A Christmas Extortion

Given Noah's recent obsession with Curious George and my only slightly more mature obsession with the Christmas season, I brought home the Curious George: A Very Monkey Christmas DVD from a recent trip to get presumably much more important supplies. Noah was enthralled, he sat excitedly giving the now typical play-by-play report on how everything was going down in the movie. Throughout the movie Curious George wears an adorable Santa hat every where he goes. I decided it would be adorable to find a similar hat and the pray we could get a picture of him in it for our holiday cards this year. We had an older Santa hat laying around in the midst of all of the boxes of decorations, but it has such an enormous band of white fuzz around the trim that by the time you put it on it looks more like a halo than a hat. I searched a bit in our travels this morning and then we hit the mall for a fun dinner at the Rainforest Cafe and a bit of Christmas shopping. Figuring there wasn't much hope of finding a Santa hat at your typical department store, we tried out the seasonal Christmas store that sells everything Christmas related, "A Christmas to Remember." You know the place. The one that shows up just in time for the holiday shopping and then immediately after they shut the doors on Christmas Eve, they vanish leaving an empty hole in the mall facade. Yeah, they sometimes have cute things, but I have learned a valuable lesson this evening. They are not to be trusted. We picked out a few of Tim's s'mores ornament (he is a bit of a collector) for stocking stuffers and Noah picked out a bunch of grapes ornament that he fell in love with. On the way out, I found the hat, looked quickly at the price (Mistake #1) and saw $4.99. Perfect! Um, not so much! After they rung us up and I heard the total, I got a little concerned. Unfortunately, I didn't pay attention to all of the prices, so I trusted that it was appropriate (Mistake #2). Tim looked at the receipt as we were walking out, the hat was listed as $24.99!!!!! Um, what! A cheap feeling, run of the mill Santa hat was $25?!?!!? Tim brought it back to the register and asked if the price was correct, the store manager assured him it was. I went back to look at the rest of the stock of hats, which were all listed as the same price. We were appalled. So naturally, we tried to return it, but were met with the spiel that returns can only be given for store credit...EVEN THOUGH WE HADN'T EVEN STEPPED OUT OF THE DOOR! In the end, the manager/owner/woman in charge gave us another $12 ornament for free, but the sting of a $25 Santa hat has left its mark on me. I will be much better about checking prices (which is unfortunately much harder when you have an impatient little man present), and I will be avoiding any stores with obnoxious and limited return policies. What a lovely start to our holiday shopping adventures!

Scared and Excited

Now that I am actually getting some where with my job application process, I can make some exciting news updates. I am not putting in specifics here, just in case someone decides to google search anything, but if you want more specifics, feel free to email me and I will certainly fill you in.

Keep in mind that this is a situation that is CONSTANTLY in flux. I can go from knowing nothing about a school to having an interview scheduled in a matter of a couple of hours. In the same vein, I can also go from having a phone interview some where to not hearing a word from them in a couple weeks. Its all possible and highly likely, so just like the 39 and half week pregnant woman, no news isn't necessarily interesting. If I want you to know some thing important, I'll share, I promise!

Preliminary interview #1, By phone, last Thursday at a master's level mid-size excellent school in the southeast for a cognitive and affective researcher in the psychology department. The interview went fabulously well, the committee members were very personable and the fit with the job sounded ideal. I should find out in the next few days whether or not I am being invited for a campus interview (which would take place in mid-December theoretically). P.S. PLEASE let me get a job here!!!

Preliminary interview #2, By phone, yesterday at a small Catholic school in the Boston area. It was a very formal and structured interview with lots of serious, teaching-focused questions. The committee members seemed very nice and the position is still very interesting. Unclear of their time line, but hoping for an on-campus interview.

Preliminary interview #3, By phone with a small state school in northern New England that is scheduled for the week after Thanksgiving. A firm date and time are still in the works.

Preliminary interview #4, Video conference this Friday with a small private school in New York and later that day an in-person meeting with a representative from the school who will be in town for a conference. This is a wonderful school and aside from their nightmarish insistence on an official video conference interview, I would be really interested in considering a position there.

On-campus interview #1, In person at a small private school in the north east. The department chair cold called me this morning and left a message indicating that he was interested in discussing my application further. I then attempted to call him back about 400 times (a gross overestimate, but you get my point) and finally gave up and tracked down his email to indicate that I was unable to get through but was interested in speaking further with him. Instead of looking to set up a phone interview with the committee, they have apparently skipped that whole process and decided on who is being invited for on-campus interviews right off the bat. I am a bit nervous about this one just given the vast quantities of unknown information here and the fact that they want me to teach Intro to Neuroscience and a Memory Seminar right away (can we say SCARY???). Speaking with the department chair left me with more questions and unknowns than I had before I ever heard them. Hopefully once I am connected with the department secretary I will be privy to more pertinent information and will be more comfortable.

At least there are more bites than last year, of course it helps that I have 53 applications out there, statistically speaking it would be pretty sad if I didn't get more bites!!

