In the past 2 weeks...

K turned 2, had a party with a duck cake and babies running around. He's like me -- he needs to take breaks from parties. So every half hour or so, he asked to go to bed and hung out in his crib reading books for a few minutes before heading back to the party.

K also had his doctor's appointment. He's 33 inches, 24 1/2 pounds. Didn't start yelling until after I started to take off his clothes, an improvement over last time. He can switch to low-fat dairy and won't have another shot until he's 5.

I had my first closing, after over a week of being at work until 10-11 at night. I didn't think I would, but I actually like deal work! (Not that there's a whole lot of it to go around these days.)

I called up the Department of Education and told them that the notice of deferment they sent me was a mistake, and that I actually should be repaying my loans. The guy just seemed confused. He changed my repayment date to May, even though I already started paying back in February. Whatever. As long as they don't think I'm defrauding them.

I read and liked Ask for It: How Women Can Use Negotiation to Get What They Really Want by Linda Babcock and Sara Laschever. Their main point is that regardless of their skills at negotiation, it doesn't even occur to women to ask for things. The book is aimed at getting you to rethink what is negotiable in your life, and to ask for things that you don't necessarily think you can get. It repeatedly attributes the disparity in salary between men and women doing the same job to the fact that men are vastly more likely to negotiate their salary up front and ask for larger bonuses each year, while women often take what they can get, or negotiate up front but assume that bonuses are handed out using some objective criteria. The message resonated with me. The book had so many stories about women complaining that they were treated unfairly, when in fact the reason that men had received better treatment was that they had asked for it and the women hadn't.

Time is at a premium these days. LL, I don't know how you have the spare time to take up photography and read historical fiction and blog every other day! When I do have a free hour at home, all I want to do is sit on the couch with JW and watch TV. Nothing that requires even the slightest use of my brain. (Which, sadly, includes blogging.)