Jet lag

Any tips for re-adjusting an infant to their normal time zone after 2 weeks on the East coast (3 hrs ahead of Seattle)?



Any other suggestions?

Baby Girl's been having a tough time of it. She unintentionally adjusted to the East coast schedule; by the time we left she was going to bed around 8PM. Now, she's exhausted by 4:30/5:00 PM here and waking up at strange, frequent intervals. For C and I, this means waking up twice before the final wake up call around 6:30 AM... I feel like we're back to the first month all over again! Exhausting. Hopefully, she'll catch up soon....

Babies = Disease Vectors

I'm on to my second cold in two weeks. I was happy that I didn't give Baby Girl my cold last week, but I'm sad to see it doesn't work the other way around: I caught my newest cold from her. Immunological properties of breast milk: 1  Me: 0.

DP01_Day 11-- Baby Data to Date

The long awaited arrival of Baby Girl has finally come (appx. 11 days ago)-- August 9th, 2011 = a little bundle of awesomeness.

Day 0

Day 5

I've been out of the lab for 2 weeks enjoying and adjusting to parent life and the new slave driver's  baby's schedule. It's been great and exhausting. She sleeps in about 2-3 hour intervals on a 24-hr schedule. It's like a continuous time-course experiment; I collect diapers instead of cells and treat with milk instead of pesticides. It's tough during the nighttime. I have some trepidation about starting work again next week because I feel it will be tough to actually get up to go to work when what I really will need/want is at least another 2 hrs of sleep. Unlike a true time-course, however, at least I'm not sleeping on the (disgusting) couch in Roo. [Ask me in a week if I have been napping there during the day.]

Overall, though, things are going well. She's just so damn cute that it's hard to hold anything against her, even at 3am. For awhile we were charting her every move (diaper changes, soiled diapers, feedings, you name it). This made me feel useful and productive, hitting all the right lab-notebook-esque spots for me to chart the experiment's..er.. baby's progress. As expected, she's doing wonderfully-- gaining weight, eating well, and being super cute. C is also feeling well, better and more mobile every day.

Future directions for this project:

• Continue to feed and change baby at regular intervals
• Watch baby grow
• Squeeze baby for being cute and observe response

Rants, Raves, and Babes

Firstly, I'm hating Seattle today. This weather is crap. Yeah yeah, I know most of the country is suffering from an unbearable heat wave, but really, 60 degrees and raining is NOT ok. Nor is it acceptable to be called "Summer." It's shit, and I'm frankly tired of wearing the same clothes from November of last year. Someone please tell the rest of the country to share their weather and we'll gladly give you some of our cooler winds.

Thanks, Wordpress.

Now that that's out of the way.. the baby is coming oh so soon! August 8th marks the long-awaited arrival of little Lady Peanut. I'm excited and nervous, but mostly just ready to try to tackle this parenting thing instead of simply anticipating it and driving myself a little batty in the process. I've always been much better at handling a situation rather than the anxiety that comes with thinking about it.

Onesie decorated at the Baby Shower. Awesomeness.

News from the lab is in the theme of 'mediocre on the verge of greatness.' Some experiments have been working out rather well these days, yielding results that I expected to see and in a lovely, clear fashion. Yay! +1 Other experiments, of the Western blot persuasion, not so much. It's kind of a mixed bag with Westerns. It's amazing how you can do the same exact thing, with the same exact antibodies, on two different days and come out with two different results. I'm not even talking different trends in your results (although, that is worthy of throwing things out of frustration). I'm talking about having absolutely nothing show up on your blot. Nothing? Why? Are the proteins shy that day? Do they not want to get out of bed? Where the f*ck did they go? Ah, the reliability of Science.

Halleloo!

Please excuse my extended absence. Apparently, I'm not very good at keeping this updated when things are going at "bat-shit crazy" speed. Here's a brief recap of what's been going on in my life since February:

1. SOT was awesome! How great it is to see this expansive world of science and toxicology outside of this hole I live in, here in the lab. It is so easy to forget why I am putting myself through all this; seeing all this other research and successful professionals really excites me. I was totally nerding out over things like new methodology and mechanisms in neurotox, but I also was cherishing the connections I was able to make. In any event, drinking and going out to jazz clubs with various professors didn't hurt either. Perhaps by simply incorporating people from industry and government into the mix, the science world was given a personality and a human-ness that's severely lacking from my within academia.

2. Peru was, as expected, fantastic. I really can't complain about sunny, 85F weather. It was super relaxing, spent time on the beach and ate a lot. The wedding was great-- a lot of fun, beautiful ceremony at sunset over the water... as you can imagine, it was incredibly difficult to return to rain and lab-slave life.

3. Girlfriend and I also found out the sex of the baby (due in the beginning of August)-- it's a girl! Really amazing, and scary at the same time. Girlfriend is already worrying about her getting pregnant. I'm still worried about changing the diapers. Hmm...

Fig. 1. Baby Girl at 20 weeks. She has fingers and hands and a nose! Yeah!

4. Lastly, things in the lab have actually started to turn around!!.... !!! I am slightly hesistant to really celebrate just yet because I still am only half believing it to be true. I am sort of waiting for the other shoe to drop and for things to go horribly wrong.... I'm pretty sure that won't happen, but really, I have no idea what to expect with my work. I can't tell you what exactly changed, but the experiment I had been doing with little success has finally worked. In addition, the results are showing surprisingly drastic differences between my treatments and controls! To that, I simply have to say, Halleloo! (Please refer to Figure 2 if this saying eludes you).

Fig. 2. Shangela from RuPaul's Drag Race on LOGO. Halleloo!

If you haven't already, please watch RuPaul's Drag Race for some pure entertainment in the form of America's Next Top Drag Superstar. These chicas are sexy. Til next time, 'echa pa'lante.'