In "Nobel" Company

Here is one of my few claims to fame. In 2004, while a student at West Virgina University, I had the opportunity to go up to Pittsburgh and hear Paul Krugman lecture and afterward attend a reception in his honor. (From left to right: Me, Saurav Roychoudhury, Dr. William Trumbull, Dr. Paul Krugman, Pavel Yakovlev, Jawad Salimi, and Priscilla Wang.) Dr. Krugman is best known by the general public for his Op-Eds in the New York Times, but he is better known in the economics field as an established economist. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics earlier this week. We were invited by the publishers of his economics textbook that was coming out at the time. (Yes, we were being bribed.) I must say that he wasn't the happiest individual. Given that it was just the second week of November of that year, he was still very much in mourning.

Although many believe that this year's awarding of the Nobel Prize in economics to Dr. Krugman was politically motivated--and indeed it very well may have been--there is no question in my mind that he was deserving on merit despite the many political differences that we have. I was, however, surprised at the timing.

In one area we are in agreement as most economists are, "If there were an Economist's Creed, it would surely contain the affirmations 'I understand the Principle of Comparative Advantage' and 'I advocate Free Trade'.......Comparative advantage is not just and idea both simple and profound; it is an idea that conflicts directly with both stubborn popular prejudices and powerful interests. This combination makes the defense of free trade as close to a sacred tenet as any idea in economics,"(Journal of Economic Perspectives, Volume 1, Number 2, 1987, p. 131).

I have had the opportunity to see James Buchanan (Nobel Laureate 1986) at seminar at George Mason University, but was not agressive enough to officially meet him even though I sat right in back of him for about an hour. I did get to hold a replica of his medal! I also saw Gary Becker (Nobel Laureate 1992) sitting on a bench at the 2006 American Economic Association Meetings in Boston.

Of course, I know most of you don't care. I fear I have only made you more fully aware of my geekiness.

I have no title for this post

This is a good clip of our kids bonding on Sunday evening.

Cuter things than scorpions (I'm talking about our children)

What a week we've had! Sleep hasn't been too hard to come by. The baby doesn't cry very much, even at night. However, of course Holly needs to feed him since he is still too small. Even though I am sleeping downstairs by Holly, half the time I don't even hear anything until she's putting the baby back down to sleep. How convenient. I did help quite a bit during the first two nights. Holly is feeling much better. I took two full days off and helped entertain the kids. Josh, Savanna, and I played in the sprinklers, went on walks, and played with toys. Braden had two checkups. One was one day after we checked out from the hospital to make sure his bilirubin was ok. It was. The only problem was a possible heart murmur. We went to see his pediatrician the following day and everything was good including the heart. Braden had already surpassed his birth weight at five days weighing in at 8 lbs 11 ozs.

Savanna learned to ride her bike on Thursday (with training wheels). She went to a friends party where they had an obstacle course. She was so proud of herself when she finished, "I went really fast!" She had a good time and really enjoys riding her bike now.

Things are going well. We're really glad that my parents were able to come out. It has made things a whole lot easier.

I have been stung!

