She's here! and other adventures...

Stats: Abigail Jayne Cobia, 7 lbs 14 ozs, 20.5" @ 10:04am on Monday 11/27/06 , apgar score 9/9


Everything went really well, Rachel did good during the C-section, she is recovering smoothly. Abigail (Abby) is a cute kid, she'll get cuter as the newborn/old man look fades. We are really happy and so excited to have her. For those that know, she looks exactly like Kelly. "Kelly Part II", or "The Return of the Kelly" we should call her. Speaking of Kelly, she is really enjoying being a big sister, and totally wants to be involved in everything to do with Abby; she is going to fit nicely into the role. It is really fun (for the moment) to have 2 kids, such a great time.

So, we had Abby, and because of the C-section we can stay at the hospital for 4 days. But, this killer storm was coming on the third day, so we're like "Let's bust out of here before it hits." On the afternoon of the third day we leave in our crappiest car, the Pimpster Mercury Topaz (Peggy had the Altima with Kelly), with baby in tow during a snow storm. It took 1 hour to drive home, but it was worth it. We got home, got all settled in to brave the freezing rain storm (it rains, then freezes instantly to whatever it touches, like being coated with a nice thick ice-glaze). Six hours later the power in our place goes completely out, same with the whole street, and eventually ~500,000 people in the St. Louis metro area. What the crap!? I guess some trees and power lines couldn't take the weight of the rain. So, we hunker down for the night in our bed, and I really mean "we" as in all of us. Rachel, Kelly, Abby, and I all snuggle under our down comforter as the temperature dropped to 15 degrees that night. So freakin' cold! No newborn should be dealing with that. So, the next morning we pack up and head for the only hotel that had vacancy and power: the Watertower Inn at SLU! This place used to be a hospital, so it's kind of weird, but it's not bad (free wireless!). We've been here for 2 days, and rumor has it we'll be here at least 2-3 more. Just great... To top it off, Rachel had to go to the ER for swelling, but we bailed after a half-hour because we would have been there all day. She's ok, some nurse just freaked on us ("You're swelling? Better go the ER!"). Bull crap, the L&D nurse said swelling was totally normal for up to 3 weeks. So, this whole ordeal has been quite the adventure. Abby has spent most of her life at a hotel, now that's something to be proud of. Well, here's some pictures of us. Enjoy. I'll keep you posted.










She looks crazy in this last pic, what a kid.

Dissertation & Internship lazy crap for crap

So. I'm am knee deep in the deepest crap ever now. I am busy applying for internship while trying to develop a dissertation topic at the same time. Why are you doing this at the same time you ask? Didn't you plan ahead and do one earlier? Well, I thought I did, but then the great cheeks in the sky opened up and dumped on me.

All summer I was researching and planning on doing my dissertation project on a longitudinal autism neuroimaging study. Well, the data came from UW, and they hadn't finished providing us with all of the scans, etc, etc. Well, late September I find out that only 4 kids from the control group showed up for the follow-up scan. If you know stats, you know that's not so good (our original n was close to 25). So I was like "crap...ok, no worries, I have some back-up research I'm doing at the hospital I could use instead (examining visual memory deficits in traumatic brain injury). Well, as I finished collecting that database together I soon discovered that there were some significant gaps in the data set. "Double crap!" This I discovered Oct 11th, and here I am trying to get a proposal together so I can put it on my applications (the first one is due Nov 1st). Not good. So, basically I'm back to square one, where I was in June.

All is not lost, the Conte Center is letting me use the data set from their first grant to develop an idea. It is going to be in a schizophrenia population, and will likely involve determining the relationship between working memory, executive functioning, and cortical gray matter volume. So now I'm running around trying to meet with people who don't have time to meet with me to get approval. I don't know what I'm doing....

Where am I applying to internship you ask? (from West to East)

University of CA San Diego
U of Arizona
Primary Children's Hospital in SLC
Utah State Hospital
U of New Mexico Health Sciences Center (HSC)
Baylor College of Medicine
Texas Children's Hospital in Houston
U of Chicago
U of Illinois-Chicago
Henry Ford HSC in Detroit
West Virginia HSC
Dartmouth College of Medicine (New Hampshire)
Harvard Medical School/Mass General Hospital
Kennedy Krieger Institute @ Johns Hopkins (Maryland)
U of Florida Gainsville

Any favorites out there?

Time for some updates

Here we go! There are a lot, so scroll on down.

First Days

Kelly had her first day of dance class and preschool a couple of weeks ago. Here are pictures. She is really excited about being involved in both. In dance she is doing ballet and tap (if it's possible for a 3 year old to do those things). She attends school at the Zion Methodist Preschool. We thought it was important for her to be exposed to some gentiles here and there. She has great teachers and it has a strong curriculum (Coloring 102, Painting 305, and a 500 level Jungle Gym course, pretty advanced if you ask me). We think this was a good career move for Kelly and we're happy about it. St. Louis Community College here we come!

It's a Girl!

We had the ultrasound done in the middle of August and found out we're having a girl. We are both pretty excited about it. Like I mentioned earlier, we wouldn't have been disappointed with a boy, but having another girl is going to be really fun. The name will be either Abigail Jane (Abby, my favorite) or Lillian Grace (Lilly, I like this one too). Sorry Jon, I know you like Lilly, but we got it first. :) Any votes on which one?