Dear Nana Lou

Dear Nana Lou -

Please get well very soon. We miss you terribly and are worried about you. Noah adores his days spent at your house and I cannot describe the distress we both felt when we saw your place dark and empty at drop off yesterday morning. A little man is missing you and we all need you back and healthy really soon.

Love,
Christina, Tim, & Noah

Nana Lou was taken by ambulance in the wee hours of the morning on Tuesday. At the time she had a fever of 105, was barely responsible, having difficulty breathing, and unable to get out of bed. At last update yesterday at noon, she was diagnosed with pneumonia in both lungs and they were continuing to run tests to determine how the onset of serious symptoms came on so quickly. I have spoken with her on the phone and after the start of antibiotics, she seems to be doing better, but she gave us quite the scare and has us all very concerned. She assures us that she is missing Noah just as much as we are missing her and that she will be back to having fun as soon as the doctors will let her. In the meantime we are keeping her in our thoughts and hoping for a fast and easy recovery!

UPDATE: Today at 3pm, I heard from Nana Lou again over the phone, who as yesterday, sounded like her usual self. She is still in the hospital and the staff are still watching her like a hawk. Latest diagnoses are questionable now about the pneumonia, but are certain on a UTI and a much more serious blood infection. Blood infections kill, and that terrifies me, but given when it was caught and how well she is responding to the antibiotics, an excellent prognosis is expected. She will be out of commission for the rest of the week and the Memeres will be looking after the wee man while Tim deals with the grocery Thanksgiving rush and I deal with job interviews. Thank goodness for family stepping in in a pinch and for whomever or whatever was looking out after sweet Nana Lou.

"Kimiss" lights in my bedroom

Things in the household have been fairly quiet around here lately. Nothing new really, just dust collecting and floors to be swept. No new illnesses, thankfully, just Noah finishing to get back to his normal active and energetic self after the week and a half of the yuck we just finished with. Now that Thanksgiving is fast approaching, we have been starting in with the Christmas excitement. Since Noah's birthday is so close to Christmas, its a really fun time of year that we like to get going as early as possible and enjoy as long as possible. We've decided not to put the tree up until the day after Thanksgiving, which is our usual tradition, but we have started to organize some of the decorations and have started the Christmas shopping (Noah's Christmas and birthday presents have all been purchased now!). While we were out running some errands yesterday, we stopped to look for a remote control train for under the tree (which Tim has been begging for for quite some time now) and I got a small package of big LED bulb lights for around the window in Noah's room. Being more excited about the upcoming holidays than anyone else in the house, I figured that I would put up the lights now as a way to kick off the decorating a tiny bit early. I knew Noah would appreciate them since he is sure to point out the Kimiss trees at every store we visit lately. He finds them and asks to go look at the Kimiss trees being sure to make note of the lights and the snowmen and Santa ornaments. He attends to these details in a way I could have only dreamed of teaching him...such a holiday season fan already! So the lights are up and Noah is, as expected, in love with them. He asks for the Kimiss lights on? in the morning and when he wakes up from his nap and announces their presence excitedly any time he walks by the doorway of his room. I am in the process of crafting an Advent calendar for him now that will hopefully spur the excitement further once the big month of December finally arrives!

My own nightmare

So I said I wouldn't update the blog with the ins and outs of my job search, but this tidbit here has to be recorded for posterity. I have been submitting applications, most of the submission process is over (thankfully) at this point, and I am now in the uncomfortable waiting period where I hope to god some school thinks that my application materials present me in a way that makes me worth calling for an interview. This is how it stood until about an hour ago when I opened my email and read this:

Dear Dr. Leclerc:

I am contacting you because you have applied for our position in psychology at [an excellent small liberal arts college in the northeast]. We have examined the materials and would like to conduct some preliminary video interviews with those people that we have identified as our top group of applicants. We would like to have a brief conversation (30-45 minutes) with you and have the discussion videotaped so that the rest of our department can "meet" you. After all video conferences have been completed, we will make decisions regarding invitations for on-campus interviews.

Sincerely,

Chair of the Faculty Search Committee

The email obviously continues on to include scheduling and logistics details that I glassed over in my ensuing throes of panic and dread. Videotaping is one thing I DO NOT DO. I hate it, detest it, violently abhor it. Each time I accidentally find myself on tape I get a first hand replay of my social awkwardness in all its glory and then spend the following weeks mentally beating myself about the head and neck about all of the little faults I saw (I hate my hair...I have such dark circles under my eyes, I fumbled words, sounded completely inarticulate). It is the one area in my life that causes me to absolutely despise myself. I can go about my life pleased with my accomplishments, content with myself and then I catch one glance of myself on camera and I instantly starting thinking like a 14 year old girl with no sense of self worth. Its a weakness, and I know I should work on it. I probably need therapy or something, but can we please just focus on the fact that it seems as though in order to get one step closer to my dream of securing a faculty position, I am going to have to live my absolute worst nightmare for a brief period of time (and of course stew about it from now until the appointment and then stew some more about all of the stupid things I said for the weeks that will follow it). Awesome, now where do I sign up?

