Happy New Year

Christmas was great after all. Thanks to those of you who shared some Christmas cheer with me. I was able to put my scrooginess behind me and focus on fun things. I made lots of yummy food. We attended a great Christmas Eve party with a lot of our good friends. We Skyped with Spiff's mom on Christmas morning and were able to watch each other unwrap presents, even though we're miles apart. Gunner and I have also been able to fully enjoy Spiff during his last ever long Christmas vacation. It has been great!

And now just a few random thoughts and stories:
1. My favorite thing about Christmas this year: New Toys! I do realize that saying that makes me sound like I'm five years old, but it's true. I love Gunner's new toys. I love the fact that he loves them and happily plays and plays and plays with them for hours. He has been content and busy for a whole week, with the promise of lots more entertainment to come. The most successful toys of the season are Playmobils, hands down. He fell in love with our nativity scene and packed Mary and "Baby Jee-us" around for days. He also loved the donkey ("horsie") and the ox in the manger scene, whom he named "Otis." He absolutely loves the "Pilots" he received from Spiff's mom, and the accompanying helicopter and race car. I have loved seeing develop his skills for imaginative play, and I'm telling you, I love love love the hours of entertainment these toys have provided! I think I will need another Christmas next month.

2. I'm having a baby sometime in the next 2-3 weeks. The question I really don't like answering is, "How much weight have you gained during this pregnancy?" I know that my very nice neighbors mean well, but describing how much weight you have gained isn't something anyone I know likes talking about. It's tempting for me to answer in explicit detail about how I have gained the weight, what sweet and fatty foods have tasted the very best, where I keep the weight, and how I feel about it. It's great that I already feel like an overstuffed whale. Thanks for drawing attention to it and for rubbing salt into that wound.

3. My two-year-old is cool. Gunner has memorized several children's books, including the original Madeline. He has also started asking for specific bedtime songs. He asked for the Daddy song one day, so I sang the "I'm so glad when daddy comes home" primary song. He asked for the Mommy song, and since I couldn't think of a mother's day song, I sang "My Heavenly Father Loves Me." He asked for the Boy Song, I sang the first song that came to my head, which happens to be a song the primary just sang in their recent program. "If you don't walk like most people do, some people walk away from you, but I won't, I won't." He asks for it almost every day these days, but I didn't realize that he knows it as well as he does until Spiff pointed out one day this week that Gunner was singing to himself, "I will, I will."

As we drove home from the grocery store yesterday, Gunner started singing this little song to himself. We decided to see how well he knew it, and we started from the beginning. He filled in almost all of the blanks. There could not be anything cuter! And just as my heart was about to melt right onto the floor of the car, I looked back at him. He had quietly taken off his shoes and socks and was in the process of stuffing his entire foot in his mouth. He innocently looked up at us and said, "I taste my toes."

Happy New Year!

Scrooged

I love Christmas. It is by far my favorite holiday. I love the lights, the food, the music, giving presents, and the general happy spirit of the season. And although I love the holiday, I feel like I have had to work a little harder than usual to feel festive this year. And now, a week before Christmas, and because of a series of unfortunate events, I feel like all of the Christmas spirit I was trying to have has been squashed out of me.

Last Saturday, I dragged my good friend and her two kids out with me to do a 5K walk. I signed up weeks ago for a "Gingerbread Walk," a 5K where we would walk around the main street of a little town, collecting cookies along the way. It sounded fun and festive, and would have been great, had it not been December and raining. We made the best of it, but our kids were cold and wet, and they lasted through 6 (out of 35) cookie stations and about 1 mile, the last half of that being on the way back to the car after calling it quits while the two young boys screamed their poor little drenched heads off. We dried the kids off and took them to McDonald's for lunch. And then Gunner and I came home and ate our six cookies. I think that cancels out any exercise we got in that day.

Yesterday, I dropped Spiff off at the airport for his millionth interview trip of the season, and then I dragged Gunner all over the city in order to finish up my Christmas shopping. We had to wait an hour for a store to open, so as we hung out in the childrens' section of Borders, he pooped. As I went to change him, I realized that I didn't have a spare diaper with me. "There goes the rest of my shopping trip," I said to myself. But determined not to have to drag us both out of the house later in the day, I cleaned him up, pulled up his pants over his bare little bummie ("My pants fall down, Mommy!"), and carried him to the neighboring Whole Foods store to buy some organic, chemical and dye-free diapers, just praying that he wouldn't pee on both of us. He was a real trouper, and with the help of some animal cookies and dum dums, we made it through the marathon shopping trip.

