the fence. As it turns out, it was the UNC chancellor's house. No joke. It was a pretty interesting adventure. I think I would have enjoyed it more if it wasn't a test.

the next Lindsey Stirling

Here is Heidi sporting the Lindsey Stirling look after sleeping with pigtails in her hair.

I found a blog post that had several different ideas for fixing toddler girls' hair, so I've been experimenting with a few of them. I haven't been taking pictures of most of them, but here are a couple:

Side French braid--first time I have braided her hair. Unfortunately, I haven't managed to repeat this hairstyle because I can't get her to sit still long enough.

Topsy-tail in front, with that hair split and added to two pigtails

Morgan Creek Trail

One Saturday in April we decided to go walk on the Morgan Creek Trail. We didn't get to see the entire thing because the children got tired, which means they kept getting distracted and doing naughty things like ignoring us. Next time we will take the double stroller. Other than that we had a really nice time and enjoyed the beautiful scenery. Kevin kept running ahead and Heidi kept lagging behind (trying to pick up and carry anything and everything on the pavement that looked slightly interesting).

This is the sad face that Heidi is really good at making. Imagine her making this face while rubbing her eyes and whimpering softly, and just try to resist the urge to give her candy.

nice pictures by Ryan

While the wisteria was blooming, Ryan took the opportunity to take some pictures of the flowers and the kids. He got several nice ones.

(He was also testing the camera to see if the pictures would have a dot in the middle. Early one morning, Kevin decided to take underwater pictures of imaginary fishes in real water. Fortunately, the water in the camera dried up and it seems to still be taking nice pictures despite the dot in the middle of the lens.)

Anyway, here are the pictures, in no particular order.

Heidi taking care of her big brother

I'm just copying this from Ryan's Facebook post because I couldn't have put it better.

"Prepare your limbic systems because this Facebook post may just bring a tear to your eye.

"A few weeks ago Kevin was having a particularly hard day. He was over stimulated all day, didn't have much sleep the night before and was too agitated to take a nap. Thus at about dinner time before he could get to the table he laid down on the floor and fell asleep. Heidi was somewhat concerned and got out of her seat to see if Kevin was OK. She went over to him and sat down next to him and asked, "Are you OK?" 

"We told her that he was tired and fell asleep. So she got up and went and got one of her own blankets and spread it over Kevin. Noticing that his feet were still uncovered she went and got one of his blankets and put it over his feet. Then she laid down next to him to keep him company.

"Heidi sure does love her older brother and he loves her."

research project update

So here is a little update about my Strontium research project. Below you can see a map of the area I've been studying and then a table with Strontium concentrations,⁸⁷Sr/ ⁸⁶Sr ratios, and elevation.

The story behind this is that a graduate student here at UNC did a Master's Thesis where she took a core of the peat (soil with a high concentration of plant matter) and studied its chemistry. One of the things she found was that the peat had a high ⁸⁷Sr/ ⁸⁶Sr ratio. ⁸⁷Sr is the daughter isotope of ⁸⁷Rb, which means that over time ⁸⁷Sr increases because ⁸⁷Rb is decaying. So older rocks will have high ⁸⁷Sr/ ⁸⁶Sr ratios, and younger rocks will have low ⁸⁷Sr/ ⁸⁶Sr ratios. The interesting thing is that the place where she sampled is close to the East coast, and the rocks and sediment there should be young. You would expect them to have ⁸⁷Sr/ ⁸⁶Sr ratios similar to modern sea water (0.70918) or else the groundwater (0.708104-0.709006). Instead she found that the peat had values of 0.71361± 0.00047. My project, which I started last fall, has been to explore why that value is so high.

Last fall I collected the first ten water samples in the table. What I found was that the water from the center (GL, CF-L, and HC) had the highest values (greater than 0.710). The samples from the east side (BC, TR-Y, and NR) had values similar to sea water. The samples from the west side (TR-P, WO-M, WO-L, and WO-H) had values similar to the local groundwater. At the time I concluded that there was something happening at the center of the Croatan National Forest that was causing the values to be high there, and I expected that there would be a radial pattern where values decreased gradually as you move out from the center of the forest towards the Neuse River, the Trent River, and the White Oak River. Since the forest is on a plateau, I also wondered if ⁸⁷Sr/ ⁸⁶Sr ratios would be related to elevation. So this semester I collected thirteen more samples, because I needed more data to be able to test my hypothesis. My focus was to get more samples from inside the forest, and also more samples in the area between the forest and the major rivers.

My results were not what I expected. Initially when I got the data back and compared it to my map, I was afraid I had done something wrong and contaminated my samples. But then I used Google Maps to figure out where the water was flowing, it made a lot more sense.

The place that worried me the most was the area in the north (samples CL-1, AR, NF1, and NF2). CL-1 was so close to the Neuse River that I was sure it would have a similar ⁸⁷Sr/ ⁸⁶Sr ratio. Since the Neuse River has a higher concentration of Sr than the other rivers in the region, even a little bit of mixing would make that creek have the same ⁸⁷Sr/ ⁸⁶Sr ratio as the Neuse River. Instead, CL-1 had a ⁸⁷Sr/ ⁸⁶Sr ratio of 0.710241, higher than the Neuse River's ratio, which is 0.709172. I know that doesn't look like much of a difference, but it's fairly significant. So CL-1 had values similar to samples closer to the center of the forest. The same was the case for AR, NF1, and NF2. Then I looked at Google Maps and realized that all of these samples are on the same creek, Brice Creek, and the creek actually meanders quite a bit before it joins the Trent River, which then joins the Neuse River. So at the location of CL-1, even though geographically it is close to the Neuse River, the water there actually doesn't reach the Neuse River until after going west and then north, and meandering a lot. If you follow Brice Creek from CL-1 to the Trent River, the ⁸⁷Sr/ ⁸⁶Sr ratio decreases as more mixing takes place between Brice Creek and the Trent River. So the values of those samples actually do make sense.

As I looked at all of the other samples it seemed clear that this is mainly a story of mixing. If the water is mixing pretty directly with the Neuse, Trent, or White Oak rivers, the ⁸⁷Sr/ ⁸⁶Sr ratios will be lower, but if there is more meandering or the location is farther from those rivers, then the ⁸⁷Sr/ ⁸⁶Sr tends to be higher.

I also plotted all of the samples on a topographic map, and there was no correlation between elevation and ⁸⁷Sr/ ⁸⁶Sr ratios.

This doesn't really tell what is causing the ratios to be high in the area, but it changes how we view what's going on. The next thing I want to do is test the Strontium in rainwater in the area to see if storms from inland are bringing in ⁸⁷Sr and raising the ⁸⁷Sr/ ⁸⁶Sr ratios. I also want to study the soil in the area. While I was talking to one professor here, he said that it's possible the geologic map of UNC isn't accurate and that the rock in the area is older than was thought.

Hopefully this was interesting to some people and not too hard to follow. It makes sense to me because I've spent so much time staring at the numbers, but maybe it won't make as much sense to other people who aren't so familiar with it.