The Post-PhD Life

Okay so catching up since April. Revise dissertation X 43 days. Start packing house X 7 days. Travel to San Antonio for SLEEP meetings X 5 days. Finish packing X 7 days. Drive cross-country X 10 days (including stops with good friends and family). See parents and celebrate Audrey's 2nd birthday X 2 days. Unpack X 1 day. Start postodc.

But really since then, things have been pretty calm. There have been the usual hassles associated with relocating to a new city (I don't know where I am going AND there are no street signs! Car insurance costs WHAT? Ah, the DMV...) but it has also been fun exploring - there are plenty of parks, lakes, beaches, carousels etc. within an hour's drive from Providence. The newest attraction is "pick your own apples" which we may try in the next few weeks...

Providence residents (Providenizens?) are very nice, we've met quite a few folks, especially since our local "pocket park" is a magnet for everyone within a 10-block radius who has a 2-year-old. Work is good (actually accomplishing small, discrete goals! What a concept!) and Paul is making inroads in the art community - look for benches designed and partially built by him to be installed on Hope Street, maybe next month.

The post-dissertation-defense entry

So I have not written since December, but here's my excuse - I was writing my dissertation draft. Now that I have defended, and passed, and been told by my committe that "draft" was probably a generous description of my dissertation, and started my revisions, I'm taking a moment out to update whoever is reading about Audrey.

She is now about 21 1/2 months old (her second birthday is coming up in June) and while she is still sometimes hard to understand, she does use a lot more words. She still can't pronounce some letters, though, which leads to very cute mis-pronounciations. She calls Paul's flip-flops "bap-baps." Nana Mary gave her a stuffed elephant that we often use as a pillow when she's getting her diaper changed, and "elephant" comes out sounding more like "elli-floo." Her favorite stuffed animals are "Ow" and "Bear" (Owl and Bear). A blanket is "ban-keh," and horse (either the animal or the bouncing on the leg game) is "or-see." One of my favorites is "Got-chew" - When Paul would chase her or pick her up I used to say "Daddy got you!" and now she'll run away and say "Got-chew! More Daddy got-chew!"

On the other hand, some words are very clear. Mom, Mommy, Mama. Daddy, Dad. Audrey. Her favorite thing - dance! Even complex words like "pretzel" she can practically do, especially if the pretzel in question is chocolate-covered. (Pretzel! More!).


Other than talking, she's busy playing at day care, and hanging out once a week with Grammie and Grampie and one of her new favorite people, Paul's brother Patrick (Pat-tri). She's also a daredevil, insisting on climbing ladders at the park that look way too big for her, but somehow she manages to get her little feet from rung to rung (see picture), whith a certain amount of parental hovering, of course.

She's definitely in the "Audrey can do it" stage with everything from putting on her pants to brushing her teeth (although we have taught her that while Audrey gets a turn to brush her teeth, so does Mom, so she'll come up to me after she finishes brushing and say "Mommy turn." And she definitely knows what she wants, whether it's for us to dance with her (Mommy, dance! Daddy, dance! Nana, Poppa, dance!) or to buy some ice-cream from the ice-cream truck at the park (Mommy, ice?), or to not take a nap (No, no, no, down!). More fun to come, I am sure, and hopefully it'll be a bit better documented on this site in the future!

White Elephant 2009

So tonight we had the annual Grad Group White Elephant gift exchange. It's always one of my favorite holiday things but this year it was especially bittersweet because Ben, Gretchen and Lily are leaving us, getting in the car in just a few days to drive to New York, and a new pastor post for Ben. There were lots of hugs and "Merry Christmases" at the end of our meeting, and even a hug from Lily to Holly that turned into a tackle, sending Holly falling (almost) into a couple of big-ish rocks in our front yard (and fortunately not the saguaro cactus that was about a foot away). As Ben said, "That will be a goodbye to remember!"

But while we were celebrating, we were too busy to be sad. We took a group picture, ate potluck food, and then all checked in as Lily (2 1/2), Audrey (1 1/2) and Elliott (11 months) competed for airtime. Then came the White Elephant. Everyone had brought an item, so everyone, including Lily and Audrey, got a number, and the games began. The most popular item was a pair of books, one a Tucson hiking guide and another a book on desert gardening, which were stolen the maximum 3 times. Hale ended up with the big box, with two tray tables and a giant stuffed bear inside, although Lily ended up going home with the bear, who will likely be her pillow on the cross-country trip to come. And Paul ended up with the "classic" white elephant gift, a Christmas Yoda (see picture).



As we gathered outside to say our goodbyes, Lily discovered that when she cupped her hands around a colored Christmas light bulb on our porch, her hand turned green or blue or whatever color the light was. She loved this and kept doing it, causing Audrey to start running from light to light, cupping her hands around each bulb, just like Lily. It was a sweet moment of them playing together - something to remember as we go our separate ways.

So as we start this Christmas week, Godspeed, Ben, Gretchen and Lily, and know you will always have a place here in our hearts and our homes in Tucson!

The 17+ months update

Wow, I haven't posted in a while. I don't know what happened to October, but November got away from me because of job applications. The first weekend of November Paul went up to Carefree, Arizona (Phoenix-ish) for an art show. Since it was only about a 2 hour drive, Audrey and I went up to support him, and to see what doing an art show with a toddler would really be like. We thought she might be bored, but she really loved it - lots of people to charm, and she thought the whole show area was a big game of "chase Audrey." She would walk away from Paul's booth, then turn around and smile to see if one of us was following her, and then she's scoot a few more feet away, merrily walking in front of show visitors and their babies and dogs. Though I didn't get any pictures of her at the show, I did take this one of her eating breakfast at the pancake house one morning before we went out to sell some art.

