Christmas Musings

Now that Christmas is over, the kids have started to calm down a little bit and we've seen which toys were great successes and which toys weren't. 

For Annika, maybe the biggest success was the Sandra Boynton board book collection. She goes nuts for the book called "Blue hat, Green Hat." And, to tell the truth, it is starting to drive mom and dad a little nuts, too. I mean, I just finished a 300 page dissertation and I find myself saying "red pants, blue pants, OOPS!" approximately 65 times a day. But, Annika loves that and all of the other books she got for Christmas, so that was a big plus. 

Christina made Annika a rag doll that she really loves too. When she sees it she grabs it and says "Baby! MINE!" Living with Ezra has taught her to always mark her territory--so she says "MINE" to everything from a bottle to a diaper to mom and dad. If she happens to be holding anything while Ezra comes by, she immediately sticks it behind her back and gets ready for a fight. I joked that since I am teaching a class on Karl Marx next semester, she should maybe attend so that she can learn of all of the evils of private property. 

Of course, she also added a few Elmos to her collection, which makes her happy. We now have 5 Elmos, and Annika insists on holding all of them in her arms as she marches proudly through the apartment. 

We also got Annika a alphabet magnet for Christmas, which led to her identifying her first letter. When I signed her name to a paper she colored last Sunday, she ran over to the page, put her finger on the "A" and yelled "A! A! A!" She was really proud of herself, and so are we! 

Ezra is pretty easy to shop for, since he tends to like everything. A big plus for Ezra this year is his pirate ship. It shoots darts from a canon and you can raise and drop the sails, have swordfights, and various other things. And Ezra really likes pirates, so this gift was a good one for him. He plays with it ALL of the time, leading to the following interesting questions: 

Do pirates have two eyes? Do pirates have mommies? Are pirates men? Do pirates wear underwear? Do pirates pee and poop? Is Batman a pirate? and various other questions. 

Ezra also loves his book "Where the Sidewalk Ends"--he cracks up every time we read it. We also got a few Dr. Seuss books, since he loves those--and he got a baseball book from Dallin that he really loves. We're thinking we should move to an "all book" policy for holiday gifts, since the kids seem to like these the best. 

Of course, when Ezra saw his dinosaur on Christmas morning, he was really excited. He said he wanted the "big dinosaur from Target" for Christmas for about 2 months, and he got it from Grandma and Grandpa. Since Annika is absolutely terrified of it, we only play with it outside when Annika is otherwise engaged. 

My favorite gift Ezra got is the tiny little helicopter he got from Grandma and Grandpa. I love to fly that thing around the house as much as Ezra does!

All in all, it was a great Christmas for us here...we made an enormous dinner on Christmas eve and spent most of Christmas snacking, lounging, and playing around. We hope everyone had a great Christmas and wish everyone a happy New Year!

Merry Christmas to everyone! (More Christmas to follow.)

A few things from Ezra

Here are some more funny things from Ezra:

The other day Ezra and I were listening to some music. I remembered listening to a particular song when I was in labor with Ezra, so I told him about how I heard that song when he was in my tummy and I was waiting for him to be born. He looked at me funny and then said "Mommy, you try to eat me?"

We have a life drawing hanging on our wall that I drew in college. Today Ezra looked at it and said "That guy's not wearing any underwear!" His dad laughed and then said "He's looking for them."

Jonathan and Annika were playing with a toy phone. Jonathan gave the phone to Annika's toy Elmo so that he could call Grandma. Ezra overheard this and told them "Elmo can't talk on the phone. He doesn't have any ears." 

Happy Birthday Dad!!

Happy Birthday Dad! Sorry I can't be there with you for your party and to eat some cake with you! I hope you have a wonderful day and get lots and lots of cool presents. Let me know what you didn't get and I'll send it to you! Love you!

10 Cool Things About My Dad:

1. He's hilarious. My dad is easily the funniest guy on the planet.

2. Like all great comedians, the funniest thing about my dad is his laugh--which is a silent chest heave that lasts around 15 minutes. 

3. He's blunt. He never skirts around the truth, so you always know where you stand. That's refreshing. When Jonathan met him the first time, he called my dad "Mr. Childs," after which my dad laughed for a while and then said, "Call me Bruce." It was really funny. 

4. He's a really great friend. Ask anyone who knows him. 

5. He's very generous--he used to give me 50 dollars every time I visited from college. 

6. He's a "sleepwatcher." My dad always fell asleep watching old Westerns on the couch. When I was sure he was deep asleep, I would change the channel. He would open his eyes and say, "turn it back, I was watching that!"