Then I stayed up way too late last night finishing up some homemade Christmas presents, and wrapping and packaging gifts to send off to family members. I told myself that the sacrificed sleep was worth it because everything was ready to go, and all gifts would be to their recipients on time, as long as I could make it to the post office today. A friend even stopped by my house unexpectedly today and volunteered to watch Gunner for me while I ran to the post office! Gratefully, I took my large box and several small envelopes to the post office, where there wasn't even a long line. All good signs, right?

The lady behind the desk worked through my stack of packages quickly. And then she got to my large box, which weighed in at a whopping 6 pounds. It came up on the computer as an $18.40 package, which was more than I had hoped, but I sucked in my pride and kicked myself for procrastinating Christmas, and I swiped my debit card to pay for it. Only then did the desk lady say, as she got out a measuring tape, "Oh, gosh, wait! I don't know where that number came from! Your dimensions are all wrong. It's not $18.40. It's $32."

Excuse me?! $32?!!! To send a package that weighs six pounds?! Because my dimensions are wrong?!?!?!?!

What does that even mean, anyway?!?!

I told her that I was in no way willing to pay $32 to send this package, so I immediately grabbed some flat rate boxes and proceeded to move and repackage everything, trying desperately to get the various items to fit in a box. Two items had to be unwrapped and shoved into the box, and will have to be re-wrapped by kind family members on the receiving end of things. One item didn't fit and will not be sent for Christmas. And as much of a bummer as that was, I figured that it was okay because I would not be spending $32 to ship something that cost me only $13 to begin with.

So, I placed my newly repackaged parcel on the counter for her to work on. It was a flat-rate box that cost a blessed $10 to send. All is well.

Except that I had already swiped my debit card and already paid the USPS $18.40. And this is how the rest of our interaction went:

Desk Lady: "You have 8.40 left on your purchase. Can I sell you a book of stamps?"

Me: "No, I don't need stamps. I have plenty of stamps. Can you void that last transaction, please?"

DL: "We can't refund debit card transactions. But I can sell you a book of stamps."

Me: "I don't need stamps! I just want to pay for the package, and that's it."

DL: "Well, I can't refund the money, so you either buy a book of stamps, or pay $18.40 to send this $10 flat rate box."

And that's about when I blew a gasket, melted in to an embarrassing pregnant, hormonal puddle on the floor, gave in, bought the stupid book of stamps, and stormed out of the post office, while the desk ladies laughed as I walked away.

I'm still seething about how it was her mistake in the first place to measure the package incorrectly, how she basically forced me to buy a book of unwanted postage stamps, and how she was utterly unwilling to do what any other cashier in the country is trained to do and void the transaction.

Then when I got home, I found Gunner crying uncontrollably at the door, where he had been since I walked out of it 25 minutes earlier. My poor, generous friend was calmly making lunch and feeding her two boys in my messy kitchen while my kid screamed uncontrollably in the entryway. I walked in feeling so bad for putting her through that, and for being hoodwinked by the USPS, and she soon had two crying people on her hands.

Now besides having a new resolution to boycott the US Postal Service for the rest of time, I'm having a hard time feeling the Joy of Christmas. I'm sure that I will feel differently in a day or two. I will be happy when Spiff is finally done traveling and home for the holidays on Monday evening. I will be happy to spend Christmas with my little family and my good friends here in town. I will be happy to bake and eat yummy food, play games, and watch Gunner's excitement over Christmas presents. But at the moment, I'm just not feeling it.

So, please tell me something to cheer me up. Share a Christmas story, or a successful shipping story! Or just something to help me bring the Christmas spirit back into my hardened little heart. I do want to love Christmas this year.

Loving My Boy

We put our Christmas tree up on Sunday. Gunner was so excited about decorating the tree, and it was so much fun to watch him hang the "guys" (little Scandinavian people) and "tubas" (bells) on the tree. He loves his tree so much, and he calls it his "Christmas". He even made Spiff and me sit down on the floor with him in front of the tree and "Watch Christmas". Who knew that a Christmas tree could be such an exciting show?

