These Are a Few of My Favorite Things

... in this order (according to Jasmine): purple sequin flapper dress, play shoes, wild post-plaited hair, and cell phone.

Take Your Kids to BioHazard Work Day

Okay, it wasn't as exciting as all that since we work with tame bugs. But they were suitably impressed with putting on saftey glasses and stirring solutions with a vortexer. Kai made a DNA molecule from my wooden model kit, all the kids took home some petri dishes with their germy handprints incubating, and then picked out some candy from our break room.

The boys were home for spring break and I thought it would be nice to have them meet everyone. They've been a bit curious about this new change in my schedule and my coworkers have been politely inquiring as to the children whose pictures have wallpapered my wall of the office.

I limited the exposure to about 15 minutes, but Kai was having so much fun with the little gadgets I think he was ready to apply to be the next lab tech. Everyone was so friendly, even Rowan who had an attack of the bashfuls, warmed up quickly.

I'm the only one in the main office who has kids, though one of my office mates is going to be a father any time now. I always wonder if this sort of visit inspires people to get refills on the birth control or to trigger their biological alarms a-ringing.

Hold Please!

Jazz loves holding all sorts of bugs and snakes and spiders and she's learned the proper technique from the Butterfly Pavilion. She even holds our rubber snakes and plastic spiders at home in this way.

Sleepy Bread

This is our special "Opium Bread" soon for sale at all your favorite parenting stores.

Rowan's Author Photo

Rowan and a classmate wrote a book in class and he suggested putting a photo on the back and he'd write a little autobiography to go with it. We went through photos on my computer and couldn't find one he liked. It had to be full face and no goofy smiles. That ruled out most of my pictures of Rowan, so we took some more. This is the one he chose.

Party Animal

Jasmine has discovered the joy of birthday parties... at least the joy of cake and ice cream. We've had a rash of parties and she's quite pleased with the new weekend entertainments.

Wack-a-Doos and Don'ts

If I had to suggest lifestyle changes to anyone, and I suppose I do because I'm a busybody, I would say: do not change or start a new job the same day as your spouse and the same day as you are switching child transportation / school preparations and the same month that your family catches some flu-like health curse. That's how January went. Ugh.

The kids are adjusting great though, even an ear infection didn't slow Kai down. He had some vague complaints of sore ears, but not enough to stop him from going to a birthday party featuring inflatable bouncy architecture.

I guess if you're going to do it though, all-at-once is a way. Theo started working for IBM from home. I guess all their employees are working from home nowadays. That worked out well since I had an extra two hours in my day just for transportation to work, but he has all the morning chaos now. He got smart though and hired one nice woman with four kids under eight years old, to watch Jasmine in the afternoons -- like an extended daily playdate, and another nice woman to drive Kai, Rowan and our carpooling partner Aimee home from school. Definitely some bucks, but it gets him some needed work time.

Back to Blogging

Before I get started on what's been going on, let me note that my daughter somehow manages to look cool and fashionable while wearing her pants as a hat.

Anyhow, I have graduated, I'm now an MS in mathematics specializing in Computational Biology and got my offer the day of my last final. I'm working in Boulder, CO which is about an hour's drive north of my house as long as there is no traffic or bad weather. Luckily, the company I'm working for, OPX Biotechnologies is the coolest place on the planet and not only lets me telecommute a day a week, but like about five other people, I come in at 7-ish and leave at 3:30 thereby avoiding all the nasty gridlock.

More of what's been going on in later posts and at MacroMath.