Welcome Baby O'Shay

Justin and I are proud to announce the birth of our first son, Ezekiel Thomas O'Shay, on Wednesday, August 17, 2011 at 4:36 pm. He weighed in at 8 lbs, 6 oz, and measured 21 inches.

Justin and I are so proud- we think he is a very good-looking baby. Overall the delivery went well- no major complications. It was a lot of work and very tiring (duh- I guess that's why it's called labor), but of course totally worth it. We got to bring him home from the hospital on Friday and are still adjusting to life with a baby. Some things have been as I expected them- I love holding my baby and/or just staring at him. In fact, I have found that I love him even more than I expected. That is a good thing, because something that is not as I expected is how much work he is. I'm sure this is totally cliche and all new parents say this, but sure enough I had not correctly anticipated how frequently he would need his diaper changed (seems like about once an hour, on average), how difficult it would be to feed him at times, and how much he would wake up in the middle of the night. I keep thinking, "good thing I love him so much, or else I would find this very burdensome." Needless to say, I am looking forward to settling into a workable routine where I start to feel somewhat normal. That will happen eventually, right?

Classes at Rice started this week; I'm only registered for one class, but I'm missing it this week. I emailed the professor to let him know, and he responded with his congratulations on the birth of our baby and a gracious "not to worry" about missing the first week. My goal is to start going next week- Mama will accompany me as I go in for that one class, and she will hold Ezekiel while I am in class. I am a little bit nervous about it, and about how I will be able to do school when so much of my time and attention is occupied by little Ezekiel.

Home Improvements and Baby Things

We've been making some preparations for the arrival of our baby. We got this cute little high chair from Ikea as a gift from Simon and Katrina. I know it will be a while before he's sitting in it, but it just looked so cute sitting at our table!

We also got this cute Moses basket from Justin's grandparents, plus some snuggly little receiving blankets that Mema sewed.

The car seat is in our Passat, ready to carry OB1 home.

Mama came over the other day and helped me do a little work in the baby's room- we set up his dresser, filled it with his little clothes, and set up the bookshelf in his room to hold miscellaneous baby things.

Here's his crib, in front of the wall that just had its wallpaper scraped off. We still need to paint his room.

I replaced the curtains in the living room. Previously I had some leafy-print ones that I got when I lived in my apartment by myself before we got married, but they clashed with the plaid couches. Then at Ikea I found these nice solid green ones! They were on sale, plus I got an extra discount because the only set they had left had a slight tear in it. Hooray! So what did I do with the other curtains?...
I put them in the dining room! We were wanting to get some curtains in there.

We found this kitschy lamp the other day at KCM for $12. I liked it, as it goes with my general leafy theme. It seems nice, and it's pretty heavy. I found a sticker on it that had some designer's name on it, so I looked him up and found that he makes lots of ostentatious "statement lamps", mostly priced in the $300-$600 range. I couldn't find my particular lamp, so I don't know if it's actually one he made, but it seems like it could be. Hooray! Art!

Baby Countdown

I am now about 7-1/2 months pregnant with our first baby, a boy! We've decided on a name for our little son, but we're keeping it a secret until he's born, which should happen in mid-August. We are very excited and also nervous. We've been taking weekly childbirth classes in which we're learning the Bradley method of natural childbirth. I am kind of nervous about this whole birth thing, but I take comfort in knowing that millions (billions? trillions? quadrillions?) of women have done it already and most of them turn out fine, including my own brave mother who had 4 all-natural births. But still, I hear it's not a pleasant process. Sigh.

Justin and I bought a house in Katy, and we moved in almost a month ago. This is Justin and me the day we closed on our house.

The house was a foreclosure, and we got a pretty good price on it. It was in good shape overall, but it was quite dirty. Thankfully we had a lot of help from family and friends in fixing it up and cleaning it the weekend we moved in. We really like living here- it's so spacious, especially compared to our one-bedroom apartment in Rice Village! We still have a lot of work to do to get the baby room ready for our little guy. Speaking of which, is anyone wanting to get rid of a crib, dresser, or high chair?

This Summer Justin is working at an internship, which is scheduled to end Aug. 12, 6 days before my due date of Aug. 18. I'm kind of hoping that the baby will come a few days early, like maybe Aug. 13 or 14, to give us maximal time at home together with the baby before we go back to school (me on Aug. 23 and Justin on Aug. 30). After this Summer, Justin will have one more semester of school before completion of his Master's degree. I will still have several more years (2? 3?) before finishing my Ph.D, but for the rest of the time I'm in school I will mostly be doing research and only taking 1 class at a time (if any). As a theory person, my research can mostly be done from home, so I'm hoping to be able to continue school on a flexible schedule while taking care of my little guy.

I am not working this Summer. Or, I should day, I'm not working outside the home. I have been spending most of my time getting our house unpacked and arranged in a homey way, and now I'm starting to have more time to work on my research. My goal is to get some good progress on my research before our son arrives in August, since I'm guessing his arrival will shake things up a bit and may forestall my school work for a while. I'm trying to finish my field exam, which for micro theory is just a paper surveying current literature on our intended topic. I'm studying public goods. My paper is pretty much written, but I still need to go through a few iterations of getting feedback from my adviser and fixing it up according to his recommendations. Finishing that paper is my first academic goal for this Summer. My second is making some good progress on my own research- maybe coming up with some theoretical results that I can work into an outline for my first original research paper.

So there you have it. That's what's going on with the O'Shays right now.

Happy 2011!

Here are a few videos I took shortly after Constantine (my nephew) was born. I wanted to email them to the fam, but they were too big. So here they are:

In this first one, I thought it would be cute to have each of the kids record a message for their new baby brother for when he's old enough to talk and watch these. I only got around to recording one with Joy... it was less wonderful than I had pictured.

