Progress

Frequently these days new articles come out talking about advances in technology, from time to time involving cloning or gametes in some way. People like to become very upset with the various possible related ramifications: “How unnatural!” “Think of what people will do with that technology, what horrible things might come about!”

Of course, yes, unsavory things might happen as a result, sometimes, but really, flying in airplanes is “unnatural.” And bad things sometimes occur in consequence. Same with cars–even more so. (Note that you don’t see the fundamentalists walking instead of driving because the Bible doesn’t mention cars, but then they get all worked up over IVF). Same with telephones–now we can harass people from afar! And with every other technological innovation. To me, I just don’t see these other types of advances as necessarily harmful. Frankly, whatever helps people have the children they desire sounds fine to me, or whatever works to cure disease.

Over time humans have evolved to be wonderful tool makers and users, with creative, flexible minds (in some ways, anyway), and recent scientific advanced are just more examples of us putting our abilities to work. Instead of leaving our bodies as we found them, we can determine where we lead them—-to controlled reproduction, to the rewriting of them to suit our vain, medical, or whimsical purposes, to healing the sick. It is up to us to put our superbly programmed brains to use to figure out how fix the disease-causing mistakes our genes never worked out, or to figure out how to increase mutual respect, or run cars on less expensive and more environmentally-friendly power, or make loved babies, and many more things that we will dream up as we go along.

Back where I started

For several years before I started grad school in 2005 I worked for a research consulting firm doing, well, researchy-type stuff with, you know, numbers and words. Bored to tears, I decided to go for my Master’s which is in a subject area that basically focuses on how to teach languages. I thought this would be good since it would theoretically serve me well when we move to Sweden, and I’d taught English and Spanish in a variety of settings since 1999 as a volunteer, so I knew I liked it.

I’ve now finished this degree. And I’m teaching ESL, yes, but not at a place that requires a graduate degree. And thus far I have been unsuccessful in getting a part-time teaching job at a more upscale place, though partly this is because ESL programs don’t hire adjuncts until they have more information on enrollment, so it’s no surprise they wouldn’t be hiring now for August. Still, it’s been a little discouraging.

So when my old boss at the research place asked me last week if I could do some part-time from-home work for them, as apparently a person who had been hired to take over some of my old responsibilities had “left suddenly,” I said yes. The project should mostly be for this summer. It won’t be thrilling or even interesting, but, well…

Actually, I don’t know why I said yes. Partly just to help them out, I guess. But it’s frustrating to go back to my old job. Why did I even go to grad school, anyway? And it’s not that we need the money; that sounds a little obnoxious to say [I guess it is also obnoxious to complain about easy part-time work-from-home offers], but mostly it’s because I just won’t be making that much doing this. Though, to make my graduate degree seem even less purposeful, I’ll still be making more per hour in research than I am in teaching. Plus I was kind of looking forward to having my evenings more free with the absence of schoolwork to get good at sewing, and reading and exercising (well, “looking forward” may be the wrong word for that last one). But I said yes. At least I don’t have to go back to my sad little office; I can work from home. Maybe I can even watch TV while doing it! Oh right, we don’t have TV now. Perfect timing!

Baby fever

I don’t have it; Baby does.

It seems like half the people I know are in possession of babies, especially newborns, these days. When we see them I like to hold them a couple of minutes, maybe make some funny sounds at them, comment on their cuteness, perhaps help coax out a burp, and then I’m done, ready to pass the squalling, floppy things back to their tired mommies.

Not so Baby. She rather insists on getting to hold them, hug them, kiss them, pat them, burp them, love them, squeeze them, ad inifinitum. Why their mothers prefer to hold them themselves, perhaps nursing them, or keeping them in their little car seats, she doesn’t know and finds intensely frustrating. She knows she would be awesome at holding them. She reaches out her arms, indicating, “Just hand him over, he’ll be fine, give him here!” For crawling babies, she’ll follow them around trying to hoist them up, or drag them into her lap. This is especially funny as some of them weigh more than she does. When she has had the brief opportunity to hold a newborn, or sit with an older baby, Baby is, indeed, gentle and sweet, intensely curious, quick with the kisses. It’s darling. But eventually we take the baby away from her, and her disappointment is quite clear. She simply does not agree that, as a one-year-old, she is not an appropriate caretaker for a zero-year-old.

Though I don’t usually post pictures of other people’s kids, one newborn is largely indistinguishable from another, so here is a hilarious picture of Baby holding a (really big) three-week-old, who looks quite alarmed about this turn of events (though honestly Baby was doing a great job holding him; I can’t imagine what his problem was).

In related news, she also enjoys holding kitties:

The siblings of these babies aren’t nearly as obsessed with babies as Baby. Maybe they want to hold them or check them out from time to time, but then they find other pursuits. But Baby is never done with the babies. And since seeing all these newborns recently, she’s been particularly into her dollies. For many of her waking hours Baby will cart around her baby doll or a humanoid-looking kitty cat and a doll bottle with fake milk. She likes to check their diapers and burp them. Perhaps it’s a phase. It makes me even more glad, though, not to have a newborn in the house of my own. Running interference all the time would be exhausting and sooner or later that baby would get toted around by its neck and then dropped; I can just see it. Yet another reason to wait until Baby is three, or four, or never, to have another baby. Baby will just have to wait!

Allergies

Baby seems to have food allergies, or at least some serious sensitivities. She’s always tended to eczema, having a persistent patch on the back on one thigh and others which pop up from time to time on her hands, face. Then a few months ago I noticed that after eating tomatoes she would get a red and irritated face which cleared up with some Aquaphor applied overnight. I have a slight skin sensitivity to tomatoes myself which isn’t a big deal, and figured the yumminess of tomatoes was worth having to risk a little skin irritation from time to time, so we kept feeding them to her (she loves tomatoes and tomato sauce). We also noticed that whole milk seemed to be giving her absurdly water poop, so we put her back full-time on formula and that seemed to help. Though I’m not sure if she has a problem with them now, she had effects from citrus when I was breastfeeding.

A couple of weeks ago, while eating eggplant parmigiana, Baby started crying, flipping out a little. Her poor hands were covered in weird white raised welts where the food had touched her. It was scary. We washed her hands, applied Aquaphor (I use that for everything), and wrapped her little hands in gauze and the welts were gone within an hour. She’d had eggplant before, but I thought maybe that was it, since she’d never had that problem with tomato. But the next time she had food with tomato sauce in it she got the welts again. So no more tomato.

Ever since then, though, the eczema on her hands has just been horrible. And then a couple of nights ago Baby got the welts-on-hands problem again from eating some (tomato-free, seafood-free) paella. I can’t imagine what she’s reacting to. From time to time she’ll get red rings around her eyes and on her cheeks. The Aquaphor isn’t helping and neither is the prescription anti-eczema medicine she has, partly because it is very difficult to apply it to her hands. We’ll put some on, wrap the hand in gauze and secure it with tape, but Baby really needs her thumbs to sleep, and the bandage will somehow end up around her wrist by morning, the medicine presumably wiped off. This weird raw redness (maybe it isn’t even eczema) is the worst on her thumbs, I guess because of the thumb-sucking. Her doctor gave us a prescription for her to have Claritin several months ago for seasonal allergies, noting a slight cough and the red around Baby’s eyes, but I never filled it as that’s pretty serious medicine for what seems to me to be run-of-the-mill runny nose pollen-allergy stuff. I think the issue is food, and I’d like to treat that issue by eliminating whatever food it is. How can I figure this out? What can I do?