Salt Lake City

Disclaimer: This blog post is not about Adelaida. I may mention her a few times in passing, but the story here will not revolve around her. Feel free to stop reading now if you like.

When I set up this blog a few months ago, I vowed to keep it up with frequent posts--my goal was an average of two posts a week. Looking over the blog now, I see I've only written three posts in almost four weeks! It isn't that I don't have anything to write about, but rather that I can't seem to find the time to write. With Adelaida, chemistry, work, rental properties, travel, visitors, cleaning, cooking, laundry, and so much more to keep me busy, taking ten minutes to write a blog post has been hard to justify. For that, I apologize to you, my faithful reader!

One of the things that has kept me so busy for the past month or so has been preparing for the American Chemical Society (ACS) national meeting. The ACS is the nation's largest society for chemists; they hold national meetings twice a year and generally attract 12 000 to 20 000 attendees for each meeting.

This year, my advisor's PhD advisor (my academic "grandfather") was being honored by the ACS for his "distinguished service in the advancement of inorganic chemistry" and my advisor put together a symposium within the national meeting to celebrate the award. The other grad students in our lab and I saw this as a great opportunity to travel to Salt Lake City, to present our research at a national meeting, and to meet people who might be interested in giving us jobs one day. So, our entire lab (my advisor, the lab's staff scientist, the lab's postdoc, and all five grad students) traveled to Salt Lake City for a week of chemistry lectures, posters, and discussions.

Not wanting to leave a three-month-old baby at home for a week, I took Adelaida with me, and my mom met us in Salt Lake City to babysit for Adelaida while I went to the conference. I won't bore you all with the chemistry details, but did have a fabulous time, including two great poster sessions and several discussions with people who were interested in the research I presented ("Computational Insights into Palladium-Hydride Bond Polarization and Molecular Oxygen Insertion").

I was a little apprehensive about driving 650 miles with a baby, but it actually turned out to be quite easy. My friend Diane, who is also the post-doc in our lab, bravely agreed to travel with us, and we took a leisurely two days to drive up to Salt Lake City and two days to drive back. Adelaida was an angel in the car, falling asleep within two minutes each time we put her in the car. Acutally, the trip was going so well that on the second day of driving to Salt Lake City, we stopped by Utah's Arches National Park for a couple of short hikes around the arches, which were absolutely beautiful.

Highlights of our time in Salt Lake City included:

Dinner on Saturday night with the entire group, at which our waiter Adam serenaded Rick with an impressive rendition of a song that wasn't "Happy Birthday."


Touring Temple Square. The weather wasn't the best (rainy-snowy, cold, and overcast), but the grounds were beautiful and the tour was interesting.


Driving out to Antelope Island in the Great Salt Lake, where we tasted the water (yup, it's salty!) and had a close encounter with a group of American bison.


All in all, it was a great trip and made me much more confident that I can successfully travel to Indiana with Adelaida this weekend.

Three Months Old

Adelaida is now three months old -- a whole quarter of a year has passed since she was born! It's hard to believe sometimes how much she has grown. As promised, here are pictures of her at various ages:

At four days old, Dale and I were still trying to figure out how to be parents and Adelaida was figuring out how to be a baby. We took pictures of her in this dress because it was one of the only outfits that fit her!


At one month old, we were much more comfortable living our regular lives--eating, sleeping, buying groceries, and even doing laundry--with Adelaida in tow.


Two months old was a time of discovery for Adelaida. She was just learning to grasp things with her hands and was getting better at lifting her head up while on her tummy.


Three months has turned out to be a time of finding her voice. She likes to hum, coo, gaa, and make other adorable baby noises, adding to her previous vocabulary of grunts and squeaks. She especially enjoys "talking" to things with faces--people, dogs, stuffed animals, and pictures in books.


Thanks again to Connor's parents for the serial pictures idea :)

Four Generations of First-Born Daughters

Adelaida had two very special visitors this week: her Nonna (my mom) and her GG (my grandma Betty). Adelaida enjoyed playing with her Nonna and GG, and I'm pretty sure Nonna and GG enjoyed playing with Adelaida :)





Having them here was especially wonderful for me, as I'm trying to finish a poster that I'll be presenting at a conference in March. I was able to get a lot of work done while they kept Adelaida occupied during the day, and they were a wonderful help with folding laundry and preparing dinner!







The week was full of fun activities, most of which focused on Adelaida. We played with her on her turtle play mat, took a couple of walks in the neighborhood, and introduced her to a mylar balloon tied to her ankle (more on that later). We also introduced GG to sushi on Saturday night, when we met some friends for dinner (both Adelaida and 4-month-old Shreya were wonderful restaurant patrons and weren't at all scared by the sudden heat from the Teppan grill's roaring flames).