Since Holly understandably does not feel like climbing stairs this week, I have been sleeping on the floor in a sleeping bag by Holly and the baby in the living room. I had no reason to fear because we haven't seen any living creatures in our house in months. Just to be safe, I had our place sprayed again the Saturday before Holly and the baby came home. I went to bed around midnight on Thursday (May 22). I remember being sound asleep when all of a sudden, I felt a quick, stinging pain on one of my fingers. It's hard to describe. It feels a little bit like being electrocuted. Afterwards, it hurt kind of like a bee sting. I jumped up and went to the other side of the room. I asked myself if I could be imagining something, but the pain was real enough. I carefully walked back to where I was sleeping and carefully looked around my pillow. I slowly took of off the pillow case. No scorpion. Was it in my sleeping bag? Those things are fast and they hide really well. Meanwhile, Holly was on the lazy boy feeding the baby. Great, I thought, There is most likely a scorpion within three feet of my baby. I moved a flannel board which was against the wall, and sure enough, there he was: a good old scorpion. I knew the day would come. I had seen three live scorpions since living here and a few were close calls. None of those survived. One was on my pillow on the couch, but I happened to see it before I sat down. One was in the shed; and I don't really know where I saw the other one. This time, I was not so lucky. I carefully moved everything away from the wall looking for something good to smash it with. I saw that it was moving rapidly towards the drapes. I lifted the drapes so that it would not be able to hide there. It immediately stopped. I had him. I ran into the kitchen grabbed the phone book, and as it moved toward me (stinger up, oh I hate that sight!) I wound up and.......Wack! Still moving. WACK!! Still moving. WACK!!! Still moving. WACK!!!! DEAD! My parents would wonder in the morning what that sound was from. I was rattled the rest of the night. I wasn't worried about me. You see, unlike the black scorpions in Arizona, these scorpions are not poisonous to humans, even though they happen to be huge and quite scary looking. But are they poisonous to children and infants? I went to google at 1:30 in the morning and found out that most likely not, at least no more than bees. It's possible that a kid could have an allergic reaction, but even then it would most likely be OK. I shut the windows and went to bed around 2:00 to dream about giant, poisonous scorpions. By the way, ya'll are welcome to come stay with us any time you want. :)

Baby Boy

We went in for a scheduled induction yesterday at 5:00 AM. It turned out to be a pretty good decision because Holly was already dilated to a six and fully effaced. When the doctor checked at 8:30, she was at seven. He broke her water and was confident that the baby would come soon. This didn't come to pass, however, and Holly progressed slowly during the next four hours. At about 12:30 she was fully dilated, but the baby was too high. She tried pushing a couple of times, but the baby wouldn't drop. Dr. Aun came to check it out. He noticed that the baby's heart rate slowed down substantially. He told Holly to stop pushing and he kept his eye on the monitor. Although the heart rate went back up, I noticed that Dr. Aun was still concerned and was trying different things. Later on he told us that the baby's heart rate was slowing down during every contraction. This is often associated with asphyxiation, or lack of oxygen to the brain which, of course, could be problem. He lamented to Holly that she would unfortunately have to go through a c-section. This is not what Holly wanted to hear, but she knew it would be best for the baby. I hurried and put on the scrubs so that I would be ready to go to the OR when called. They wheeled Holly away and came to get me about 15 minutes later. They were already pretty far along and it went pretty quickly after that. I tried to comfort Holly, but she was having a hard time. The anesthesiologist gave her a drop that caused her to forget everything right after she heard the baby cry. To make a long story short, our beautiful baby is a healthy 8 lbs. 10 oz. and 20 1/2 inches, much bigger than our first two six pounders. We have decided to name him Braden Wayne Ashby. We are very happy to have him with us and feel very blessed. I've posted some pictures and will post some more in the near future.

Our future family member

Savanna wants to talk about Hollly having a baby:

"I feel good. I feel happy and proud. Joshua's my best brother in the world. And Nathan is my best daddy in the world. And Mommy is good at Forts [this means games, like Candyland?]. Mommy is good at little kids. Mommy loves kids. Mommy likes me. Mommy and I are always together when we like. That's all."

[In case you were wondering, Savanna is kind of a Momma's girl]

The birth of a blog

So it has happened. We have finally entered the great blogosphere. Here we will include entries of the comings and goings of the Ashby family including photos, videos?, and other stuff. At least those things that we want to be made public. If you are a family member, friend, or even a brief acquaintance of the Nathan and Holly Ashby Family, feel free to visit frequently and contribute. If you are not a family member, friend, or brief acquaintance of the Nathan and Ashby family, get off our blog and go get a life!

Anyway, we'll see how this goes... So far so good... I'm almost done with my first entry....Shew....I made it.