Cold Spaghetti

Kate, in her favorite outfit.

These and more on up on the Shutterfly photo page.

Monday morning: Kate and Will visit Dr. Milvid.

Will: 37.7 inches tall; 31.4 lbs.
Discussion: While he’s grown an inch or so in the past few months, his weight has been roughly the same for about a year! Will’s previously infected ear was “retracted,” meaning that the swelling was subsiding and it was healing appropriately. No tears, not even a flinch, when he got his flu shot.

Kate: 25.5 inches tall; 16.7 lbs.
Discussion: Ear is still infected. New antibiotic given to try. No flu shot; back in 10 days to check. When we told the doctor of Kate’s lengthy unsupported sitting, backwards scooting, and up-on-her-knees moves, Dr. Milvid gave us a sly smile and said, “Good luck. You’ve got an early walker on your hands.” “How early?” we asked, noting that Will was walking at about 13-14 months. Her answer: “This one looks like a 9-month walker.”

On Saturday morning, I took
and
to the
. We wanted to empty our fridge of the frozen bread we’ve been keeping to feed the and
and. Will did a good job of protecting Baby Kate from aggressive geese, who he told to “get back” and “be nice”. Will did a lot of talking to the birds and ducks and squirrels and geese and people. He did a good job talking to everyone. Kate enjoyed her brother’s attention, but was perfectly happy watching the animals and playing with her feet.
Every once in awhile, she shot her brother a quizzical look, having no idea what he was continuously babbling about on such a beautiful morning.

— Two Saturday afternoon teaching sessions of “Biostats & Epid 101: The Very Basics” for the handful of students without prior coursework. Why those classes aren’t pre-reqs I have no idea!

— A part-time freelance writing gig. Writing text book assignments for a technical writing course. Pay is okay, not enough for a career change but twice the slave-labor rate of being a teaching assistant.

— Mr. Strongbad, our household spider, is perhaps Mrs. Strongbad. Baby Strongbad has made a web right in front of Mommy or Daddy. Teeny-weeny-itty-bitty crab-like spider!

— Two guest lectures this week for INHL 712: Measurement and Evaluation of Maternal and Child Health Programs in Developing Countries. I’m lecturing on newborn health and developing/measuring indicators for newborn health programs.

— In-home translation during home-nurse visits for a spanish-speaking mother of twin preemies. She and her husband are desperate for english classes… I’m contemplating giving free weekly lessons, if I can figure out when.

— Twice weekly volunteer sessions at Abeona. The Reggio-Emilia philosophy (with which I agree) calls for parental volunteerism. Personally, I think that parental involvement should be a precursor for being at Abeona, but maybe that’s something to work towards as the school continues to define itself.

Kate is:
1. Sitting up unsupported for about a minute at a time.2. Getting up on her knees.We are currently working to locate diving weights.

Since birth, Kate’s hair has only grown on the front of her head and over her ears. The hair in the back is pretty much the same as the day she was born. But the hair in front and over her ears have been on the job. The poor thing got my hair genes… her hair grows directly, do-not-pass-go, do-not-collect-$200, straight into her eyes.

A few days ago, we received two wonderful packages in the mail. One was from my Aunt and Uncle, who had sent Halloween treats to the kids, including homemade super-cute no-slippy hair clippies for Kate. The other was a holiday package from Paul’s Mom, which included a hair band for Kate.

It was perfectly fitting that these arrived when they did. Because the night before their arrival, I finally got around to cutting Kate’s bangs out of her eyes.

Because she is our squirmy-wormy, I waited until she was asleep. Not my best work. Pretty awful actually.

My application to Wenner-Gren was submitted today… phew! PhD students who collect their own data are rare in my field, most use secondary datasets. From the beginning, I wanted to conduct my own study and receive funding to do so. Today I actually put some omph behind it by asking for $24,040 towards dissertation fieldwork.

Wenner-Gren is an anthropologic foundation, so the application is written towards an audience of anthropologists. I love anthropology; I came to Tulane because I wanted to study with a medical anthropologist who worked academically in public health (i.e. my committee chair). The application I sent in today is far from a prospectus (what I have to defend and get approved by my committee before moving on to actually doing the dissertation) but it is the very rough start. Good gracious, I almost have a dissertation.

Should inquiring minds care, here is the title:

Mi vida aqui es puro trabajo: Latinos, labor, and family in post-Katrina New Orleans

And here is the brief (less than 200 word) project description:

The primary aim of this research is to explore the experiences of newly arrived Latino migrants and immigrants in New Orleans. The secondary aim is to examine the range and magnitude of this population through a specialized methodology uniquely suited to the challenges of studying hard-to-reach groups. Within these aims, there are several sub queries that will serve as foci for the investigation: exploring what vulnerabilities are unique to this population; determining what sub-populations exist within the mélange of recently arrived Latinos; investigating the factors that influence permanent settlement; and considering how racial tension, workplace exploitation, and other challenges to life in the region are negotiated. This research utilizes respondent driven sampling, a specialized chain-referral methodology uniquely suited for three reasons: illegals within the population are clandestine; the population has transient qualities; and because the methodology allows tuning so that subgroups of interest can be sufficiently explored. By capturing a wide range of subjects, insight may be had on how individual response, adaptation, and resistance differs according to various social determinants, structural limitations, and cultural barriers. The approach offers comparisons within groups to identify individual differences and between groups to identify national, linguistic, economic, or newly emerging differences.

The good news: my chair has been a reviewer for Wenner-Gren for several years and his comments about it have me walking about 5 feet off the ground.

The bad news: I won’t find out until July!

** Extra note: my neighbor is a retired medical anthropologist and gave great last-minute feedback to my application. How wonderful is that?!