The Black Cloud

I know that it has been awhile since we have posted and I will try to remedy that this weekend. When we left our heroes they were in the midst of a nasty cold and had just gotten their car stolen. Well the next week our nanny walked off the job. She just stopped showing up and wouldn't return our calls/emails. So we were back to square one with child care (which really wasn't a lot of fun the first time we did it). Anyway, we decided to try and stick with the nanny-share with Rick, Brooke, and Kennedy. After a furious weekend of interviews (mostly train wrecks), we have a new nanny that we all are very happy with. Doris is the Kenyan Mary Poppins as far as we can tell (and comes complete with her own British accent). Also, they found my car. It had the steering column stripped and some minor damage, but at this point it looks like I will be the proud owner of a 1997 Civic again. I was just getting used to the 2008 Camry rental car, too.

In honor of the black cloud being lifted, I have posted some random baby pics below. We will try to make the updates more regular.

Julie starts a new job

I started my new position this week, at the Maryland Psychiatric Research Center. So I am now officially a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. Although the main medical campus is in Baltimore (on one side is downtown, on the other side is an area that is being "reclaimed"...), the MPRC is located in Catonsville, a quaint little suburb town on the southwest side of Baltimore, just outside the beltway. Apparently Catonsville used to be the site of many Baltimorans' summer homes, because it is situated on the highest hill around and offered the best view around. The cities have grown to meet each other but as you drive up the back hill to my work, you can still see the inner harbor in the distance. Anyway, the MPRC is actually on the campus of the 2nd oldest continuously operating mental hospital in the country, Spring Grove, which was founded in 1797 (the oldest one is in Boston).

In the slideshow, the 1st picture is the MPRC, the 2nd picture is the creepy old, boarded up asylum (a national historic landmark, so the state won't tear it down, but full of asbestos, so not safe to use), and the 3rd just shows some of the other buildings on the campus. It's actually a very picturesque setting, but it's a little creepy with all the old buildings and patients walking around, talking to themselves. Every morning in fact I'll be walking through a lobby where schizophrenics wait for their appointments. When I took Brent for a visit to my future workplace (I was still pregnant, but there was some paperwork to be dealt with and my new mentor wanted to take us to lunch in historic Ellicott City)), Brent remarked that the place was "really cool but looked like somewhere they should shoot a horror film". In fact, we found out that the Blair Witch Project was filmed there! However (little piece of trivia here), Blair, MD, is actually an hour west of Catonsville, past Frederick.

The work I'll be doing will be supervised by Dr. Jim Koenig, a top-notch researcher and so far a very chill guy. He has developed the prenatal stress rodent model of schizophrenia, and my work will focus on how the prefrontal cortex is altered by prenatal stress, and what this can tell us about cognitive deficits (like working memory and executive function problems) in schizophrenia. I'm very excited to start on these projects!

Introducing Kennedy & Jessie

One thing that did seem to go well this week was the introduction of Aiden to his new nanny, Jessie, and the other baby in her care, Kennedy. Jessie graduated earlier this year from the University of Maryland Baltimore County with a degree in Psychology. She has an interest in child development and is taking some time off before graduate school while she figures out exactly what she wants to do (clinical, counseling, or educational psych, or research). She's already had a lot of experience being a nanny of infants--previous families include one with two twin 18 month old boys and another with a child with Aspergers and a younger sibling with sensory integrative disorder. She seems to be an extremely patient and easygoing person, and her references couldn't quit gushing about her. And we're really pleased with her so far--we think she'll be great for Aiden.

Kennedy is a very bright and even-tempered 6 month old. Her parents, Rick and Brooke, both finished law school within the last 3 years. Rick is still a lawyer (works just across the border in Pennsylvania), but Brooke decided she just wasn't a paper-pusher, and decided to go back to school to get a master's in education. She joined a special program where she gets her classes at Hopkins paid for in exchange for her teaching in an inner-city school in Baltimore. She said she is one of two white people in the building (that's students and teachers included). She really loves it and finds it very rewarding, and is considering staying on in the ghetto after she finishes classes (just two more left). But no doubt it's a rough place--just last week, a kid who went to school there was shot in an altercation with police.

Anyway, Kennedy lives about 5 minutes up the road, right on my way to work, which is pretty convenient. Every other week, Jessie & the kids will be at our place, and Aiden won't even have to get out of his PJs if he doesn't feel like it. Also we figure, what could be better for him than playing every day with an intelligent baby who's just one step ahead of him on those developmental milestones?

The babies already seem to get along great. The day I was home with everybody, Aiden and Kennedy spent some time just grinning and cooing at each other. Kennedy likes to squeal pretty loudly when she gets excited and, after just two days with her, Aiden does now too. Oh well, guess you can't complain about your kid being a quick study :)

Welcome to Baltimore! (We're gonna need your car.)

This was a big week for our family. I started my new job, so this was Aiden's first week with the nanny, Brent got slammed at work (this was probably his hardest week so far, with the longest hours) and then came down with a really nasty cold (woke up one morning and could barely swallow), which of course got passed to Aiden. Oh yeah, and our car got stolen.

Here's how it went down: Brent somehow gets himself out of bed on Wednesday morning (day 2 of nasty cold) and, as he's drinking some tea, begins wondering how much frost he'll have to scrape off his windshield before the morning commute. He gets up to try to gauge this from the front window. Good news? No frost. Bad news? No car. Yes, that's right folks. Our car was stolen right from under our noses, in our nice quiet little Jewish Orthodox neighborhood. So, there are some frantic calls--first to the cops, then to a fellow intern to see if she can cover him for an hour or so, then to the insurance.... Around 8am, the new nanny (on day 2 of job), the other dad and his little girl, and the cop all show up around the same time (Don't worry Rick, you're leaving your 6 month old in a safe place!). I can't imagine what must have been going through everyone's mind. Anyway, the cops, the guy at Enterprise, and the insurance claim agent each told us that the Honda Civic & Accord models that came out prior to the keyless entry (which shuts the engine off if someone doesn't use the remote to get in) are the easiest and therefore most popular cars to steal.

The insurance requires that we give the cops 30 days to find our car. Meantime Brent's driving a 2008 Camry rental to work. At this point we don't know what to hope for--our Civic was a '97, and we know that whoever stole it isn't taking good care of it. Do we really want it back? Without a garage, it seems likely it will just disappear again. On the other hand, that little baby was completely paid off. Anybody interested in selling one of their cars? Looks like we're going to be in the market.

Welcome to Baltimore.