7. He loves to fish, and goes every chance he can get. 

8. He drives 15 miles per hour. Everywhere. (Although, one time, when he took Jonathan on a refrigeration call in the middle of winter, he had Jonathan drive the truck. It was icy, so Jonathan was going really slow. My dad told him, "you can speed it up a little." I told Jonathan that if my dad told him he was going too slow, he was REALLY going too slow). I still laugh about that. 

9. He's really patient and understanding. 

10. I'm his favorite! Since I have four brothers and I'm the only girl, he's implied on several occasions that the day I was born was the best day of his life. 

Santa Claus came to town

Today we helped run a Christmas party for Purdue Village. One of the highlights was Santa stopping by for some photo-opps with the kids. To provide some context, neither of our kids felt particularly well, both woke up really early this morning, and neither of them had naps during the day. But, like the little troopers they are, they made it through and fell asleep on the walk home. 

Here's Ezra and Annika sitting on Santa's lap. You can kind of notice how excited Annika is to be there. Why is it that Santa scares the wits out of kids, but they'll gladly sit on the Easter Bunny's lap? Shouldn't more people be scared of the Easter Bunny?--I'd be willing to guess at least 60% of adults are scared of the Easter Bunny. Poor Santa...

This picture is pretty much priceless. I love Annika's look. She was really not impressed with Santa, but he still tried to make an effort and look happy. Of course, around the point this photo was taken, Annika was so tired she wouldn't let her mom or dad put her down for a second. 
Here Ezra looks like he's trying to find the right moment to tell Santa he wants the gigantic remote-control dinosaur he's asked for for months. As far as we know, Santa has decided against getting Ezra a 3-foot mechanical dinosaur that makes his sister cry even more than Santa does. However, Santa has consented to giving Ezra Geotrax as a compromise. We think (hope?) he'll be happy with that.

Santa's elf is not nearly as scary. This is our neighbor Josh, who was a really good sport for wearing this all night. Nice tights, Josh! 

Once nearly everyone had left, we had some time to ourselves. Ezra and Mom are making yet another gingerbread house, while Dad tries to make Annika happy. Note that Ezra looks like a zombie in this picture. He was really, really ready for bed right about now. 

Here's the family plus Ezra's best pal Dylan. 

A dissertation, explained

This is Jonathan. Christina implored me to tell the story of my dissertation defense. This should count as your proper warning--this is not an exciting and/or funny post. 

So I wrote my dissertation over the past few years. Generally, once one has selected a topic, one will spend 1-2 years researching and 1-2 years writing the dissertation. I spent roughly 1.5 years researching my topic and another year or so writing it. Of course, the 3 previous years were spent learning the surrounding arguments that would bracket my research. Dissertations are supposed to "fill a gap" in the existing literature on a topic. They are much better if they can fill several gaps. My dissertation (on Henry David Thoreau and political detachment) tried to respond to critical reception of Thoreau in the past 20 years while also responding to the liberal/communitarian divide in political theory. The most important thing about a dissertation is making sure you fill this gap properly, which means that you have to read EVERYTHING about a topic before you can write about it. I read about 15,000 pages of Thoreau's original writings (twice, and I'm reading them now a third time), somewhere around 50 books on Thoreau (again, twice) and 100 or so articles on Thoreau. After that, I read another 30 or so books on liberalism and another 25 or so on communitarianism. Then you have to index all the important points and get ready to write. 

Writing takes forever. Some people in my department have been at the writing stage for 5-6 years and still haven't finished. I outlined my dissertation in about 15 pages, and gave myself deadlines for everything. Of course, you have to expect the unexpected, and I found myself adding two chapters, taking a chapter away, and completely rewriting the introduction twice. All in all, I wrote 8 chapters in my dissertation, totaling around 320 pages. (I'm now in the process of transforming the dissertation into a book-- hopefully by March, which means another 100 or so pages in addition). 

So, after 6 or so years spent leading up to the moment, I finally defended my dissertation last Tuesday. I was really nervous (I had flu-like symptoms that kept me in bed the previous weekend) with momentary bouts of panic throughout the days leading up to the defense. Finally, around 2:45 on Tuesday afternoon, I saw Christina come into the Political Science lounge and I was calmed a bit. I was really excited that our friend Sarah watched Ezra and Annika so Christina could come. Since the writing and preparing of the dissertation takes so much time--including a lot of late nights, weekends, holidays, etc.--this defense was as much Christina's moment as mine. A lot of people say that "without so-and-so, this wouldn't have been possible." The truth is, I probably would have written a dissertation even if I hadn't met Christina, since it is what I've wanted to do for a really, really long time. But it would not have been as good, and it definitely would not have been as fun. 

