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I finished my corporate finance exam at around 4PM on Thursday and they sent me an email telling me that I passed at around 7PM on Friday. If only the SOA could get results out so quickly! This is likely the last update on the handy pie chart until November or so, but here's the current incarnation:

Meanwhile, Erica is heading back out of town on Tuesday to visit her mom's parents for a few days in West Virginia. I get to stay in Baton Rouge and work and try to make up some of my lost study time.

Finally, Kent's sleep revolution appears to be over, as he has not done well with the roll-him-over method the last two nights but has done ok with walking. So it goes.

—Jack

Labels: actuarial, exams, family, handy pie chart, Kent

We have returned from our summer jaunt to New Hampshire, which you can read about on Erica's blog.

I had to spend some of the trip studying because we got back on Tuesday and I had a corporate finance exam today. I think it went well, but I haven't ever taken an exam like it before and I'm not sure how flexible they are if you don't type their particular phrases when answering a question. All of the questions were free response, so no guessing C to try for extra points after you've answered all of the questions that you knew. The material wasn't as hard as for an actuarial exam but there were a lot of lists to learn and I haven't been exposed to much corporate finance before.

At the end of the exam they said that I'd get results in two to four weeks so there will be a little wait to find out if I passed, but in the meantime I am going to plow headfirst into studying for the next actuarial exam, MFE, which I will take on election day. I'm already over a month behind my proposed study schedule, but they are changing the syllabus in 2009 so I will do my best to pass now instead of having to take it again next May. In the meantime I've updated the handy pie chart below:

—Jack

Labels: actuarial, exams, handy pie chart, travel

Kent is just over a year old now and we still have a lot of variance in the amount of sleep he gets in any given night. Many nights he wakes two or three times, but I can get him back to sleep pretty easily. Last week we had two nights in a row when he didn't wake at all. And then the weekend came...

Friday night he was up for three and a half hours straight during the night, even though he was tired. None of our usual techniques would get him back to sleep. He would doze, or start to drop off only to kick and wiggle himself back awake again. We walked him, fed him, eventually came out into the living room and played with him and read him some books; nothing was working. In the past, we've tried letting him sleep on his stomach a few times but it never worked well. But finally, in a fit of desperation, I put him down on his side, let him roll onto his stomach, and he fell asleep. I figured it was due to exhaustion. Even though he's usually up for the day between 5:30 and 6:30, he slept until 7 AM on Saturday, obviously worn out by the extended waking in the night. So Saturday evening would be better, right?

Every once in a great while (thankfully) Kent has a night when he wakes after every single sleep cycle, roughly once per hour. Saturday started out as one of those nights, although he did manage a three hour stint in the middle. Finally around 4:30 AM I put him down on his side, let him roll onto his belly, and he dropped off quickly. He woke again in about an hour and I did it again. In the morning I told Erica about this new method. On the way back from church on Sunday Kent fell asleep in the car. We usually just sit in the car with him until he wakes up because he doesn't fall back asleep if we bring him in and try to put him down for a nap, but he had just fallen asleep and I didn't want to run the car for another 30 minutes (at least). I decided to try the new rollover method for a nap. And it worked.

So I told Erica about it, and on Sunday evening I used it instead of trying to walk him when he woke (his usual two times, I think). On Monday, Erica got him down for two naps this way. And the success continues.

This is a sea change. A paradigm shift. A revelation. We used to have very long routines we went through to get Kent to sleep, both at night and for naps. Putting him on his side and letting him roll over feels like we're cheating. But I'll keep cheating as long as he'll let me.

Update: 7.30.08 6:11 AM - Evidently Kent doesn't want his dad to feel like a cheat. So it goes...

—Jack

Labels: Kent, sleep