This next one is just the kids running around upstairs.

Last weekend Justin and I went to Washington D.C. for a few days. Over a year ago I used the rewards points from my credit card to get a Hyatt gift certificate. We still hadn't used it last November when I realized it expires this Jan. 31! We had been thinking it would be fun to visit DC, so I checked on hotel and airline prices. We found that we could stay at a nice hotel for 3 nights for the gift certificate price, and plane tickets for mid-January were pretty cheap! So we decided to go.

It was fun but super-duper cold. We spent a lot of time at the Smithsonian museums. Did you know that there are a bunch (maybe 8 or 10) different Smithsonian museums, and they're all free? We only made it to two of them: the American History museum, where we got to see the first lady ball gowns collection;

and the natural history museum, where we got to see lots of rocks and fossils and stuff. (no pictures yet- those are on Justin's camera).

We also spent some time shivering as we walked around the monuments. The highs were in the mid-30s while we were there, plus wind that made it feel like it was in the 20s. Notice that all the reflection pools are mostly or completely frozen!

Justin in front of the Potomac, with ice chunks floating on it.

Birthday!

Happy (belated) Birthday Mari! And Happy Birthday Chris!

We also recently celebrated Justin's birthday. He was in College Station most of the day, which gave me plenty of time to put up balloons before he got home:

I also made a cheese pie, and even though I put candles on it, I was too nervous about setting off our super-sensitive smoke alarm to light them.

Justin's parents sent him a funny birthday card that doesn't actually open. They secretly informed me ahead of time, so that I would be sure to be watching his face to see his reaction. I had my camera ready and everything... I watched him open it, and he chuckled slightly... "what's happening?" I thought. He had taken the card out backwards, so the first part he saw was the back that said "...birthday cards that won't open" and had a birthday message from his parents and sister. I snatched the card from him and turned it around, but it was too late- he already knew the joke. Oh well. He still got to appreciate the funny card, which I think is the main goal.

Back To School

Last Friday was the last day of our Summer internships for both me and Justin. I'm happy to report that they both ended on a good note. During my last week of work I had informal review meetings with both of my bosses at work to discuss my internship experience. Both bosses reported that they were very pleased with my work and that they would be happy to have me come back to work for them. They said they thought I fit in well with the company and seemed very capable and intelligent. It's always nice to get positive feedback! Right now I'm focusing more on school, and looking forward to being back in academia, but it's nice to know that there's a spot for me in the working world if I choose to go that route.

Justin's bosses seemed very pleased with his work as well. He gave a presentation summarizing his summer's work on Tuesday, and there were high-up geoscience people there who were listening, interested, and asking good questions (which Justin was able to asnwer!). Over the next few days he got lots of positive comments from mentors and coworkers. This makes us feel optimistic about his job prospects after he graduates in December 2011.

I'm really looking forward to going back to school. I like school. Last year I had an office on campus, but it was in building all the way across campus from where we had class... and it was in the basement... and it was pretty small... and I shared it with the 6 other first year grad students. So we never used it. We found that it was convenient to work in the Library or coffee shop. But this year I've been assigned to an office in the building where all my classes are! Well, it's actually just half of a cubicle in an office in that building, but still, at least it's in the right building.

All grad students have some TA assignment. Last year I was a grader for a freshman-level undergrad class; my job didn't involve any teaching. This semester I'll be a TA for a graduate-level class! I think it will involve some actual teaching / answering questions. The class is in microeconomic theory, which is what I want to study, so it will be a good review of the basic concepts. And I feel like it's kind of a promotion, showing that the professor (who's the director of graduate studies, I think) has confidence in my abilities. I'm looking forward to this new job.

Work and Exam Results

I started my Summer Internship a week ago Monday. Overall I like it. It's a long way from our apartment, so that's not ideal. But it's in the same direction as Justin's work, so we've been carpooling. I really like this. Even though we don't get home until 6 pm, I feel like I'm home at 5:25 when I meet Justin because that's when I get to chat and relax. But it would be nice if work wasn't as far.

The company I'm working for does price consulting. Even though I've had some boring moments of staring at screens full of data, at least the data is meaningful. For example, I've been looking at a table of dates, prices, quantity sold, and promotional info, trying to determine how much a certain promotion (price reduction, newspaper flyer, grocery store display, etc.) affected sales of an item such as chewing gum. After studying economic theory for a year, it's neat to be able to sit down in front of a bunch of real world data and see how it works.

Speaking of studying for a year... Friday before last, June 4, I took my last qualifying exam. We were told to expect results in 1-2 weeks. I'd heard that last year results were out 10 days after the exams, so on Monday (June 14, 10 days after my last exam) I was anxiously checking my school email all day. Nothing. Same thing yesterday. Still nothing. Again today I was disappointed time and time again as I looked at my email account. As I was getting ready to leave work today I gave it one last check... RESULTS!!!!! I had hoped to be able to tell how I did based on the subject of the email, but the subject was ambiguous: "Results of the Qualifying Exams." Nervously I opened the email. The text read, "Please click the attachment to view the results of your qualifying exams." I clicked the attachment, heart pounding. It opened up a zip file with 2 word documents. I clicked the first one. After about 30 seconds of nervous waiting, my computer spit out a message the this document wasn't compatible with my version of Microsoft Word (I've been using the boss's old computer). I tried the second document... [drumroll]... I PASSED! ALL 3 QUALIFIERS!!! NO RETAKES!!! I'm so relieved.

On the way home, Justin proposed that we go out to eat to celebrate. We went to Two Rows, which is pretty much across the street from our apt. They have $1 beers on Wednesdays! We enjoyed a relaxing meal of burgers, fries and beer, and Justin ordered me a surprise ice cream sundae cake. YUM!