Bringing a Baby to GHC12

As you saw in my first post about GHC12, I brought my baby to the conference.  My husband came as well to help out with baby things and because he's in computer science as well.  It was a positive experience for everyone, including other attendees!

We road tripped to get there because Baltimore was driving distance, driving three people is much cheaper than flying them, and I'm terrified of flying with a baby.  Nobody wants to be the parent with a screaming kid.  We made sure not to drive more than 5 hours a day because we figured that's all the baby would be able to handle.

Once at the conference, we were able to take advantage of the free childcare.  Grace Hopper is an opportunity for all women to get together, even if they've recently had babies or have older kids.  The childcare is a big part of making that happen.  Better still, the quality was very good, so we felt that Molly was very safe there.  It was still hard to leave her, of course.  After all, she's never been in the care of anyone other than her parents and grandparents! But other than being upset when Mommy and Daddy left, she did really well and all the childcare ladies loved her.

I also took her to one of the sessions on balancing academic life and family.  It seemed appropriate. ;)  She was mostly quiet, but if she got a bit noisier, my husband just brought her out into the hall for a bit.  A few people later commented how happy they were to see her there, and how cute she was.  I was able to be a good role model for others thinking of having kids during grad school.

I'm really glad that we took the opportunity to travel to GHC together, as it may not come up again for some time.  I hope that other conferences eventually follow suit and offer some childcare options (even if they can't be totally free).  It would make attending so much easier for parents like me.

Environmental Friendliness Isn't As Hard As You Think!

I was thinking about whether we could consider ourselves green in our family after Natalie posted about Ottawa's Green Bin program.  It turns out that our habits are actually pretty good.  We actually do most of these things without even thinking about the impact on the environment, and none of them are inconvenient at all.  Perhaps there are some new ideas for you to try now or in the future!

Green things we do:

• use reusable shopping bags and bins
• refill sports water bottles instead of buying bottled water
• drive very fuel-efficient cars, one of which is diesel (we don't have public transit in our rural town)
• carpool to work (sometimes I drive with my husband to his job and then bus to Carleton)
• line dry laundry outside (don't do this when it's snowy, but probably could)
• cloth diaper our baby and use cloth wipes (it's actually way cheaper and easier than you'd think!)
• breastfeed our baby (lets us avoid unnecessary packaging for formula)
• buy used baby clothing (we'd do this even more if we didn't receive so many clothes as gifts)
• fewer toilet flushes (sounds gross, I know, but it doesn't really need it every time!)
• cook and eat whole foods (less packaging!)
• grow veggies and herbs in the summer
• buy locally from our farmer's market and butcher
• compost in our backyard and use the result in our gardens (instead of the green bin)
• keep our house cool in winter (18 during the day, 15 at night), and air condition only our bedroom and only on the hottest days
• buy the best quality we can afford so we aren't throwing things out all the time

 What else do you do?

Two Months Before Mommyhood

I'm actually not sure I've talked about this whole "becoming a mom" thing here on the CU-WISE blog yet, so, if you didn't know, I'm expecting! Not only that, but I'm due in less than two months. (That's one reason you don't see me on the current list of executives.)

I noticed on my personal blog that I hadn't written about pregnancy or mommyhood very much, so I took a few minutes to list out some of my worries and some of the things I'm looking forward to.  Check it out.

What are your impressions about being a student and starting a family? It probably seems like a particularly scary notion if you're an undergrad, but can you see yourself doing it as a grad student? What goes through your mind when you see other students with pregnant bellies walking around campus?

Ada Lovelace Day: Natalia

In celebration of Ada Lovelace Day, I wrote about one of my fellow CU-WISE founders:

I participate in Ada Lovelace Day every year by blogging about my tech heroines.  This year, I had a really hard time deciding who to honour because there are so many worthy candidates! After some thought about what stage of life I'm at and what's happening today for her, I finally settled on Natalia Villanueva-Rosales.

You can read the whole post on my blog.  I hope you'll consider blogging about your tech heroine today, too!