Light and Momentary

Small Freedoms

My kids pick their own clothes. I provide input sometimes and on rare occasions make demands (mostly about dress-up clothing), but in general I figure it is a good way for them to exercise autonomy and to make cheap mistakes. Barbara Coloroso, who wrote one of my favorite parenting books, says that if you let kids make mistakes when they're cheap, they're less likely to make costly mistakes down the line. So hey -- you want to wear shiny green shorts with a red striped top? Be my guest.

This morning Pete agreed that he wouldn't wear a tank top, but he insisted on wearing a T-shirt and shorts. We stepped outside for the walk to preschool and he said, "You're right, Mom! [<-three of my favorite words] It's chilly out here." Not chilly enough to change, he said, so off we went.

We're having lovely early fall weather here, cool nights and warm days. I didn't worry about Pete's attire for a minute, but when I picked him up the teacher asked to speak to me privately. Before the class went outside she had insisted that he put on a jacket -- one of the extras they keep at the preschool. He had declined, saying he didn't mind the chill and he didn't want to wear someone else's jacket. She said, no, really, you have to wear the jacket. He burst into tears. He said he wasn't going outside if he had to wear someone else's jacket. Down he sat, and there he stayed until I arrived.

I am a little puzzled by her reaction. I am feeling guilty, because (a) every other child in the class had brought a jacket and (b) I was five minutes late for pick-up. Underneath the guilt, though, is a conviction that a 4yo can make a reasonable choice about whether to wear a jacket on a day like today. I can see taking a firm stand on a 20-degree day, but today? really? That's not the hill I'm going to die on. (NB: I have never sent a child out in shorts on a 20-degree day. Temps in the low sixties today.)

She seems to view it pretty differently, though. Stay tuned. And tell me, please, what you think about kids and clothes.

More R Tricks

Do you hate these posts, O readers who subscribed to this blog for the tales of life with small children and not for the tips on deriving z-scores? I find these posts very useful personally and I do hope that unhappy googlers trying to learn R will also appreciate them, but they are probably a snore for the rest of you.

Yesterday I figured out part of something that had perplexed me. I would slap tables of variables together on a regular basis, and sometimes they would have column names and sometimes they would not. Part of the answer is that dataframes have column names; matrices don't. You can't do much (any?) statistical analysis on a matrix. But if you have three vectors of equal length named x, y, and z, you can say this--

> more.data<-data.frame(x,y,z)

--and get yourself a dataframe called "more.data," with columns headed x, y, and z.

Suppose you'd like to compare kids' performance on measures x, y, and z, but their scales are very different. You can derive z-scores as easy as pie:

> z.data<-scale(more.data)

Now you have a new dataframe called z.data, in which your measures have been converted to z-scores.

Suppose, though, that you don't want everything converted to z-scores -- suppose you have a column for participant ID#, and a column for group membership. Obviously, you don't want those to be z-scores. Participant #0.549879 is less than illuminating if you assigned him ID #62. You could convert the variables individually and then stick them into a new dataframe, but you can also do it more easily.

It took me a long time to figure out something about R that's actually pretty straightforward. In web pages about manipulating data, I kept seeing sets of brackets with mysterious commas in them. For a long time I just followed instructions blindly, but I finally saw what was going on. You can tell R what to do with your data in terms of rows and columns inside square brackets -- rows first, columns second. So this--

> part.of.my.data<-my.data[c(2:5),c(1,3,5,7,9)]

--tells R to give you a new array of data containing rows 2-5 and the odd-numbered columns of the old dataset. Or you could do this--

> part.of.my.data<-my.data[-c(16), ]

--which means "give me all the rows except 16 [that's the "-c(16)"], and give me every column [that's what you're saying with the ", ]". which is perhaps a little confusing]."

So if you want z-scores for your experimental measures x, y, and z (in columns 3-5) but not for the first two columns (participant ID and group membership), all you have to do is this:

> z.data<-cbind(more.data[ ,c(1,2)], scale(more.data[ ,c(3:5)]))

If you wanted to add a column with the mean of each participant's three z-scores, you could do it like this:

> z.data.with.means<-cbind(z.data, rowMeans(z.data[ ,c(3:5)]))

Extra points if you get all your brackets and parentheses lined up on the first try. You probably already know that if you say "rowmeans" instead of "rowMeans," R will blink blankly at you, waving its little "Klingon only" placard. You might not have considered that you must restrict the row means to the last three columns or else R will average in the participant ID numbers, leading you to wonder how your last participant had a mean z-score of 73. (That's like getting a 7800 on your SAT Verbal -- yes, the one with a maximum score of 800.)

Or maybe you have considered it and I am just dim.