Gunner and I made a batch of Jiffy blueberry muffins today, and then he licked the batter bowl. Seriously, Jiffy Muffin mix is really that good!
And just as a side note, notice the box of Wheat Thins on the table. Gunner refers to them (and Chex Mix) as "chicken". They are the only meat products he's willing to eat.

Tonight, my baby had the hiccups. I put Gunner's little hand on my belly so that he could feel it, not really expecting him to feel anything or get it at all. But he felt it! I explained that the baby had the hiccups, and he smiled and pressed his little hand in closer so he could feel them better. Then he kept asking for more hiccups as I put him to bed. Pretty awesome.

The best part of my day these days is bedtime. I love reading books and cuddling with my little boy before his nap or bed. It gets better every day as he gets better at talking. He remember phrases from his favorite books and quotes them throughout the day. And he almost always asks for more books, which is almost always irresistible for me, and I almost always cave and read him just one more. Especially when he asks for them by content, like tonight when he asked for the peanut butter ("beanut buttet") book, which turns out to be a library book where a dog eats some butter off the kitchen counter on one of the pages. I think the only thing I love more than reading him stories is singing his bedtime song while he cuddles on my shoulder. He's old enough to pick his song these days, and it melts my heart to hear him ask for "the daddy song again." Like I said, it's the best part of my day.

The interview trail and duty hours

So the interview trail has been a busy one for me. I have been trotting all over the midwest, and I'll share a few thoughts on the strengths of the various programs that I've been to:
Mayo: Amazing physical facilities. Dozens of different kinds of marble in the waiting rooms alone. Also, the truly bizarre cases come to Mayo
Michigan: A lot like Mayo from a pedagogical standpoint, Ann Arbor has a little more going on than Rochester
Case Western Reserve: Sweet moonlighting possibilities where you can make $65/hr doing anesthesia after hours. Level 1 for children's trauma.
Cleveland Clinic: Very strong in hearts, lots of pump cases and congenital cases. Very strong ICU
University of Wisconsin: national leader in transplant, very livable town.
Medical College of Wisconsin: Strong peds rotation
Washington University: Has everything, knife and gun club.
SLU: lots of penetrating and blunt trauma.

I have two more anesthesia interviews and three more prelim or transitional year interviews before I'm all done in January.

So, now my rant about duty hours. Residents are currently able to work no more than 80 hours a week, averaged over a month, with no shift lasting longer than 30 hours. They must also have 8 hours off between shifts. I think this is reasonable and allows for sufficient exposure to ensure a balanced and adequate post-graduate education. The Institute of Medicine, a think-tank (if they in fact think there) which makes recommendations to the ACGME, which is the accreditation body for residencies, recommended that interns not be allowed to work more than 16 hours at a time. This recommendation becomes codified into regulation next summer, when I become an intern. Great! I hear you cry. Interns won't be as tired and will be alert and less prone to make errors. Right? Wrong.

Here are the problems with that line of reasoning. Yes, there will probably be fewer fatigue related errors. The flip side of having shorter shifts is that there will now be more hand-offs of patient care between residents. Would you rather have your ailing father be cared for by someone who had seen and monitored his care continuously for the first day he was admitted? Or would you rather have 3 different hand-offs?
Remember playing Telephone as a kid? the same problems with garbled messages and discontinuity will now exist in medicine. In essence we're trading fatigue for the problems engendered by frequent pass-offs of care. I think it will also turn the newest generation of physicians into clock-punchers who will be ill-prepared for the real world where doctors don't have duty hour restrictions. I would rather work hard as a resident and emerge a well trained physician who is competent and has seen and cared for a wide variety of illnesses than emerge a well-rested but half-trained doctor.

There are also changes for upper level residents, who will only be able to work for 24 hours straight. This will not be any change for anesthesia residents who only work 24 hours at a stretch when on call anyway, but will be devastating to surgical residents. If you shorten the amount of time a resident can be at work, you limit the number of procedures he does. Would you like to have your knee replaced by new surgeon who has done it 350 times in training? 200 times? 100? 50? 10? It is a mathematical necessity that in order to be competent in a procedure, you have to have a baseline minimum number of repetitions to be good at it. Surgical residents are going to be doing fewer cases and emerging from training with less experience than their predecessors.

Bravo, institute of medicine. That's some strong work.

