She's Very Advanced

Maia was playing with her toys on Saturday. She picked up this green bucket and in the course of exploring, it ended up on her head! Full disclosure: the picture is a reenactment. By the time I got the camera, it had fallen off her head. This is pretty close to how I found her though.

She's officially mobile. Give her enough time and she will creep, wounded soldier style, around the room. Her timing is perfect- our house is a mess of boxes and piles of stuff waiting to be packed.

Solid food...well, sort of solid food

Maia has ventured into the world of eating semi-solid food. We started last week with rice cereal, which she was totally excited about for about 3 days. She is over the thrill, and could take or leave it at this point. Yesterday we introduced her to sweet potatoes. She loved them, and even ate the rice cereal mixed with sweet potatoes.

Her 6 month check up was earlier this week. She is 19 pounds, 10 ounces and 29 inches long. Her weight is in the 95% percentile for her age, and her height is still off the charts. She was pronounced "perfect" by the doc, who told us that all her spitting up should clear up by the time she's walking. Let's hope she walks early!

Happy 6 Month Birthday!

Maia is 6 months old today. Where does the time go? Here are some of my favorite pictures from the past 6 months!

Ick!

I intended to use this post to write about our fun 4th of July trip to visit families in Missouri and Illinois, but that will have to wait until I can see out of both eyes.

Maia and I were sick for a good part of the trip, and last night we both added conjunctivitis to the list of flu symptoms. A trip to the doctor today confirmed that we are both inflicted with some sort of icky bug (the doc said antibiotics would only shorten the course of the bug by a day or two, so no antibiotics for us). The fever, sore throat and general sluggishness are improving, but the crusty, burning eyes have a way to go.

Andy is taking care of us. I hope we are no longer contagious, I'm sure it would be hard to write his thesis with gooey eyes. Maia is supposed to start with a new babysitter on Wednesday, but we might be in quarantine for the rest of the week.

She's Very Advanced

Our mantra ("She's very advanced") is holding true. Maia is now officially teething, with not one tooth coming in but two. Both lower incisors. Her cousin Noah is just now getting his first tooth, and he's 5 months older!

Advanced indeed!

Anchorage Neighborhoods

Until now, we've only had a vague idea of where to find the various neighborhoods of Anchorage: Downtown, Midtown, Rogers Park, etc. Unfortunately, this is how the locals advertise their apartments for rent! But I just found the above image on the Anchorage Community Councils webpage. I'm posting it here as much for our future reference as for our legions of loyal readers.

Nose to the Grindstone

Maia and Becca have gone to visit family for Independence Week, leaving me behind to get some work done. This looks like it'll be their last trip to the STL area before Christmas, so it's good that the families will get to see Maia. It'll be hard on us, too... neither of us has been farther than an 8-hour drive from home our entire lives, so it's always been possible to run home for a weekend. But Anchorage will be an adventure, we'll make a few trips down per year, and we'll have our share of visitors. We're looking forward to it.

I have about 8-9 days while they're away to work really hard on my thesis research. It's lonely work, but it needs to get done, and honestly it's pretty exciting. As I'm poring over my data, comparing Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) data with images I took with the 3.5-meter telescope at APO, I feel like a real astronomer. And there's a hint of light at the end of the tunnel. When Maia and Becca get back, I'll have about a month to get my dissertation to my committee, then about two more weeks to work on my presentation for my defense. So much to do!

I thought I'd share one of my cooler images, taken from the SDSS data. This is Comet Dalcanton, discovered in the Sloan data back in 1999. My code predicts the location of the comet (cross-hairs), then looks for detections that were there in one image but not in the next (circles). See the two extra circles? It's not uncommon to find faint "transients" that have nothing to do with the comet or asteroid in question, but in this case it's possible that they're actually fragments from the comet. I can't prove that yet (in fact, they don't seem to be moving fast enough to keep up with the nucleus), but it's an exciting possibility. Heck, it's cool every time the circles line up with the crosshairs. And that, my friends, is why I'm a scientist.



Back to work!