Here's the requisite cute baby picture. A few days ago I said, "Darling baby mine, please stop trying to grab my socks in progress to see if you can tickle your cochlea with a size 1 knitting needle. Here, look at this nice fat book instead." Whereupon she flung the nice fat book to the ground and climbed upon it, the better to reach my knitting. She's a determined girl, that baby Stella.

Fishous Circle

Somwhere long ago, maybe in Miss Piggy's Guide to Life (which I read about 168 times when I was in junior high -- hours of my life that I will never get back), I read about a fishous circle. It's when you go around like a fish in a bowl, thinking the same sequence of thoughts again and again. That's where I am. It's not vicious, exactly, because it doesn't get any worse, but it's not pleasant either.

I don't know when I have ever felt so worn out by the things I need to get done for this program. ->

Oh, sure you do, just remember [pick yer crazy season and fill in the blank]. ->

This has been a long crazy haul, trying to get this degree. ->

What have I been thinking, exactly? ->

What am I thinking now, if I am planning to apply for that job? ->

Oh, rats, what is the baby doing now? OH NO! ->

I don't know when I have ever felt so worn out by the... [repeat ad nauseam]

I have always said that the hardest part of mothering, of all the parts I've done so far, is the window between 9 and 18 months when they have great mobility and no sense whatsoever. You just forget how intense it is when you don't have an actual child that age.

Something New

Here is a video of my daughter eating a piece of paper while her mother watches, wondering, "Is she eating that paper?" (It came back out right after the camera was off. I don't know why she likes to eat paper, but she does. Maybe I should have vaulted over to fish it out of her mouth, but I didn't.) There are approximately a zillion disclaimers I could disclaim here. But some of you may enjoy it and the rest of you know where to find the pause button, so here it is anyway.

This is a song I started to write three years ago, about a night when Pete was in the throes of a nap transition.  One night when his brothers woke him up (AGAIN) I came utterly unglued, and this song is about coming back to my senses. The pieces of the song wouldn't quite come together then, but for some reason on Sunday I decided to finish it.

These are the lyrics:

The Not Quite Full Moon

v.1: The baby was sleeping when the noisy boys woke him
I could tell there'd be no sleeping any time soon
I flew into a fury and out of my front door
and on the horizon stood a not quite full moon.

Ch.1: They always to go sleep, I know; I'd forgotten in my angry morass
The truth that eludes me when anger deludes me is this: this too shall pass.

v.2: For close on an hour we paced through the neighborhood,
me in my fury and him at my side.
But a baby can't sleep when his mama is raging
So we turned one more corner, his eyes open wide.

Ch. 2: The hours drag like years sometimes, though the years fly so fleetly, so fast
The truth that eludes me when anger deludes me is this: this too shall pass.

v.3: The not quite full moon thrust herself through the treetops
and her light fell upon me like courage, like balm
The thoughts of my heart, which were "why me?" and "what now?",
were swiftly supplanted by a much-beloved psalm.

Bridge: The sun shall not smite thee by day nor the moon, nor the moon by night
The one who neither slumbers nor sleeps will watch, will guard your life

v.4: I can tell that my babies are made in God's image
Because they're none too fond of this slumbering thing
But peace is contagious as surely as rage is
And sleep stole upon that small boy in his sling.

Ch. (hybrid): They always go to sleep, I know; I'd forgotten in my angry morass
A bit more perspective, a bit less invective, for this, this too shall pass.

v.5: I wish I could say that I'd never been swayed, that
the truths I saw clear in the moonrise still shone
When slowly his eyes closed as we walked through the shadows
and the not quite full moon rose and lighted us home.

***

Oh, goodness, I just checked the preview of this post and I am internally disclaiming even more. I couldn't tell just what she was doing, see, because her back was to me. And and and-- only that way madness lies ("I know I said I'd get you the first part of chapter 3, but I was busy working on the breath support in my video because I wasn't at all happy with the high notes"), so I think I will just wince a little and post it anyway. This is what our home is like, with a million books around and a baby who is mostly gentle with them, except when she's not. And a mom who loses her temper sometimes, and who always hopes to do better.

In Which I Am Feeling Clever

Ha! I just discovered that even an English major can write an R function.

Here is a picture of all five of my lovely children (the oldest is wading, wearing the orange shirt) for those of you who are thinking, "Is she talking about her stats program AGAIN?" But perhaps you might also like to see the pretty picture I just made.

I am looking longitudinally at kids' language abilities, based on transcripts collected at three visits, each a year apart. In the first year, they were in first or second grade; by the last visit, they were in third or fourth grade. In addition to looking at group differences at each point, I am also looking at growth trajectories.

