its been a while...

(from the jojos archive)

Allright -- I know I've been super-lax about updating the journal & leaving all the hard work up to Mamma Jojo (who's been doing a great job, but I think her online persona is getting a little lonely). So, how long has it been? Since the beginning of April. Whew! Lets see if I can recap. First the boring-ol-school stuff:

The partial first draft of the Master's paper went over swimmingly with my advisor -- no real comments other than "keep it coming". I sent him a full draft last week and am eagerly awaiting his comments. Its gotta get done by the 15th of July, which shouldn't be a problem.

The paper I wrote on detecting subjective language in text got rejected from the AAAI-05 conference, which is starting in a couple weeks in Pittsburgh. Too bad it didn't get in, and too bad we won't be in town yet for the conference, but hey... its not my first rejection, and I already polished it up a little and sent it off to the HLT/EMNLP conference in Vancouver. Its probably a better fit for the paper anyway, and it would be super fun to make another trip out to BC.

My research assistant job is winding down. We just got a big chunk of work done, which is the culmination of what I have to show for my two years on the project. Its really lost its thrill at this point, but there were many good lessons learned and I'm glad I had the chance to work with those guys.

And the big school-related news is, of course, we're moving to Pittsburgh soon so I can start a PhD program at the Language Technologies Institute at Carnegie Mellon. I'm sure all of you knew that, but I don't think its been officially documented in the journal. I'm both thrilled and terrified. Thrilled about the change to study with some of the greats in my field and about the doors this will open, and terrified of the amount of work I'm facing and leaving beautiful Chapel Hill and our wonderful friends & family here.

And now for the fun-family-stuff:

Joanna and Aiden gave me a great first father's day -- I got a very nice new shirt, we went to Weaver St. for brunch and then had a really long walk in the forest.

Aiden's tooth-count is now up to 4. The top two canines (?) cut through last week, and the past few days the drool kicked in again, so there might be a couple more on the way soon. He's also crawling *FAST* and pulling up on everything. This is already accompanied with plenty of bruises scrapes, as he seems to prefer crawling on cement sidewalks and our stone patio. He LOVES it outside and it almost always puts him in a great mood when he's down in the grass. I'm so happy our new house in Pittsburgh has a little yard...

... and speaking of the new house, I'm heading up there on Thursday for the closing! Our brief stint between-houses as renters has been fun, but I'm really excited about the new place. Much more space, which means we don't need to whisper whenever the baby's napping, and we can start flushing again! (well, its not really that bad... but almost)

The return of dairy

(from the jojos archive)

When Aiden was about 6 weeks old we started to suspect we had a colicky baby on our hands. He would scream in the wee hours of the morning and I could hear his tummy growling and rumbling from a few feet away, especially just after a feeding. I started to suspect he had a cow's milk allergy. I learned the difference between this and lactose intolerance.

Lactose intolerance is the inability to digest the type of sugar in milk. A cow's milk allergy means that the infant has an abnormal immune system reaction to proteins found in the cow's milk The baby's immune system "attacks" the proteins in the milk, resulting in symptoms of an allergic reaction. The cow's milk proteins were in my milk from my diet having dairy in it so I cut out all dairy.

That didn't mean just not eating ice cream, cheese and drinking milk. No yogurt, butter, or most baked goods. I had to read labels and make sure to avoid all the products containing casein, caseinate, lactalbumin, whey,and on and on. The list of no no's was long. I found it very hard to give up dairy when it wasn't by choice. But after a few weeks we could really tell a difference in Aiden so it seemed like a good sacrifice. He was less gassy and it didn't seem like his stomach was hurting all the time.

Every month or two I have had a little cheese, or a few bites of yogurt, or a little butter to see what his reaction would be. Each time he would get really fussy, have a hard time falling asleep and wake up often. But slowly it has been getting better. Most babies outgrow the allergy by their first birthday. Around 9 months I was sure it was going to take Aiden longer than a year but suddenly his reactions have gone away. I had a little bit of yogurt last week with no problems. Then I gave him a few bites of yogurt with no bad reaction. This week I've had cheese and ice cream too. He has also had a few other things with a tiny bit of dairy in them with no problem! I even had milk on my cereal yesterday and French toast for breakfast this morning. Its amazing to have so many food options suddenly. Hmmm, cheese!

June Pictures

(from the jojos archive)

The June photo album is now posted on ofoto.