Both Nonna and GG were amazed at how much Adelaida changed just in the few days they were with her--most notably, she really increased her vocabulary (adding "goo" "gaa" "uhh" "ohh" and "baa" to her previously limited vocabulary of "caa" and "ahh"). Adelaida really enjoyed making sounds this week and would lay on her changing table or turtle play mat and "talk" for ten minutes at a time.

Nonna and GG also provided Dale and me with a much-appreciated evening out. We went to see Comedy of Errors on Sunday afternoon, then stayed out for a wonderful dinner of prosciutto-wrapped scallops at Artichoke Cafe. Thanks GG and Nonna!

The highlight of the visit was our opportunity to take a picture of four generations of first-born daughters--a pretty special picture!

A Growing Girl

Adelaida at 2 weeks old, wearing a cute little pink dress that reached down to her ankles:


Adelaida at 10 weeks old, wearing that same cute little pink dress, that now is more like a mini-skirt:


She's growing!

Trip to Colorado, Part 2

We loaded up all of our gear on Sunday morning and drove around the Rockies and up to Loveland to spend time with our family there. We stayed with Charlotte, who was amazed at how much Adelaida had grown in the eight weeks since she'd seen her last (more on that in a future post!).


We spent a nice, relaxing afternoon that included a game of cards for the adults. About a quarter of the way into the game, Dale was losing horrendously to Charlotte (and I wasn't far behind her), so he paused the game to go get his "good luck charm." She had just woken up from a nap and was eager to help him play cards, but she must not have known the rules of the game, because Dale never did catch up to us.

We met Dale's extended family for dinner: his aunt Karen, aunt Janet, uncle Steve, cousin Kris, cousin-in-law Steph, and second cousin(?) Kadan all went out to dinner with us. Kadan is five months old and is so big compared to Adelaida! He is a beautiful baby and his favorite activities seem to be grinning and jumping. He would stand on his dad's or mom's legs and jump and jump and jump and jump... for what seemed like hours! The two babies were passed around all evening and were just as happy as they could be.

Here are some pictures from dinner:
Aunt Janet holding Adelaida

Aunt Karen holding Adelaida

Kadan, with Steph and Kris

The two babies eyeing each other


We ate breakfast at Schmidt's (Dale's favorite breakfast restaurant), then packed up our things and drove back to Denver. We were sad to leave the Mazda 5 (what a great vehicle!), but happy to fly back to Albuquerque and rescue the pups from the kennel. We didn't have any problems flying with Adelaida, and I now feel much more comfortable about our upcoming trip to Indiana, when I'll be flying with her by myself.

Trip to Colorado, Part 1

Dale and I traveled to Colorado this past weekend with Adelaida. It was her first trip on an airplane and her first out-of-state experience. It was a short trip--only 2 1/2 days--but a fun, busy trip and Adelaida got to meet several new people.

Adelaida traveled beautifully on the plane. She was a little fussy before takeoff (because she was hungry!), so I fed her and she slept the rest of the ride in her carseat. Dale carried her onto the plane and immediately became irresistible to all of the women (and a couple of the men!) we passed walking down the aisle. She woke up when we got to Denver, so Dale showed her how to play SuperBaby by helping her "fly" in the front of the airport train.

From the Denver airport, we got a rental car (incidentally, we fell in love with the Mazda 5--the sliding rear doors are awesome for a carseat!) and drove to a ski resort town on the west side of the Rockies to stay with some friends. Dave and Brooke have three little girls: Elise is 4 1/2, Alexa is 3, and Anna is 1 1/2. Elise (in purple and black) and Alex (in blue and white) were fascinated by Adelaida and very gentle with her. We know that Adelaida will have lots of fun playing with the older girls in a few years!

With three young girls of his own, we weren't surprised that Dave was a master of multi-tasking, able to hold Adelaida and Anna while helping Anna drink out of a big-girl cup and playing the role of "Son" to Alex's "Mommy" in "pretend."




Despite the fact that Anna and Elise both came down with the flu and got sick while we were visiting, we really enjoyed spending time with Dave and Brooke (and miraculously didn't catch the stomach flu ourselves). Dale especially enjoyed wrestling with the older two girls, and Alex cast me in the role of "Lion" in a game of pretend that must have lasted at least two hours!

After a fun day with friends on Saturday, we packed all of our gear back into the Mazda 5 (which we love!) and drove around the mountains to Loveland for some time with family--which will be recounted in a future post.