So-- I wanted to superimpose density curves. What did they look like in year 1 vs. year 2 vs. year 3? How were they changing? I figured out how to make these superimposed curves show up on my own computer screen, but I couldn't figure out how to save them in a usable format. I figured my committee would frown on a dissertation that said "Stop by my house and I will show you the pretty pictures I can't get into this document."

If you would like to make your very own superimposed density curves, it's actually not hard. Open a text editor and type the stuff in black.

progress<-function(x,y,z) [Hey, R, make me a function called "progress" where the expected input is three vectors.]
{
    plot(density(x),col=1)
    lines(density(y),col=2)
    lines(density(z),col=3)
}

Then save your function as "progress.R" and at the R command line type

> source("directory_name/progress.R")

Now we're all set to create a save-able image:

> png("image_name.png")
> progress(year1,year2,year3)
> dev.off()

And tada! This image shows the changes in the density of elaborated noun phrases across the three home visits. How much more often are kids using rich descriptive phrases as they mature? (More details here if you are pining away for want of knowledge about elaborated noun phrases.)

It's not perfect -- I'm going to change the title and the labels for the axes (which I know how to do) and ideally the scaling (which I have no idea how to do, but which would make it easier to compare curves across samples -- the numbers change each time due to attrition). But hey-- I wrote an R function and it did what I meant it to do! Hurray!

Next

I've started telling people that I'm going to graduate in the spring. If some kind of disaster strikes, like if I'm diagnosed with cancer next week or my husband runs off to live in Ixtapa with one of the interns, then I may curse my optimism. But I'm feeling confident enough that when people ask me how school is going, I tell them I should be done soon.

What they are supposed to say is, "Hey, that's great! What an accomplishment, finishing a PhD with five kids." Then I'm supposed to smile a satisfied but still modest smile and scuff my toe in the dirt.

What they could also consider saying is, "How's your dissertation coming together? I've always heard that last stage is tough." Then I could allow as to how it is pretty tough, between my recalcitrant stats program and the baby whose mission in life is to stuff into her mouth every choking hazard she can find.

What they actually say is, "What will you do next?" And I don't know yet.

I've been pretty calm about the whole thing, because I believe that God has a plan for me. I felt called into this program and I don't need to know the next step just yet. That, however, is a conversation I'm more likely to have with a good friend than with some random parent at soccer practice.

I have been hoping that something would open up at the university in my neighborhood, but I just didn't know how likely that was. I've been telling people that I would apply for a half-time post-doc that's based an hour away. I figured I could spend one long day on campus and work from home the rest of the time. I could also return to clinical work, even though that's not my favorite idea.

Today in between subsetting my data and making more pretty tables for chapter 3 of my dissertation, I looked at the faculty openings for the university in my neighborhood. There's nothing in the department that trains SLPs, but there are three tenure-track openings in a closely related department. On paper, at least, I have all the qualifications they're looking for.

No heavenly lights beamed down to spell out, "This is it, Jamie -- it's what you've been preparing for." I'm not sure if I should pursue a full-time appointment when baby Stella will still just be toddler Stella. (The department is a five-minute walk from my house, though, and I'm pretty sure a full-time load would be two courses per semester.)  

I'm going to apply, I think, and we'll see what happens next.

Good Try

2nd grader: This math is too easy.

4th grader: Well, then, try some harder math. What's 2i + 2i?

2nd grader: 4?

4th grader: [attempt to explain the distributive property omitted here] Don't you know about i? What's the square root of negative 1?

2nd grader: Negative 42!

Garbage Out

The thing I love about computers is that they do exactly what you tell them to do.

The thing I hate about computers is that they do exactly what you tell them to do.

My dissertation dataset is much the largest set of numbers I've ever tried to wring any kind of meaning from, and the most basic number-crunching is proving to be a larger task than I'd anticipated. I came back from our vacation feeling relieved, because I'd been able to learn enough about multilevel modeling to take a stab at building models with my data. (It is revealing that one of the highlights of our vacation for me was the afternoon spent alone with a stats book and a sleeping baby, in which a couple of light bulbs finally flickered on. Thanks to my husband, who made it possible by wrangling four boys through a water park that sounds like his personal version of purgatory.)

I'm not going to be building models for a while. First I have to get my numbers to line up and stop giving each other noogies.

Last week I spent an embarrassing amount of time just getting some descriptive statistics into a usable format. Today I discovered that the format may be usable but the statistics are garbage.

Somehow when I said to R "take the year 2 tallies for low-frequency vocabulary and divide them by the year 2 utterance counts" -- somehow I actually said, "Please serve me up a heaping bowl of number salad." And R said, "Happy to oblige, and how about some exotic phthiraptera eggs on top?"

I cannot figure out what went awry. The numbers all look plausible but they are all wrong. And because computers do exactly what you tell them to do, it must be my own fault somehow. Argh and blast and FIE.

