Bloom where you are planted

I recently saw folks talking about the advice to "bloom where you're planted" in the context of being in a less than ideal situation but making the best of it. I thought this idea could resonate well with where we are in life and would serve as a nice way to organize the million photos I accrue with A when I'm only updating the blog once or twice per month.

I thought I mentioned here that we decided to plant fun this year. More than anything, it served as a nice science experiment and introduction to gardening so I haven't had high hopes that it will be a success.

We are having fun, though!

I ordered a raised bed off of Amazon and put it together myself. It was incredibly easy to do but did take a tremendous amount of soil to fill it!

One of our favorite parts of all of this has been A developing a "fairy garden" for the backyard. We have baby tears, freesia, and a little shrub growing in the shade.

Plants we have include 3 kinds of tomatoes, 3 kinds of strawberries, peas, carrots, 4 kinds of peppers, basil, 2 types of thyme, oregano, lavender, eucalyptus, lemon grass, citronella, rosemary, and a few flowering plants (penta, dahlia, lantana, senorita rosalita). I think we went just a little overboard.







Chad and I have had mixed success with herbs in previous years. Before A was born we had a flourishing herb garden but inevitably spider mites took over the oregano. In the last few years, we just collected dirty pots on the patio, with no real desire to care for additional living things. Since we are trying again, I thought we should get some friendly pest control to keep down populations of aphids, spider mites, and the likes.

And again, science.

You may recall from the Easter post that A got 2 praying mantis egg cases. They hatched on separate days and we were inundated with little baby mantids. It was a little creepy to release them (between 50-200 hatch at a time!) but so much fun!









We also released ladybugs. A key to releasing lady bugs is that they should be done at dawn or dusk to increase the chances that they will stick around your yard.




The other half of the "bloom where you are planted" idea came to me as I have been thinking a lot about my work lately.

Last night was the graduate hooding ceremony where I hooded my first ever graduate student. Today I was back for undergraduate commencement where I had three research assistants graduate. When I interviewed here, I was told by more than one person that this job could be thought about like an extended post doc or stepping stone to the career job. Instead, I was interested in finding a home (to "bloom", if you're cheesy). I've been fortunate to be in a department where that has been easy to do. We are growing and developing a national reputation for excellent research and clinical training and it is exciting to be a part of that. So despite some very real (and sometimes incredibly hard to overlook) issues like geography, proximity to family, meteorological scares, local politics, and some limited resources, I am happy to currently be in the spot I've found.



I have really fantastic colleagues.

Getting to know the students and impact their training or professional development has been incredibly rewarding.

It's also been really tough for me to accept the temporariness of academia. Colleagues have moved on and that has been sad. And every year since I have been here, students also have moved on. They are doing precisely what we hoped for and trained them to do--leave. There are some students I will see at conferences and others who will stay in touch to keep me posted on their own development. However, there are some I have known who I may never see again. The realization that this cycle is repeated each May has been difficult for me.

I can instead move toward generativity and attempt to plant seeds for future students.

(but I still don't like change)

Personality & Psychopathology Lab: Alumni & Current Graduate Students

Sweet (& smart!!) cuddle bug

I've had lots of time to cuddle my sweet girl this last week or so. Between cutting 5 new teeth (teething seems to take an eternity) and allergies/cold (with a worse than usual cough), our good little sleeper has been waking up most every night lately. But she's so cuddly and sweet that I almost don't even mind feeling like a zombie during the day. 

Seriously. This laugh is ridiculous. I don't think anyone could be grumpy after hearing her. Instant mood brightener. It's truly hard for me to imagine a sweeter, funnier little girl.

Last weekend we went to Zio's with cousin Avery. The service was terrible and the food was mediocre but the company was wonderful. :)

Alaina got her belly full.

Avery loves her baby Waina. 

Silliness runs in the family. 

In addition to being silly, Alaina is starting to show just how much she's learning all the time. She isn't using a tremendous amount of expressive language (she has approximately 22 recognizable words) but her receptive skills are really developing! Last week Chad had her in the nursery while I finished making dinner. He sat in the glider and asked her to bring him a Mirabelle book (cutest books ever). He wasn't terribly surprised when she brought him her favorite, Mirabelle and the butterfly. But then she turned around and retrieved Mirabelle and the bouncy red ball and Mirabelle goes for a walk. So he asked her to bring You are my cupcake, which she did. He named five books and she got them all on the first try. I did a similar thing this weekend with her Little People animals. She loves the goat.

She also knows some body parts (eyes, ears, nose, mouth, belly) and is great at following simple instructions. What has been crazy for us is realizing she sometimes picks up this stuff after only hearing it once! This is all appropriate and expected milestones but it somehow still floors us. I am often finding myself thinking "wow. She can do that?!?"

In other growing up news, on Sunday, baby girl snuck into the guest room and snatched a pillow. I promptly ordered her a toddler pillow on Amazon though I'm not sure if I will actually give it to her yet. She started using a pillow at school last month due to her congestion. We just haven't introduced it yet at home. 

Alaina isn't the only one who likes this set-up.

And finally, these are just 2 cute videos of her showing off her mad dance moves.

Just my imagination

At first I thought it was a fluke. But it turns out that Alaina is already developing her little imagination, creativity, and imitation. When she comes home from school, I enter all of her information into the Baby Connect app (I know, it's crazy that I'm still tracking these things...!). A few weeks ago, Alaina started taking my cell phone and the paper they send home and she sits down and "studies" the paper and then taps on my phone. It's adorable. She also 'pretends' to talk/babble on the phone. We really have no idea where she would have picked this up because we are never, ever on the phone for voice calls (yea, sorry about that; it makes me a less than stellar friend or family member, I know...). Anytime I have taken a call, it is generally on speaker so that my hands are free. That was a habit I developed from the pregnancy-related carpal tunnel syndrome. So perhaps she has seen the other kids do it at school? Either way, it's pretty hilarious.

I messed up the phone camera so the first video is only a couple of seconds long. I couldn't get a good video after that. However, in the one below, you can see that she does it with a lot of items.

Tonight we also caught her pretending to put lotion (/sunscreen) on. A girl needs to stay moisturized!

She is so funny. She still isn't walking consistently but that doesn't stop her from getting into things. :) Her current favorite is the dogs' water bowl.

Her eating is still hit or miss. As I hear often happens, she actually eats great at school. Like, it's to the point that they comment on it when we pick her up in the afternoons (Alaina sure loves food! Alaina went completely crazy about watermelon!! Yea, yea, she comes by her love of food honestly!). At home though, sometimes she refuses to eat most anything and other times we feel like we are just throwing food at her and she gets it eaten before we have turned around! This is especially the case with most any fruit and with macaroni & cheese. She is so her mother's daughter.

Her table manners still need a bit of work, though.

Clearly she is also still working on her judgy face. Must continue to practice being nonjudgmental (but don't judge her judging!).

Poor little thing wasn't feeling well this afternoon. She had a low fever and just wanted me to hold her/cuddle all day. I totally loved the extra snuggles, especially since I will be gone to a conference Thursday-Sunday. But I hate that she isn't feeling well again. Her first top tooth is breaking through right now so I hope that is all that is going on. She really needs a couple of weeks to just be fully healthy!