Thar she blows

As previous posts have noted, we have been subject to an invasion by Mus Musculus Domesticus, or "el mouso"as the Spaniards are wont to say. 3 spring traps, 3 sticky traps and 5 pieces of anti-coagulant bait were to no avail. Our bold little nemesis would spring forth in the evening to scuttle across the kitchen floor or race across the dining room floor. We would rise, anger boiling and driving us into a killing rage, only to be frustrated as he scampered arrogantly beneath the baseboards. This evening, Mindy noticed the enemy as he darted behind a bookcase. Surely this is a dead end, I thought. The baseboards seemed to close to the floor for even a mouse to scuttle beneath, yet when I looked behind, there was nothing. I even prised the bookcase away from the wall a few inches for a better look, but there was nothing.
We sat on the couch, thoughts of vengeance filling our hearts. Lulled by thoughts of another failed attempt at extermination, I was unprepared when Wiff cride "Oh! Mouse" again. He was running across the dining room and hid under the piano. Aha! I though, we will drive him out with music, like the Pied Piper of Hamlin. Wiff hastily improvised some 20th century atonal riffs, since rodents hate Schönberg, this seemed a logical choice. Nothing. No hasty retreat from his musical abode. I peeked under the piano with a headlamp, hoping to spy the dreaded beast. Nothing at the bass end. I moved upwards in register, and still nothing. Finally, beneath the plinky little notes at the high end, I thought I saw a robust looking dust bunny. Upon closer inspection, the dust bunny had moved a little.
Quickly, I outlined the plan to Wiff, who reluctantly agreed to cooperate. Would she prefer to be the Coaxer, or the Smasher? Coaxer she quickly replied. Her job was to use a wooden spoon under the piano to drive him out where I would quickly reduce him a lifeless paste with a hiking boot. As I refined the plan in my mind, I recalled that deep in the recesses of my stored camping gear, there was a blow gun. I ran downstairs, leaving instructions with a very hesistant Wiff to prosecute the rodent with extreme prejudice, should the occasion arise. I tore into my boxes of camping gear, and at the bottom, was able to dig out my blowgun.
Hastily, I assembled the 4 pieces, and pulled a dart out of the holder. I checked under the piano to ensure that my target was still downrange. I put the muzzle of the blowgun up to the edge of the piano, drew in a breath, and expired swift death to the mouse waiting 6 inches away.

We now have a very small addition to our trophy room wall.

Unwelcome Houseguest

We have a mouse in our house. It's so super gross to admit it, but there it is. The little creature came in on the first cool day of the season, about a week and half ago, on a day when we happened to have some contractors working on our bedroom wall. Since they were walking in and out of the house and up and down the basement stairs, I blame them for letting the little mousie in. That first day, just after we finished eating dinner, it scuttled across our kitchen floor and ran into a crack between the cabinets and the dishwasher. I was so grossed out I couldn't step foot in the kitchen for the rest of the evening. Spiff thinks I overreacted. Gunner now walks around periodically scolding the mouse, "No, No, Mouse is yutty!"

Spiff found it several days later scurrying around the drawer under our stove among the baking dishes. I can assure you that we have washed those dishes several times! I can also assure you that if it had been me who had found him there, I would have had a heart attack, and then run screaming from the house, just before moving into a hotel for the rest of the winter.

Later that night, our bold little mouse scurried into our living room. Spiff saw it run behind the couch. He got all excited by the thrill of the hunt, handed me a work boot and said, "Okay, when I move the couch, it's going to come running your way. Stand on that vent and smash it before it gets away! Great. Ready.......Go!!!" He practically picked up the couch and threw it two feet into the room, leaned over it and yelled, "Ha!", while I squealed "Aaaaaaaaaaaaaah!" from my post on the vent with the boot dangling tentatively from my girlie little fist. The mouse must have found another exit because I thankfully didn't have to try my hand at boot-mouse bashing!

A couple nights later, we watched him scuttle around the house. He appeared at random places without any kind of indication as to how he got there. We'd see him at the stove, then by the TV in the living room, then scurrying under the baseboard across the room, without having run across the room. It was like a gross version of Jack Jack Attack, when Jack Jack is floating around the house through walls, while Kari was chasing him from room to room, never quite knowing where he is going to surface. Spiff occasionally tried to "catch" him by waiting stealthily on a kitchen chair with a small frying pan in hand. He never did.

