1. We recently had family pictures taken, and they turned out REALLY nice. Josh Bishop, a friend of ours and photographer extraordinaire, took them for us and did a fabulous job. We will print some out and give them out around the holidays. Or if you want one and know my email address, you can email me and I will email you some.
2. I have a dry and sarcastic sense of humor, which enables me to get along with my husband quite well. However, sometimes I am not as funny to other people as I think I am in my head, and I have recently had to apologize for something I said when someone took it the wrong way. I don't mind apologizing for hurting someone's feelings, but damn. Come on. Would I really say something like that if it wasn't a joke? Seriously people, lighten up.
3. Trinity is officially one. She is also officially walking, which means I am officially a try-and-keep-all-those-things-out-of-my-reach mom again. We also discovered she is allergic to tomatoes, and possibly to cottage cheese. The latter is puzzling, though, because she can handle other dairy products. She has an appointment with the doctor Friday, so maybe he will have some insight. Wayne thinks I am crazy, but I think she has 6 words: hello, thank you, mama, dada, Bubba, banana.
4. Riddick is potty trained. He sleeps through the night without a pull-up and doesn't wet the bed. He still has accidents on occasion when he is playing and just forgets to go. He loves to pee on trees, and will do so in all types of weather. I have decided that Trinity will be potty training soon because she is a great imitator and I refuse to wait until she is three to start. Despite the advances on the elimination front, we now face challenges in the night fears arena. Riddick is not afraid of the dark I don't think, but he will not sleep all night in his room because he hears sounds in the basement that scare him. So most nights, Trinity wakes up around 2 and we go out to the couch to find Riddick there. Which means I have to actually be awake and sitting up to feed her. Which means I am still as sleep deprived as ever.
5. Wayne shot a deer on the first day of opening season, which is great for our food budget! Kathy and David let him process the meat at their place, which also saved us a ton. Thanks Kathy and David!!
6. After many months of RNA extraction problems, my advisor finally broke down and let me get an RNA extraction kit. However, one problem in getting good RNA stems from me letting other people touch my samples and ruining them (yes, I am positive it was not me). It turns out that RNA that is in homogenized tissue doesn't like to be thawed more than once, so trying to get RNA from these already-once-thawed tissues because the original samples were degraded is the devil. Luckily for me, I have back up tissue samples that have never been thawed that I can use with the kit. Thank goodness for good study design and lots of samples.
7. Knitting and crocheting have completely absorbed my "free" time. It is that time of year again where I find myself making gifts like crazy. For some reason I always make things for other people and nothing for myself.
8. I will probably not give my name as a tutor for Genetics next semester, although it has been a great refresher since I had a genetics course more than 10 years ago. I actually learned some things, too, so that was nice, but tutoring is a major time suck that I don't think I want to deal with next semester.