My goodness

While we all know how much I love Nana Lou, I can honestly say with a great deal of certainty that when I finally land my faculty position and we settle where ever it is that we are going to end up, I am finding an in-house nanny. I love that Noah gets to socialize and gets a different routine 3 days per week and fun adventures out with Nana Lou and Dante, but I am so completely over the seemingly endless array of viruses and ear infections and related fevers that are making the poor guy miserable and interrupting our routine. As you might guess, Noah is sick again!!! We just did this a few weeks ago (actually he just finished his 10 days of antibiotics for his last ear infection last Thursday) and here we are again. Tim is home with the little man today tending to yet another fairly high fever. It started on Tuesday night, he felt a little warm, but didn't officially have much of a fever, only 99.6. He didn't sleep as well as usual, waking up, crying and looking for MOMMY!!! at 2:30am. Yesterday thankfully he was home with Tim all day for the usual Wednesday Daddy/Noah day and over the course of the day went from a 98.3 temperature in the morning all the way up to 102.2 by the end of the day. He flat out refused to eat dinner (he didn't even try, just saw the plate and said "All done!") and was what I call "emotionally fragile" and needy the whole evening. I knew just looking at him last night that he was going no where today and called the pediatrician's office first thing this morning. I figured it would just be a return of the ear infection that we just finished the antibiotics with last week, but instead Tim came home with a diagnosis of the coxsackie virus, the one that causes hand, foot, and mouth disease. This is another one of those very common childhood diseases that are hard to avoid, especially with a little one in out of the home childcare. Its nothing ultimately serious, just a fever for 2-3 days, blisters on the back of the throat, and sometimes a rash on the palms of the hand and the soles of the feet. It will pass in a couple of days and we will all be back to normal, but in the meantime I am calling UNFAIR!!! Poor little guy had had enough of the illnesses for a while, give us all a break please!!!

UPDATE: As of 3pm this afternoon, Tim called to report that Noah's fever spiked to 104.5!!! He called into the nurse practitioner he saw this morning who reported that this virus is notorious for higher than average fevers and that as long as he is still drinking and he is acting okay we are fine. He has apparently be chugging apple juice all day, but hopefully the fever breaks soon.

Happy Halloween!

Since any holiday is more fun when spent with others (that and Memere & Pepere's neighborhood turns into a HUGE Halloween block party with all of the candy goodness a wee man can handle), we headed to Maine to invaded Memere & Pepere's house again this year for Halloween. Our mission, should we choose to accept, was to convince Noah it was an awesome idea to let us put him in an adorable green 3-eyed monster costume and parade him around the neighborhood to collect candy for everyone! Mission status: HUGE SUCCESS!!!

We headed up on Friday afternoon a little early in attempts to avoid the majority of the traffic. Noah chatted nonstop the entire ride, but was happy to be heading to see Memere & Pepere for sure! We hit the usual breakfast spot on Saturday morning where they made Noah a Mickey Mouse blueberry pancake and he stuffed himself to the gills. Memere & I did some bead shopping up in Freeport during the afternoon and arrived home just in time to have some Alex's Pizza and get the little dude ready. It took a bit of convincing (including Tim trying on the hat for him, which is a darn funny picture I am refraining from posting to maintain some level of Tim's dignity) to get the costume to stay on. I think Noah was convinced that we were just trying to torture him, but once the cameras came out and he saw everyone else outside in there costumes, he quit trying to pull off his hat and started having fun. And just like last year, Noah had his large entourage with Memere B., Pepere L. & Nana, and Memere L. & Tom along with Mommy & Daddy. Its nice that we can all get together to parade the little man around the neighborhood, and then we can all share the leftover candy!

He was adorable! And he is indeed a three-eyed monster, not a frog, not a fairy???, not a bug, I'll take alien maybe, but really, look at him, do you see wings? No, so HE is not a fairy!!

Regardless of the fact that a few people couldn't manage to figure out what he was, he had a ball going from house to house collecting candy. He kept asking for "more walking?" He held hands wonderfully (since there were just so many people out), and said "Buh-Bye!!" to every single person (including a couple of inflatable decorations and a very nice doggie!). We couldn't get him to say "trick or treat" or "thank you" but we made sure to say it for him and helped him to hold out his pumpkin so we could get "more candy in pun-kin!"

He walked all the way around one of the loops in the neighborhood, going to each house and saying "Buh-Bye" to everyone!

We even hit Memere & Pepere's house twice since they are such suckers for an adorable green, three-eyed wee man!

He walked almost the whole way, and just as we were coming up the second side of the end of the loop, he lost interest and we pulled him in the wagon the rest of the way back to Memere & Pepere's. You could see when we got back that he was torn and wanted to go back out with all of the other kids, but he was just too pooped out.

We couldn't have asked for a nicer night, it was almost 65 and didn't start raining until after we got back inside. Noah had such fun and talked about his flashlight, his pumpkin and most of all the walking to get candy! I am not sure he totally understood what the whole thing was about, but the key is he had fun. Such fun that Tim and I are already excited about next year's trick or treating event.