We have set all kinds of traps around the house. Sticky traps, snap traps baited with peanut butter, and mouse poison. I have had dreams of catching him. One night in particular, I woke up and heard noises in the kitchen, which I then convinced myself were the sounds of the mouse getting caught by the snap trap behind the fridge. I even thought that I posted "Got Him!" as my facebook status. I couldn't quite believe that the trap was still empty in the morning. Even more unbelievable was the fact that the peanut butter on the trap had been licked clean, and the trap was still set.

We haven't seen him for a few days. We're hoping he got some of the poison and has now gone somewhere to die quietly. But if he's still around next weekend while Spiff is away, I'm borrowing a cat.

And that's how I broke his heart...

New words for the week: Church (turch) and Nursery (nursy).

Gunner has been asking all week long to go to church. Seriously, all week long! I didn't know that he knew or cared that we go to church, other than that it's the place we try to make him sit still and be quiet! He even asked to take one of his friends to church.

As it was Sunday today, we went to church. We planned to only stay for Sacrament meeting because Gunner has a cold and we couldn't send him to nursery. I was actually happy because that meant that he would get a Sunday nap, which hasn't happened for months. So we headed for home.

And when he realized we were walking out of the building, and not into the nursery room, the tears began. I can pinpoint the exact moment when his heart tore in two. (Anyone remember that episode of the Simpsons when Lisa breaks poor Ralph Wiggum's heart? It was like that.)

All the way home, I got this, between the tears:
G: "Nursy, please, Mommy!"

"Please?!"

"Nursy!"...

"Please?!"

He didn't stop until he had cried himself to sleep in the car.

I didn't realize that it meant that much to him. You can bet that he will be asking me about church all week. You can also bet that as long as he's healthy, we're taking him to nursery next week.

In other news, Spiff's residency interview season has started. He traveled to an interview over the weekend. While he was gone, I hung the plastic on our two living room windows. I will happily accept the Best Wife Award for the month of October. Thank You.

Nervous Confession

I know a whole lot of pregnant women these days. A whole lot! It's that time of life for us, and most of our friends are having babies and expanding their families. If someone isn't pregnant, it's probably because they just had a baby, or are somehow in that wonderful in-between stage when your baby is still a baby and you haven't yet thought about the next one. I just spent a few minutes looking at blogs of some friends who are in the just-had-their-baby category. I love their birth stories and pictures of their sqwudgy little newborns, but reading their stories had an unexpected effect on me.

In short, it made me nervous.

Don't get me wrong. I'm already nervous out of my mind about having another baby. How will we make it through labor & delivery again? How will I handle having two small children? How will I survive the newborn stage? How will Gunner handle things? Etc. The nerves are in no way a new thing.

What I didn't expect was realizing with intense sadness that I am coming up short of my alone time with Gunner.

I remember visiting a friend in the hospital 18 months ago to meet her second child. Things went great for them, and their new little boy was a dream! I asked her the details of their hospital stay, and she replied that she was hoping to go home sooner rather than later. She stated, "My girl is there."

I remember being sort of shocked by this opinion because of my own experience being at the hospital with newborn Gunner. I didn't want to take him home. I liked being at the hospital. I liked the food. I liked the nurses. I liked being able to send Gunner away to the nursery, get some sleep, and see him again with a diaper that had been magically replaced for me! Home meant that we had to care for this foreign little demander all on our own, and I had no idea what to do with him!

I think I understand what she meant now. While I read my friends' experiences, I imagined our upcoming stay at the hospital, with Spiff going back and forth from hospital with me to home with Gunner, leaving me to get acquainted with our new little boy. I feel a bit jealous of him. I'm feeling that I would rather go home to the little boy we have had two years to know and love, than stay at the hospital by myself taking care of a stranger and missing my sweet toddler.

I'm also imagining baby #2 reading this post someday and thinking I'm a horrible mother who didn't want or love him. That's not the case. Of course I want this child, and I imagine that I will love him and Gunner equally. All I'm saying is that I have loved having my one baby. I have loved giving Gunner my undivided love and attention. I will miss that.

The windows.

"Honey, I think it's time that we put up the plastic," Mr Thrimbly's wife exclaimed chipperly one clear October morning. Gerald Thrimbly thought himself a rather stolid and unflappable chap, not given to easy starts or fear of any kind. Yet his wife's bright announcement sent his heart sinking and the erstwhile cheerful Saturday had suddenly taken on a gloomy timbre, a funerary pall now hanging in the air. Gerald dreaded the annual autumnal ritual placement of plastic over his windows. Secretly he hoped that his wife wouldn't think it necessary, that the baggy sheets of clear cellophane loosely festooning their living room would somehow suffice to keep winter breezes at bay. Realizing that his wife was still awaiting a reply, he answered "Isn't it a bit early?""No," came the stern reply. Gerald's heart sank even further, knowing his one stalling tactic had failed him again.

