Giving Thanks

I am a day late with my weekly gratitude post, but better late than never, right?

1. I am thankful for the good health we've enjoyed the past 6 months. As of tomorrow, it will have been 6 months since any of us were hospitalized, and that's not something I take for granted. We've also been rather healthy even in terms of minor illnesses. I was reminded of that yesterday because Ian and Nadia came down with something. Both have runny noses, and Ian also had a fever and a cough yesterday. Oliver didn't have a fever or a runny nose, but he was really cranky yesterday so I think he also must not have been feeling himself.

2. Oliver continues to gain weight at a nice pace. He will hit 15 lbs before he turns 7 months old. He's currently up to 3 percentile for his weight! People still comment to me on how small he is for his age, but when I look at his preemie size clothing, I am amazed at how much he has grown.

3. Paul had his second phone interview yesterday! They called while he was at work. This one was just with one person and was impromptu (the first one was scheduled with a committee). They said they had 60 applications for the two positions. If Paul is selected to come for a face-to-face interview, they said he will find out between now and Sunday. Yay for not being in suspense for long. It isn't our first choice because it's at a community college in New Jersey, but if he's invited out there it would at least give him additional interviewing experience, and if they offered him a job, it would at least give him teaching experience. We haven't heard anything from his first telephone interview. No news is probably not good news in this instance.

4. Paul hadn't submitted any applications over the past week, but he's working on some today. As of last week he had submitted 27 applications. Once he finishes the ones that are in progress, he will have submitted 34 applications (2 were submitted thus far today to bring the current total to 29). I was encouraged that one posting this week was for a tenure track position at a university in PA (although it was in biochemistry so he can't apply for that one). I'm hoping that maybe there might still be a few more tenure track openings posted this month (at 4 year schools). Almost all of the openings lately have been at community colleges or for temporary positions (visiting assistant professor) at 4 year schools. Two of the seven he's working on are for teaching post doctorate positions (2 year positions). They will be the first post docs he's applied for. He's been applying for jobs for more than four months now. It can be rather discouraging at times, which meant that yesterday's phone interview was encouraging for both of us.

5. I am thankful that Paul's dad is very flexible regarding Paul's work schedule. Paul had originally planned to take off work today (and work tomorrow instead) to go to PSU to meet with two different professors regarding two additional articles he might try to get published this year. This morning he changed his mind and rescheduled his meetings at PSU for next week. He's staying home today to work on job applications and such.

6. Yesterday morning Oliver started fussing off and on as early as 3:45am, and I got up with him at 5:30 (and then Ian came down at 6:15). Between that and the kids not feeling well yesterday (and a lengthy battle with Nadia over eating chicken and dumplings), I was exhausted last night and went to bed within 30 minutes of putting the kids down for bed. I was grateful I went to bed so early when Oliver woke up at 2:30am. I had him back down by 3:05 (usually he's up for at least one hour so that was better than usual). When he woke up again at 4:30 I was really flustered until I went into his room and saw he had his hand pinned under his body. I helped him out and he went right back to sleep and slept until 7:00am. I can't remember the last time he slept until 7am. I'll take a 2:30am feeding if it means my day isn't starting at 5am.