April 2019

This month we have continued settling into our new home and figuring out what projects need to be tackled first. We've been getting to know our new ward a bit, which appears to be more transient than the branch we came from. Alex enjoyed his first Easter egg hunt (see video below), and he has been enjoying spending a lot more time outside now that things have thawed out around here. In other news:

Autism Awareness (Rob)

Earlier this year, Alex was evaluated and diagnosed as being on the autism spectrum. Accepting this has been a gradual process for us because in most ways he seems pretty typical. But as he has moved into toddlerhood, and language skills continue to elude him, we've had increasing cause for concern. In addition to not saying more than a few words, he also isn't very receptive to verbal commands. It so happens that April is autism awareness month worldwide. For us, the awareness has become particularly acute as we've accepted that he is non-verbal at this point, and has a few other narrow behaviors that we can't entirely chalk up to being a toddler anymore. Becky has been on the phone a lot with people from state agencies, therapy centers, and former clients of her's in Arizona -- just trying to sort out what they best early intervention strategy for Alex will be. As transplants to a new state, figuring out what state services are available and how they are administered has required quite a bit of legwork. We tried a clinic run by the university, but decided it wasn't what Alex needed. There are other clinics further away that appear to offer more intensive ABA-based programs that we eventually hope to be working with. In the meantime, we've made some dietary changes for Alex and Becky has increased therapy sessions at home that incentivize him to sign or vocalize for things he wants, for example. He's made some progress and now sometimes responds to his name and makes some vocal imitations - things that happen naturally for most early toddlers, but are big steps for Alex. Although we've come to accept that the developmental path forward for him won't be typical or easy to define, we know that he is generally a bright child and we think he'll respond well to therapy.

Ignite (Rob)

Not long after I started working at Binghamton University, I had the idea of doing an Ignite Talks event on campus. If you don't know what Ignite talks are, you could think of them as kind of like TED talks, but shorter and less formal (and less pretentious, in my opinion). Every Ignite speaker gets exactly 5 minutes to give a presentation on a topic, and the presentation always has 20 slides that advance automatically every 15 seconds. I thought it could be a good way for graduate students and postdocs to showcase their work, so I presented my idea for doing this to some other people on campus. To my surprise, none of them told me no. So with their buy-in, I moved forward with it. Planning the event became my passion project at work during the last few months. A few years back when I was in Arizona, I planned similar events for church singles activities with the help of some friends ("Expert Night" and "Storytelling Night"), which gave me some useful experience. I found the perfect venue for the Ignite event on campus, and ended up having nine willing speakers who were either graduate student or postdoc researchers. I encouraged them to talk about their research, but adapt it for a general audience. They did well with that challenge, and covered things such as the history of US/Russia relations, quantum cryptography, mental health, immigration, biofilms, and more. Some of the speakers seemed very comfortable with the public speaking aspect of it, while others were pushed a bit more out of their comfort zone. We had a good audience turnout of about 50 people, including some students, faculty, administration and department heads. I got lots of good feedback, and will probably do it again next year. Here is a link to a write-up about the event in the campus newspaper, and here is a link to the talks on YouTube if you'd like to see them.

"The Joys of Home Ownership" (Rob)

We had an early introduction to "The Joys of Home Ownership" this month (sarcasm here is implied by the quotation marks). Our house has a fancy newfangled tankless hot water system that also runs the baseboard heaters. It seems to be relatively new, but nonetheless, it went out on us toward the end of the month. After exhausting my very limited capacity to troubleshoot such a thing, I called on a heating and plumbing place nearby to have a look. They seem to have identified the problem and they ordered the appropriate parts to fix it (which were fortunately covered by a manufacturer's warranty), but it will still be a pricey repair. This has meant going without heat in our home or hot water for more than a week. Fortunately, we aren't in the dead of winter, but it is still a bit chilly some days. I thought it might be a good opportunity to try out our fireplace, but that resulted in a lot of smoke in our house because it appears that our chimney also needs some maintenance. Showers and baths for us have been sparse, but not entirely absent thanks to the kindness of a next-door neighbor who let us use their shower, and a stay at the Hampton Inn thanks to a work trip out of town that I planned to bring the family on anyway. 

Providence (Rob)

Toward the end of the month, I attended an annual conference in Providence, Rhode Island along with other people from my office. Just like last year when I attended this meeting in DC, Becky and Alex came along with me to see what there is to do in Providence this time of the year. As it turns out, not nearly as much as in DC. But there was a big park nearby (Roger Williams Park) that had a zoo, gardens, natural history museum, and other things where Becky and Alex spent a lot of time while I was in meetings. We drove out to Providence (it's about 5 hours away) a day before my meetings, and spent most of that time checking out the park. They had all these elaborate and imaginative fairy and gnome displays at the botanical garden that you'll see in some of the photos. Alex isn't old enough to appreciate it, but I know some of our nieces would have loved it. Becky and Alex also checked out the campus of Brown University, which has a lot of old historic-looking buildings.  Aside from enjoying the luxury of a large hotel room suite with a hot shower (as well as a bath and kitchenette),  we also enjoyed some great tacos and other nice meals while in Providence. The best part of the conference was that I saw some of my old colleagues from ASU there who happened to end up working in research development like me, and I really enjoyed catching up with them.

For more photos and videos of travels to Providence, Easter fun, outdoor adventures, and other happenings from April, just go here.