The Olympics are almost over

Note: Cross-posted on FertilityStories

I have really enjoyed watching the Olympics. Abigail (Guli) claims they're boring, but then - she's 3 and she'd rather watch Richard Scarry's Best Learning Songs Video Ever (a great video really, but it doesn't outdo the Olympics, at least not for me - and BTW, what is that insane pricing???). I remember watching in the middle of the night, while feeding Matan and Lilach, in 1996 - with the time difference (7 hours earlier there) it worked out great. I am already waiting for 2012.

In the meantime, Gwendomama, who I met at the BlogHer party in Macy's awarded me a Kick-Ass Blogger award (yes, that's the one and only time you'll see that word in my blog, I'm sure, as it's not one I ever use...) So - first - thanks :-) My blogging has a long way to go, but I do believe it's going to get better someday soon...

In the tradition of such awards, I'm supposed to pass it on to 5 bloggers:

Kirby, who doesn't blog often enough, but, when she does, she makes up for it. She's expecting her first baby any day now and still joined us on a yarn-spinning, goat-milking, archeological tour on Wednesday. How amazing is that?

Erin, who is a career mom and a very real person, one who's not afraid to say how she feels - even when it's far from easy.

Topcat who is a recovering addict, an infertility survivor and now dealing with her husband's cancer. And she's still got a sense of humor & plenty of attitude.

Doc Grumbles who grew up in a very screwed-up family that provides her with plenty of things to write about. And despite it all, she's so cool...

Sara who lives in Korea with her husband and daughter. I always look forward to reading her posts & I've particularly enjoyed the ones about life in Korea recently.

It's hard to stop at just 5... There are a lot of really great bloggers out there :-)

Wonders never cease

Psycho-ex just proposed to his girlfriend (at Lilach's bat mitzvah celebration, which we did not attend) and she said yes...

One of the best things about this is that he's moving away :-) (Unfortunately, the kids will still have to go there and she really doesn't like 2 of them and said - just last week - that she would never move in with psycho-ex again because she can't stand them - yes, she said this to their faces...)

One more thing down

I just sent out the first draft of the screens for a new security system for which I'm designing the user interface (the company draws up the specs, I make screens that people can use, a graphic designer makes it pretty and a programmer makes it work). The fact that I am able to do this between fixing up my seminar paper and having 6 kids home surprises even me.

I also wrote a speech for Lilach's Bat Mitzvah party (one that her father is throwing for her, that we're not going to). Her father's girlfriend had hit ctrl-c > ctrl-v from Wikipedia (in Hebrew) and then just deleted the "mother" in the thank you's section (actually, it was much worse than that, but I'll try to get to that in another post) and with Lilach having a difficult enough time reading things that she does understand, I thought it was really unfair (not to mention the fact that it seemed as if she had been born via immaculate male conception which was just weird). She loves the speech and since it includes a lot of bible passages (which are difficult to read correctly), Hadas is going to read those out loud for her. They practiced together today and it sounded great.

I even called my ex-sister-in-law yesterday to wish her happy birthday and to thank her for the powerpoint presentation that she made for Lilach (apparently she put in lots of pictures of the little girls too :-))

OK, back to the Olympics (at least I get to watch while I feed Yirmi :-))

Met with my advisor

First of all, she's really nice, which makes everything easier. I have a lot of work to do, especially in terms of statistics, but nothing really has to be reworked, which is cool. I am going to ask for an extension, though I haven't quite figured out yet how to do that... As for the results, which my advisor agreed are very interesting, I will only post them after I have turned in the paper (as she instructed me). It makes sense to me anyway...

In other news, for anyone who missed my update yesterday, Nomi can now eat eggs! She is still allergic to sesame seeds, bananas, kiwis and almonds (as far as we know) and is not allowed to have any nuts or peanuts until she's 3, but the two biggies (milk and eggs) are behind us. I think neither of us see it as a huge relief, because we've found so many ways to work around it that it really didn't make things difficult for us and we were never really worried that she had a dangerous allergy. On the other hand, it will be really fun to see her able to eat things that we've had to tell her to avoid for so long.

What's for dinner?

We don't know yet, but it might include eggs...

Results sometime in the next 2 hours.

Update:

After nearly 2 years from discovering Nomi's allergy to eggs, she passed the first part of the test tonight. If all goes well through tomorrow then she's no longer considered allergic! She was rubbing one of her eyes tonight, so we're still not certain it's OK, but at least, even if she is allergic, her allergy is very mild.

I.sent.the.first.draft.

Yes. I did. I really did. I hope my advisor's comments won't be too bad. I'm meeting with her on Thursday.

What did I send? The first draft of my seminar paper on women's estimation of their chances to conceive during their first year of trying and comparing those estimates to actual chances, at set points during that first year. (OK, re-reading that, that's quite a mouthful... Perhaps I should try again... I did research on how women estimate their chance of conceiving during their current cycle and overall during the first year (and some points in between) and then I compared that to the data reported in academic research of time-to-pregnancy.) Feel free to ask questions...

The results are really interesting. I have to find out if/when I can post them.

Woman and person

I may claim to be both, but gawrsh time is something I have way too little of.

In the meantime, Erin wrote this fabulous post... Women are and have to be more than moms. Being a mom is incredibly important, a lot of hard work, very time consuming and sometimes rewarding, but (at least for me) it's not the only thing I want to do and being a mom is not all I want to be.

Back to my paper... (it's going to be done someday soon, it really is)

New blogroll

It's up and it's on the left (scroll down some). What do you think? Too much information about each blog? Just right? Want me to add your blog? Leave a comment...

How Muppets Work

Check out this page.

I think it will really interest bigger kids as well.

More silliness than you thought possible

And hi to Elizabeth who appears in the background - I actually think it's great :-)

And, Grover, if you ever get to reading - Ohad can't believe you forgot to say hi... (BTW, this was the real Grover.)