Sadie's third state

Sadie's third state is one that Jack doesn't have, and one I didn't even have until a layover on my honeymoon. The lonestar state. Where the stars at night are big and bright. And now I'm all out of unique things about Texas.

Sadie's first flight went about as well as it could, for a completely full flight with only middle seats left by the time I got on. I for some reason prioritized sitting in the bulkhead with extra leg room over sitting next to a person that looked sympathetic to the plight of a mother traveling alone with baby. That was not a wise choice, and I made a better one on the return flight (equally full), but Sadie was so charming she even got the harried businessman who was clearly disgruntled to be sitting next to us to smile at one point. I think when a beautiful baby stares at you long enough, gazing unblinkingly into the very core of your being, there's really nothing else you can do but smile. You can't look away. Her gaze is like a tractor beam. And it starts to feel uncomfortable after about three seconds of locking eyes if you don't smile. Smiling is the only way to break Sadie's penetrating gaze, because then she'll smile, and then she laugh, and then she'll inevitably throw her head back or bury it in my shoulder. Just FYI, in case this happens to you.



Sadie had a fun time in Texas. Of course, it could've been Alaska for all she knew, because she only left the hotel for about a cumulative of two hours. It was as hot as you might imagine 105 degrees to be. I once told my grandma that when it was hot I liked it cold and when it was cold I liked it hot. Pretty sage words for a three year old, and still pretty applicable. This is why it is good I live in Northern California and not Texas. Anyway, given the limited resources at my mom's disposal, she did an excellent job entertaining Sadie all week while my dad and I went to the ecology conference. (Which reminds me, my sweet seatmate on the way back, who talked to Sadie and even held her for me at times, asked me what I did and when I told her I was an ecologist, she repeated: "An e-cologist? What's that?" I think she thought it was some kind of online thing.) Wanting to travel light and not check anything, I had brought only two toys for the poor girl and it being so oppressively hot out, my mom's two options were pretty much the hotel room and the swimming pool. Sometimes the bathtub or the lobby just to mix things up. I don't know how she didn't go crazy. Either of them. But she was a very happy girl every time I came back to the room, buzzing with new connections or interesting developments.

And of course, Sadie was having plenty of her own new developments. First, after weeks of sort of absent-minded dabbling (on the part of her mother), she has definitely moved onto solid foods now. Second, as you can see from above, she can sit up now! For at least three seconds at a time. Long enough to snap a photo anyway.

I think this trip was a rite of passage, in a way, because Jack got to take the same trip, almost at the same age, two years ago. The meeting was in New Mexico that year, and it wasn't quite as hot, but had a similar flavor of hotel rooms and learning to do new things and having grandma and grandpa all to himself. And check this out:

What do you think? Are they related? (I think my favorite thing about these two pictures is that my dad is wearing the same shirt. It must be his ESA shirt.)

Meanwhile, I learned a lot and met a bunch of people and connected with old friends (when do you start calling them "colleagues"?) and may have gotten a lead on a new job. And gave my talk, which I had considered posting online somewhere since I basically annotated the whole thing while I was practicing it, but I think for now I will just post this slide, because it's the one I'm proudest of.

These are maps of the Salinas Valley and part of the Central Valley, showing the steps of our analysis to find out the value of the pollination services natural habitat can provide to farmland. The red boxes are pointing out how an area can be a "hotspot" in terms of the pollination services it's receiving, either because the crops grown there are especially high value or especially dependent on pollination, or because it's located close to habitat that can provide pollinators, or some combination of the two. I took way too long to make that slide and was very annoyed with myself for doing so because I knew I was presenting on the last day of the conference and wouldn't have much of an audience and thus my time would be better spent, say, putting together a job application for the job I just found out about, but c'est la vie. Now I've posted it here so at least five more people will see it. (Winky face!)

Meanwhile, what was going on back home while I was gone? Well, aside from ogling trains and cranes and ships with daddy (as illustrated by the photos in the previous post), Jack and Clare purportedly role-played lots of different animals. By the time I got back, she was a pro. Now he says "I'm a wolf," and she replies, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world, "I'm a caribou." Hunting dog: impala. Elephant: lion. Sea lion: penguin. Seal pup: killer whale. Triceratops: T-Rex. Fox: goose. Walrus: walrus! She knows them all!

Uncle Paul and Nana came to pick her up to give her a brief weekend's reprieve before she joins us to go to Minnesota next week. They stayed for dinner.



It was a nice visit. And I think Danny was just a little excited to see his little girl again.

She was pretty happy to see her daddy, too.