With dread-laden steps he trudged to the basement. The chipped plaster in the stairwell looked to him as the dank walls of the Bastille, closing in on the foppish French aristocrat. Soon, the tumbril would take him back to his cackling Madame Defarge with her maniacal fascination with weatherproofing. Mentally crossing his fingers, he hoped that the basket with sheets of plastic would somehow be empty, that he could forestall the dreaded operation by making a trip to Home Depot, which might take place some indeterminate day in the future. Sadly, the basket was full, boxes of unopened plastic from the last winter leered at him, mocking his fear. "It's not so bad", they seemed to say, "all your friends are able to hang plastic without the final product looking like a blind chimp placed it". Gerald knew the lie, and had once told himself the same thing. Now, after several years in his centenarian house, he knew the sheets of clear plastic were deceitful. Not only would the final product look like some grotesque parody of a window, but that he would be confronted with his own inadequacy every day he spent in his own home. There could be only two solutions. Either Gerald could hang the plastic and stare his incompetency and incoordination in the face for six months, or he could kill himself. Death seemed a welcome alternative to the incessant barrage of mockery, lies, and poor craftsmanship.

Knowing that flight through the locked basement door was impossible, and realizing that his 2 year old son needed some kind of father figure, but fearing that his son's affection would forever be tainted by disdain for his father's poor handyman abilities, Gerald Thrimbly decided suicide was out of the question, and shambled back up the basement stairs. "Honey, we need to hang the plastic before it gets too cold for the tape to stick", said Mrs. Thrimbly brightly. She too knew of the duplicity of the plastic, but was somehow inured to its lies. Gerald masked his dread and presented his wife with a basket of plastic, like some trembling Aztec priest offering the sacrificial knife to a homicidal shaman. Suddenly, Buddy ran in, distracting Mrs. Thrimbly. Quickly Gerald put on his shoes and said "Let's go, we need to get to the store" He knew that if he could get the family moving, his sentence would be commuted, and that perhaps in the interval, some miracle would intervene on his behalf. Vaguely, he thought hopefully of flames licking the side of the building or a smoking pile of rubble greeting the family on their return from the store. Calmly, he walked out of the house, leading his family, his aplomb and nerve restored. No coward he, he thought bravely of himself.

Gunner's 2nd Birthday

Our little boy is two! I can't quite believe it! We celebrated by doing things he likes to do. We took him to the zoo, where we rode the carousel, visited penguins, the red rock animals, and the bird house. We got splashed with penguin water (gross!), he said Hello to an owl, chased peacocks, and bounced like a kangaroo. Then we had two of his favorite little friends over for dinner and birthday cake.

Some funny things about our little two-year-old boy that I want to remember:
All musical instruments are "tubas," including all brass instruments, drums, a piece of rubber inner tubing Spiff pulled out of his bike toolbox, and his new kazoo that he got for his birthday. Exceptions to this title are violins and guitars, which are "la la's," and the piano, which has no name.

All tools are "hammers," including tape measures, screwdrivers, bike pumps, and my iron.

He has picked up new names for me. From the other room, I have heard him calling me "Honey" (which is what I call him sometimes), "Hottie" (which is what I call Spiff), and "Mindy."

He is ecstatic about his new Richard Scarry books he got from his Grammy for his birthday. He searches for Goldbug and squeals when he finds him, and he walks around the house saying, "Go Go Dinno!" (Dingo is the bad driver character who is running away from Officer Flossy, who is trying to give him a ticket.)

He received some new matchbox cars from his auntie and uncle, and he has already named one of them his "Noon Car." I have no idea what he means by that, but at least I know which car he is referring to.

He is also ecstatic about receiving a new Lightning Mcqueen car from his other Grandma. Now he has his beloved Blue Car, and his new beloved Red Car.

He is such a talkative little guy, and I love hearing what's on his mind. I also love hearing his speech develop. Just the other day, he started putting the final syllable on his words. Instead of "Duh" for Duck, he says, "Dut." Dump Truck used to be "Dump Fwuh" and is now "Dump Fwut." Garbage/Cement Trucks are now "Dahder Fwut." He also answers questions with a crystal clear "Yes" or "Nope," emphasis on a listpy little "s" and the "p". Love it!

