The girls are here

To: All
From: JT and Writergrl


Please welcome the arrival of our baby girls, Pumpkin and Cricket. They were born Easter Sunday at Rush University Medical. P arrived at 2:46 pm and weighed 1 pound 11 oz. C was born at 2:47 pm andweighed 1 pound 7 oz. The girls are just 26 weeks so they will have to spend a few months in the hospital before they can come home, but they are doing just fine right now and they have the best neonatal medical team on the planet caring for them 24/7.

Right now the medical staff say that that they are experiencing everythingthat babies born at 26 weeks do. This includes a little help from a ventilator with a little oxygen here and there depending on how they are doing. They have both been under bili lights to help with jaundice. P pooped for the first time yesterday (C is still holding it in). Their brain ultrasounds came back just perfect - and cardiac ultrasounds are on deck. A heart valve called a PDA still needs to close in each of them. This is common and a type of ibuprophen is used to close it. If that doesn't work there may be more invasive options, so we are keeping our fingers crossed on that. C is on some medicine for low blood pressure, but she is working off it quickly. Writergrl got to hold P for the first time on Tuesday for one hour. She is hoping to hold C in the next few days when they take the IV out of her belly button.

Things change day to day. We will update everyone on the girls' progess as things develop. The nurses say to take things in stride. Like full term babies, they will have good days and bad. We will be spending a lot of time in the hospital with the girls the next few months and will not have access to cell phones while we are in the special care nursery. Please let us know if you are interested in receiving email updates on the girls each week. We thank all of you for your good wishes.

Love,
JT and Writergrl

Attached are pictures of the girls - in one Writergrl is holding P for"kangaroo care." In the second, C is getting a "tan" to help with jaundice - since the picture was taken, she's been able to ditch the bili light.

Name check - Mike Roloff, NWU

Way to go Roloff! I just found the Feb 12 article "Why perfect dates make lousy partners" from Live Science on MSNBC and my former professor is the entire source for the article:

Why perfect dates make lousy partners
Want to be in a committed relationship? Pick the socially-awkward type

The best "catches" in dating land may be the worst choices in the long-run, new research shows.

Popular people who monitor themselves carefully in social situations and thereby appear to be the most socially appropriate are often highly sought after as romantic partners, a study finds, but these people show less satisfaction and commitment in relationships than socially-awkward people.

By self-monitoring, people assess how their actions affect others and adjust to fit the appropriateness of the situation. They screen their words and behavior to suit the people around them.

"High self-monitors are social chameleons," said Northwestern University professor of communication studies Michael E. Roloff."And, because they're quick to pick up on social cues, are socially adept and unlikely to say things upsetting to others, they are generally well-liked and sought after."

Self-monitoring is often a helpful attribute.

"Research finds [self-monitors] to be excellent negotiators and far more likely to be promoted at work than their low self-monitoring peers,” Roloff said.

But there’s a downside for high self-monitors when it comes to their romantic relationships.

"High self-monitors may appear to be the kind of people we want to have relationships with, but they themselves are less committed to and less happy in their relationships than low self-monitors," Roloff said.

The problem seems to be that they can't turn the self-monitoring off.

"The desire to alter one's personality to appropriately fit a given situation or social climate prevents high self-monitors from presenting their true selves during intimate interactions with their romantic partners," Roloff said. "High self-monitors are very likeable and successful people. However, it appears they’re just not deep."

Roloff and co-authors Courtney N. Wright and Adrienne Holloway conducted a study of 97 single young adults to investigate the effects of self-monitoring on romantic relationships. The results will be detailed in the journal Communication Reports.

Not intentionally deceptive

The researchers surveyed study participants about the levels of emotional commitment in their romantic relationships and assessed their degrees of self-monitoring, intimate communication, levels of emotional commitment, relational satisfaction and relational commitment.

They did not survey the partners of study participants. "That may be something we eventually should look at," Roloff said.