After we returned from the show, I was buried in job applications and presentation preparation for a few weeks, and then we headed to Virginia on Nov 25 for Thanksgiving and, for me, a trip up to Philadelphia for the AAA meeting the next week. Audrey has been enjoying hanging out with Nana and Poppa (and she can now say both of those names) running them ragged by being in constant motion and making most of her desires known with her still somewhat limited vocabulary. Although many of her words sound alike (dog and duck both sound kind of like "doh") she often uses a sign to distinguish which word she means. She also has some words that she exclusively says (like "plane," that we don't know the sign for) and others she exclusively signs (like "cereal," apple" and "signing"). Though she's enjoyed being the center of attention as the only grandchild on this side, she also had fun playing with her cousin Owen, about 8 months older,one day after Thanksgiving, and all the Guilford Avenue roommate's kids a couple of days later (she is the youngest of a 6-kid group, the oldest being 5 1/2 and the closest to her age being 3 months older).

One of the funniest moments of this trip to my parents' house was that they bought her a little kid cell phone that makes noise when you press the buttons, and also, if you close the phone, it waits about 5 seconds and then rings. Audrey was attempting to wave bye-bye and leave the room (one of her favorite things to do, followed by a re-appearance a few seconds later) but every time she closed the phone and said bye bye to us, the phone would ring. The first couple of times, she answered it, but after about four times, with all of us laughing as she got more and more put out, she handed the open phone to Paul and then successfully left the room.

The Tao of Bei: Linguistic Development a la Audrey

Anal PhD mom that I am, I was recently making a list of all the signs and words Audrey now uses at 14 months (at least 6 signs and 8 words, in case you were wondering) and I started thinking about one of her favorite multi-meaning words, namely "Bei" (or maybe "bay"). This is a word Audrey uses, with slightly different inflections and associated hand signals, to mean "belly button", "baby", "bird", "cat" and "dog."

If it means belly button or baby, she points at the item in question (typically real babies but sometimes her baby doll). If it means bird, she makes a hand signal that looks a little like the sign for "bird." For cat, she uses a sign that looks a bit like "cat." For dog (which can be prompted by real dogs or our neighbor's dogs barking) she doesn't use the American Sign Language sign for dog, but instead a hand motion that looks a little like summoning a dog.

She is also experimenting with stringing words together. Her longest phrase so far has been 4 words ("No, mom, no, mine!" when I closed the refrigerator door before she was finished positioning her water bottle appropriately inside) and she's also signed a two-word phrase ("more signing" when I turned off the Signing Time DVD)

Audrey's first road trip

So we have finally taken the plunge and gone on a long-overdue trip to San Diego. This is a seven-hour drive for us, pretty easy and boring. BUT Audrey has never been in the car for longer than it takes to drive to Oracle (or thereabouts, for Jessica and Sean's wedding) We tried to be cunning and leave just in time for her morning nap, but she saw right through us. She refused to sleep, trying to figure out what we were doing and where we could possibly be going that took more than an hour.

After the first hour I moved to the back seat but still couldn't convince her to go to sleep. Finally as we approached Yuma (and lunch at Subway) a little after noon, she fell asleep. But as soon as we carried her into the restaurant, she woke up. This enabled her to fully participate in the ritual eating-of-food-that-is-not-good-for-you of road trips.

By my estimation, here is what Audrey ate yesterday, in addition to some milk...

• about 10 french fries


• a sandwich bag of grapes


• a small container of "dry snacks" - graham crackers, goldfish, cheerios and yogurt melts


• chocolate milk and bites of chocolate chip and white chocolate macadamia cookies


• bites of turkey, bread, black olives and apple


• bites of hamburger, veggie burger, more french fries and an onion ring


• bites of ice cream from a root beer float

After lunch Audrey stayed awake the whole time until we got to San Diego around 5 pm, and then through dinner and playing at the park after dinner. She was tired but didn't want to go to sleep by herself in a strange pack and play in a strange room, so she stayed up until 9:30 before finally falling asleep!

Memorandum of Understanding

I am amazed at what Audrey understands. She is 13 months and one week old and I talk to her a lot, but still. Just today she was able to come down ten stairs at my friend Jenne's house by herself because I reminded her to sit down and then put her feet down on the lower step. No physical guidance, just talking her through it. And tonight she spit out some cheese on the floor, then continued on with her activities. I said "Where's your cheese? Can you give it to me?" and she stopped doing what she was doing, went over and picked up the cheese and handed it to me. Also today, she was heading toward the above-mentioned stairs for the tenth time, and I was able to distract her by asking her to pick up a toy and bring it to me. Which she did, and by then she had forgotten that she was going to try to go up the stairs.

On a related note, if asked, she can point out her belly, her nose, and sometimes her toes. I don't know when kids are supposed to know these things, but I like to think she's advanced for her age. She also uses the word "lights" (this is probably her fourth consistently-used word after mama, dad, and ah-da (Audrey)) and also has a word that sounds suspiciously like "mine!" when something is taken away from her.

Sometimes I ask her to do something or find something, and I can tell I've used too many dependent clauses (or something) because she sort of stops and looks at me blankly. But most of the time she understands. Amazing!