In addition to Christina, my friend Nate and a few fellow grad students came to the defense. My advisor came in a bit before 3:00. Dr. Weinstein is world-renowned for his research on the philosophy of technology and American political philosophy. He's also married to the world's foremost scholar on heavy-metal music and is himself the former lead singer of an anarchist punk band. He is the greatest guy in the world. My other committee members include Dan, who is a scholar of french philosophy and pretty much everything else, Leigh, who is a scholar of environmental politics, Kevin, who is a Marx scholar, and Sam, who is a scholar of contemporary rhetorical theory. The dissertation committee is pretty important, since these are the guys who are going to give you feedback, write your recommendations, decide if you actually get to receive your doctorate, etc. My committee was great!

When we started, I was allowed to talk for 5 minutes or so before the questions started. Your committee has a month or so to read over your dissertation before the defense, and they prepare a list of questions for you to answer at the defense. Sam, who is from the Communication department, was asked to go first. He asked me so great questions about ethics and writing, very difficult questions that were hard to respond to. After he was finished, Dan, who is in the philosophy department, asked me some questions. Dan's questions were about liberalism and whether what Thoreau was writing would fit into the liberal camp. These were also great questions. Leigh asked about my contention that Thoreau was not ethical with a series of questions that were also very good and difficult to answer. After this round, we had to move to the department head's office in order to call my fourth committee member, Kevin, who is currently on research leave at UCLA. We had all sorts of trouble with the phone, since I could barely hear him and there was a lot of feedback into the phone. Kevin asked variations on the same question over and over, which got frustrating because I felt I had sufficiently answered him. 

The question and answer session went on for two hours before my dissertation chair stopped everyone and asked me to leave the room. Once they were alone, they discuss whether I pass and what types of corrections I might have to make. I got really lucky--I passed and only had to make a few minor corrections and one minor addition. Then my chair calls me back into the room where the committee greets me as "Dr. McKenzie," which was kind of cool. 

Now, a few days later, people ask me "how does it feel to be finished?" And, to be honest, the answer I've settled on is: disappointing. I spent six years of my life preparing for this moment, and 3 years of that time writing this dissertation, and now it's just sort of over. On to the next project. It's a weird feeling--I feel like there should be something more. I guess it hasn't sunk in yet, that I'm really done. Or maybe I'm just wondering why I spent all that time working on this project that, now finished, underwhelms me. 

Our budding Picasso...

Dr. Jonathan McKenzie

Today was one of the biggest days we will ever have. Jonathan defended his dissertation and accepted a tenure track job at Northern Kentucky University. This is before the defense:

Getting settled. There were actually four committee members and one more via telephone.

Jonathan and his advisor Dr. Weinstein.

And finally......Dr. McKenzie!!

I'll have Jonathan post later with all the details in his own words. It was a great day!

Christmas time!

Since this is coming:

We've been decorating like this:

And doing this:

What have you been doing?

Pirates, airplanes, and cutie-pies.

Ezra dressed up as a pirate today. His costume was complete with a dishtowel on his head, a vacuum extension as his sword, and one of moms earrings on his ear. By the way, I tried to put a shirt on him but Ezra says that pirates don't wear shirts. :)

One pirate taking the other pirate hostage.

Dylan came over to play with Ezra yesterday and they decided to fly on an airplane. I love how creative these two have become recently. It is so much fun to watch!

I attempted to take holiday photos of the kids. They didn't turn out how I wanted them too, mostly because one of them was in a bad mood- but here as some of the better ones anyway.

Look at Annika's big rosy cheeks! I love these two babies!

I have to add this photo. Last week Sarah watched our kids so we could go to a movie. When we got back she was rocking Annika to sleep in the chair. I couldn't believe Annika would let her do that. She never liked to be held like that before. She is a busy-on the go-kind of gal. Since then, I've rocked and read her books before bedtime every night and she loves it! I do too! Thank you Sarah for discovering that Annika will now sit still and let you hold her. She would never let me do that before- unless she was asleep! I love it! And she goes to bed a lot easier too. You are amazing Sarah!