High self-monitors seem to avoid face-threatening interactions and honest self-disclosure. Thus partners of these people may be completely in the dark about the extent of their significant other’s degree of commitment and regard.

"It's not that high self-monitors are intentionally deceptive or evil," Roloff said. "They appear to have an outlook and way of achieving their goals that makes them attractive to us socially but that prevents them from being particularly happy or loyal in their romantic relationships."

Conversely, the researchers found that low self-monitors — people who are the least concerned with social appropriateness and are unlikely to mask their feelings or opinions to avoid confrontation or preserve their self-image — are more committed to and more satisfied with their relationships.

Those awkward people who always seem to be sticking their feet in their mouths may ultimately be more genuine and capable of intimate relationships. However, their honesty and loyalty can extract a price from their partners, because they may be more likely to say blunt and hurtful things.

Fortunately, Roloff said, self-monitoring is normally distributed, so most people end up with a partner who falls somewhere in the middle. A person who moderately self-monitors may have great social skills and the ability to be unguarded with their partner when necessary.

© 2008 LiveScience.com. All rights reserved.

Best Video of the day

Yes - it's a commercial - but oh so fantastic! Makes me long for summer time (too bad it will be snizzling here tomorrow)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRFfJJjLpqw

and - as a bonus to the stunning visuals - a great song by Cinematic Orchestra

Best Photo of the Day: Ahh, youth

Thank you Chicagoist for this awesome reminder of what it was like to peruse the local quick-shop aisles on a weekend night pre-marriage and pregnancy.

Best photo of the day: What is that, Dad?!?

Thank you Chicagoist!

In today's Quick Bites, they dig up this utterly awesome photo of Hungry Mag writer Michael Nagrant's photo of his son gawking at a 23-ounce bone-in ribeye at Harry Caray's.

As JT and I have agreed that our kiddos will be vegetarian growing up, this photo strikes a particular cord with me. (Whooo - and one of them is kicking in agreement right now!)

Best list of the day: list + music, a two-fer

I love random lists of things - I get an appetizer of info that I can later follow up on in greater detail and there's nothing better than a list you don't agree with - it really gets you thinking about your personal Top 20 trashiest starlets or overused Bartlett's quotes, etc.

Oddee is always a great source of these, but today my email delivered a list that has blown all others out of the water: the 25 Greatest Duets of All Time! No. 1 is definitely on my "must have if ever stuck on a desert island with only 25 songs" list.

H/T: the Very Short List

File this under "awesome"

A blog that is entirely dedicated to "unnecessary" quotation marks (as if there were such a thing).

To the writers of The “Blog” of “Unnecessary” Quotation Marks:
my fellow grammar enthusiasts - I salute you. Thank you for alerting us to the elusive double comma, the sketchy use of quotation marks in a logo and hand-lettered gradeschool signs that go against everything those poor 6th grade teachers are trying to get across.

- writergrl

hat tip: dittoheston

Ragan.com comes clean on proofreading gaffes

So funny -
Ragan is a firm specializing in communication training, analysis of communication, you name it. In today's email newsletter they distributed this story about unfortunate misspellings and typos.

Great sidebar, too:
Nobody’s perfect, not even the spell check

To help avoid grammar goofs we talked to Julie DeSilva, the director of editorial services at ProofreadNOW.com, a professional copyediting and proofreading firm. She suggested communicators run searches on these common terms the spell check might miss:

form/from
mange/manger (for manage/manager)
polices (for policies)
pubic (for public)
Sleight of hand not slight. Sleight means deceitful craftiness.
Hay is baled; water is bailed.
Interest is piqued not peaked.
Stocks fare well not fair well

Best tool of the day - Percent Change Calculator

For anyone who is a non-numbers type and has to do anything resembling financial PowerPoint slides, consider this my little Valentine's day gift to you:

NewsEngin Percent Change Calculator

The best part -- the only line of extraneous text on the page says, "The fact that you need this tool will be our little secret."