Hint

If you were ever to find yourself including the sentence "I digress" in an assignment you were submitting for me to grade, it would be a clue that you weren't quite finished editing.

34 down, 6 to go.

Seven Quick Takes: Parasite Edition

1. Many thanks to JeCaThRe for the Cetaphil suggestion. I treated all five kids on Saturday; haven't spotted any lice, either alive or dead, since Friday. I am girding my loins to repeat the treatment tomorrow. It takes a l-o-n-g time to get all five heads coated and combed out and blown dry.

2. I am continuing my efforts to smother any lice with the temerity to transgress upon my head. Every other night I saturate my scalp with olive oil. I use almost a cup, which is a whole lot of olive oil but I have a whole lot of hair. Then I cover my hair in plastic wrap and cover the plastic wrap with a towel, and head to bed. I had been thinking that I smelled like salad, and then my MIL brought me 30 pages of home remedies for lice -- one of which was a vinegar rinse. That could almost go on a restaurant menu: this salad features delicate tendrils lightly coated with olive oil. You'll enjoy the subtle vinegary tang and the faint crunch of exotic phthiraptera eggs.

3. ICK ICK ICK. Sorry. If I don't laugh I might cry, so I keep looking for the funny. I have been musing that I would probably rather have lice in my house than mice in my house. Lordy, do I hate mice. Isn't it weird that in this country we have two giant theme parks dedicated to animals that sneak into our homes and defecate in our food and run across our feet while we sit peacefully reading our email? (Not that I've been scarred for life or anything.) Imagine if Walt Disney had sketched a Rickey Louse instead of a Mickey Mouse. Annette Funicello could have had a cute little beanie with a pair of giant lice jutting out in lieu of ears. Am I a marketing genius or what?

4. It's interesting to me that lice have such a high ick factor when we don't lose our minds about, say, mosquitoes, which also suck our blood and make us itch. Or even fleas or ticks. I am grateful that I read the Aubrey-Maturin series this summer because I am certain I would have been more freaked out about the lice otherwise. At least I don't have any weevils in my biscuit. If you could pick your parasites, how would you rank them?

5. This post is making me itch.

6. Silver lining #1: Last Friday I was not laughing about any of this. I was hugely upset at the prospect of having things CRAWLING on my SCALP and I shuddered my way through my shower feeling grateful that I am too nearsighted to see anything that might or might not be falling off my head as I scrubbed and rinsed and scrubbed some more. I combed and combed and combed under the water, tugging out fistfuls of hair. I was feeling decidedly sorry for myself until I remembered St. Clare, cutting off all of her beautiful curls to embrace Lady Poverty. I resolved to get a grip but do you know what? All of these hot oil treatments have been good for my hair. It's all shiny and curly, and my hair is thick enough that you'd never miss the odd fistful. Go figure.

7. Silver lining #2: my friend around the corner offered to help me go through my hair with a nit comb. In the moment I was so busy wringing my hands that it didn't really register: she offered of her own free will to go strand by strand through my potentially lousy hair. I said no thank you, opting for the ignorance-is-bliss salad-head approach instead, but wow. That's a true friend.

Eek, this is more than anyone really wants to know about my hair. More quick takes here.

I Still Don't Speak Klingon

This morning I opened a new Google document that I called "Useful R Tips," but then it occurred to me that I might as well blog them. There must be other people out there in the world who are attempting to use R for stats and are equally baffled by the documentation. I thought I might have been exaggerating in this post, but it's really bad.

 Here is a cute baby picture for the rest of you, and a promise to be more interesting next time.

If you have a big monster spreadsheet and you want to look at descriptive stats for some of your variables, here's what you can do. Use cbind() to stick the variables of interest together into a table, like this:

> densities2<-cbind(adv2,mor2,lf2,ccnj2,ml2)

This gives me a mini-table, called densities2, with five columns containing all my data for just the five variables I want to know more about. If you want to stick together rows and not columns, use rbind().

You can also manipulate your variables while you are sticking them into that table. I am looking at things like conjunction density, which means all my values are less than 1. I told R to multiply them by 100 so I wasn't dealing with a million tiny numbers:

> densities2<-cbind(adv2,mor2,lf2,ccnj2,ml2)*100

You can use the pastecs package to make a handy table of descriptive statistics. There is information here in English, not Klingon, on how to install the package and use the stat.desc() function.

Now suppose you want to copy your table into a word processor, or just save it to read later. Use the write.table() function, like this:

> write.table(object.name.from.stat.desc.goes.here, "directory/pick_your_filename.csv", sep=",",row.names=TRUE)

Now when you look in the directory you specified, you will see pick_your_filename.csv, which you can open up in Excel or its Open Office clone to manipulate as you please.