[This is a post I wrote a while ago... I guess about a month ago. For some reason it never got posted, probably because I couldn't get my pictures to load for some reason.]

About a month ago Justin started his new job. I am happy to report that he likes it quite a lot. We're still adjusting to the new schedule, and even though he has to spend many hours away from home now, he does in fact like what he's doing. Also, having him get up and leave early each morning helps me get out of bed and get productive too. I have actually been wasting very little time lately!

I have been trying a different direction with my research lately. I had been losing interest in my current topic (having to do with matching grants in the provision of public goods). After spending about a year reading the literature and trying to find exactly what direction to take my original research, and finding nothing substantial so far, I started praying that God would give me guidance about how to proceed. Should I look for another topic? At the weekly required workshops, in which we listen to a professor from another school come talk about something they've worked on, I often found myself thinking "this seems kind of interesting. Would I be more motivated to research if I worked on this?" Then a couple of weeks ago a fellow grad student shared some topics ideas with me, said it was a good topic to be working on, and asked if I wanted to discuss ideas together. So I've put aside my boring public goods formation work for now to explore coalition formation, which at the current time seems more interesting. Hopefully I'll get some traction here.

Ezekiel is 6-1/2 months old now and he is crawling!!! It's not hands-and-knees crawling yet, but he army crawls. The other day he scooted over to me for the first time and tried climbing onto my lap. Super cute!!! I picked him up to reward him for this cute behavior. Then he started chewing on my shoulder, so I guess he was hungry. Speaking of which, he's been super hog-jaws lately. He doesn't really like baby food we try to give him, but he's going to have to start eating something else soon because I'm having a hard time keeping up with his milk consumption. Then again, as Mama observed while looking at his thighs, "he's clearly not wasting away."

I recently started giving him toys in the bath tub. It's really cute to watch him try to pick up the rubber duckie as it bobs along in the water. Sometimes he uses his plastic dinosaur to corral the duckie towards him.