Mwah! xxoo

Best misspelling of the day

Now - I'm not an awesome speller. In the 6th grade I was finally chosen to be in the spelling bee and I was the first one of everyone in my grade school - kindergarten through 8th grade - to have to sit down. The word that outted me? Access. I hesitated on the last 's,' tripped by the bright light of scrutiny. My shame is still acute.

Which is whyI think I perpetually look for others in the same situation. Taking the bus with JT to work, we stopped at the corner of State St. and 16th St. [Ed note - in Chicago, when giving cross streets, you always begin with the north/south street and then give the east/west street, i.e. "Dearborn and Harrison" not "Lake and Clark." You're welcome.] As passengers loaded on, bundled and booted from the weather, I read the signs posted in the corner shop, which appeared to be some kind of mortgage broker or financial services shop.

"Equity Loans" "Refinancing" "401k Rollover" "Business Financing" "Dept Consolidation"

Wait - what? Dept consolidation? On a professionally printed sign in a window. So, if someone is going to handle all the Ps and Qs of paperwork relating to your DEBT consolidation, shouldn't they be pretty detail oriented? And with the current state of the financial industry's reputation for overlooking details (and thus lending people money they can't afford to repay for homes which are overvalued to begin with) I'd think a start-up operation would have the brains to say "Hmmm, perhaps I should not hang this one and order a new sign."


See previous: http://writergrlsramblings.blogspot.com/2008/01/blog-post.html

Voluntary simplicity

Moving in with JT a few months before our wedding, I had to confront a lot of stuff that I'd been hauling around from apartment to apartment as I wound my way up and down Chicago's neighborhoods and suburbs. While he had (and still has) a few boxes of things that are uncategorized mementos, photos, college papers, etc., he had a much easier time than I did with the process of clearing out old stuff in order to make room for "new."

I remember a quote, I think it was attributed to E.B. White re: editing, "You must kill your children." Meaning - when writing/editing, you tend to fall in love with a phrase or a plot point and you then begin writing around it in order to shore it up, make it useful in the context of the whole. These 'children' are too clever to be useful to the reader and must usually, despite your longing for them, be exorcised from the piece.

Cleaning out 10+ years of accumulated history is a lot like that: the fuzzy blue picture frame that holds a picture of friends you haven't talked to in three years, and have no desire to speak with again, really, is a child of your past. It looked "so awesome" on the wall of your first decrepit apartment, but now is forcing you to shore it up, with similar items from a similar era, a box and a square foot of space in which to store that box.


Insipirations:
Extreme Downsizing: How moving from a 6,000-square-foot custom home to a 370-square-foot recreational vehicle helped quell one family's 'House Lust.' Daniel McGinn, Newsweek.com, Feb. 12, 2008

Unclutterer.com

The Simple Living Network

Push - reality and humor

There's lots about my pregnancy that isn't hilarious. Or rather, it isn't hilarious in the moment, but hindsight softens the haze of hormones that I swore would never descend over me, and I can laugh about things like crying over the realization that, at 19 weeks, my feet disappeared from my visual field.

Just found a funny not-blog from a writer at Chicago mag, who with weekly updates, describes his reaction to his wife's pregnancy and all its attendant wackiness and learning. Give it a read - funny writing and, for any who are experiencing the miracle of life themselves, pretty poignant as well.


About Push:
A few years ago, Chicago's deputy dining editor and humor columnist Jeff Ruby, aka The Closer, learned that his wife was pregnant. For 40 weeks, Ruby kept a journal to chronicle the experience. Now, much to his wife’s dismay, he has released the journal on Chicagomag.com. "Not a single dumb argument or disturbing bodily malfunction has been omitted," he says. Push is not a blog, since the events aren't happening in real time (Ruby calls it a slog, "much like the nine months themselves"), but it is an extended flashback to the "most bizarre, scary, and humiliating nine months" of The Closer's life. (Note: you may notice the entries start at week 5. He decided to spare you the conception and the four uneventful weeks that followed.)"