getting there babywise

We decided to cosleep with the kid-partially because it's supposed to
be good for his psychological development, mostly because cosleeping
breastfeeding mothers get better sleep. But our bed is not big
enough for 3 of us and I'm less worried about rolling over and
squishing the kid if he has his own space. Hence, we made a sidecar
out of a crib. It needs to be raised up just an inch or so and it'll
be perfect. He'll be safely removed from his sleep deprived parents
but still within arms reach.

Green tomatoes

The garden is good but still pretty far behind where we were last year. Someday we'll get ripe tomatoes.

navel gazing

Easier to do these days since it's sticking right out at me. I had an interesting conversation with my PI today about maternity leave and what I wanted out of my career. I was planning on going back to work part time 6 months after the kid is born (because I get 6 months full salary and 6 months half salary for my 1 year of mat leave, crazy good I know). However, PI doesn't want me to come back half time unless I really feel like I can be productive-which makes sense and is fair, but I'm just not sure if I'm going to want to go back if I take a whole year off. Or maybe I'll spend a few months with the little guy 24/7 and decide that day-care cost be damned I have to get out of the house.

I'm not a rock-star, I hate writing way to much to think that I'm going to get tenure at a big university even if I were able to get a job at said big U. I do think that I want to be a prof at a small master's only kind of school but there just aren't that many jobs out there and I'm guessing a large number of other people wanting the same kind of position. I just spend a depressing hour or so looking at academic job postings, there just aren't that many.

It's coming along slowly

We now have little tomatoes for each variety except the green doctor, but both of the very weak plants that we put in are alive and growing.

Garden update 2 weeks old

Alright I haven't done a very good job keeping up with the garden progress. Here's what it looked like 2weeks ago just after we put up the trelli for the tomatoes. Some of the plants are now above the middle support. Maybe I'll get a more recent picture up some day.

Garden stuff

The garden is looking pretty good. We've finally got warm weather-this past week several days it was at or near 30. The tomatoes and lettuce are really happy about that. The lettuce was growing at least an inch every day it was that warm.
But this kind of heat is the end of the peas-there are still lots on the vines ripening but I think they'll be done by the end of the week. This year we planted Sugar Snap peas and I'm really happy with them, they are powdery mildew resistant and produce tons. They're much bushier than the Super Sugars that we planted last year and didn't grow at tall but I think the output is pretty much the same.

I finally started pruning the tomatoes yesterday, some of the suckers were pretty huge but they're all gone. After seeing how well pruned tomatoes performed last year, I'm only allowing each plant to have one vine. Last year I let some have 2 or 3 vines which I don't think improved yield but did make for more crowded plants. I'm pretty happy with the state of the tomatoes but we are at least 2 weeks behind where we were last year-combination of our cold spring/early summer and the damage to the seedlings while we were out of town. Oh well we're getting blossoms now on a lot of the plants, just no baby tomatoes yet. Thairo built the rest of the trelli yesterday but forgot his shovel in the field so we'll have to put them up next weekend.

kidlet