He is generally fairly polite, asking for things by saying please (mlee?!) and Thank You (Day dyou).

"Blue" has become a term of endearment for him. He has his beloved Blue Shoes, Blue Car, and "Blue Blank", which refers to two different items, neither of which are blue. One is a baby quilt he got from his Grammy before he was born. It is orange and brown with monkeys on it, and quite gorgeous. Gunner found it one day and decided that the border is a great place to drive his cars around. The other is his Gunnerville. He sits on the with "Blue Blank" on his lap, driving his cars around for hours. And he insists on going to bed with one or the other of these Blue Blanks and falls asleep playing with his cars.

Whenever Spiff gets home from work, Gunner asks to "Mar Daddy." Spiff turns on a playlist of "The Hall of the Mountain King" from Peer Gynt Suite by Grieg, "The Ride of the Valkeries" by Wagner, "The Imperial March" from Star Wars, and the "Indiana Jones Theme." Then the two of them march around the living room, getting faster and faster as the music gets louder and faster.
Spiff has also taught Gunner to hold his hand to his ear when the music is soft and whisper as they listen to hear it. It is a Daddy/Son game, and he loves it!

So Happy Birthday, Gunner! We love you more and more every day!

Grab Bag

Here's the stuff that's been on my mind recently:

Things I learn from patients:

If you have a subarachnoid hemorrhage, don't leave the outside hospital against medical advice. You will come to my hospital obtunded with minimal brainstem activity.

Don't inject "shake and bake" homemade meth synthetic product into your arm, it will give you cellulitis.

A dead liver cannot be fixed by changing ventilator settings.


Things I learn in General Conference

The word "even" can be used as punctuation, in lieu of a comma. Consider the following example:
"We are thankful for the prophet, even Thomas S. Monson, who leads us...."

Alternatively: "We are thankful for the prophet, Thomas S. Monson, who leads us.." This is another instance of why we need Victor Borge's phonetic punctuation.

"Indeed" is three words. "Indeed" becomes "in very deed". Indeed is not the same as "in deed". Indeed is an adverb, expressing incredulity, or to reinforce the credulity of a statement previously asserted. Etymologically, I believe this tendency to embellish words stems from the King James version of the Bible, as seen in very deed in Exodus 9:16, 1 Sam 25:34 and other places. From a literary perspective I think it's fine, but in oral speech it is somewhat stilted and contrived.

Backfire

Gunner loves the movie, "The Incredibles". It is one of my favorites, and I'm happy that he likes it. Recently, he has been commenting on the show, asking me what the characters are doing (Doonat guy?). He likes it when Dash runs away from the bad guys (Wunning!). I think it's cute how he has woken up to the action on the show.

Yesterday, I decided to show him "Jack Jack Attack" on the second disk. I turned it on and left the room to finish up some dishes. I returned four minutes later as the short was finishing to find my sweet little movie-loving guy on the couch, shaking from head to toe, pointing at the TV, saying, "Baby?!...Baby?!!"

He was terrified!

And I felt terrible! I immediately picked him up and he glommed onto me like a wet shirt. I turned the little show back on and tried to talk him through it, saying things about how funny the little baby was for flying or disappearing, or bursting into a flaming monster. See, Gunner, isn't that hilarious?! Please, please think that it's hilarious! Mostly, though, I comforted him and told him over and over that the baby was okay.

G: "Baby?!"

Me: "The baby is okay."

G: "Baby K?!"

Me: "Yeah, the baby is just fine.

And then we got out our newly acquired library books and read about planes (Cop-ter!), trains (joo joo), and automobiles (Bus, Mommy!) to try to distract him.

I never thought that it would scare him, and I feel just terrible for putting him in into such a scary situation. But I'm glad I was there for him and realized quickly what was going on. And I'm grateful for the glomming cuddle time, since I have to take the cuddles when I can get them these days. I also guess I have learned to be a little more careful about what I expose him to. Although, really, who would have thought that it would have been scary?!

*Several days later, Gunner is still assuring us that the baby on the show is okay. Out of the blue, several times a day, he declares, "Dac Dac fine. Dac Dac fine." And we reply each time, "Yep, Jack Jack is just fine."

Residency App

I've had my application in for about 3 weeks now, and have heard back from several programs. My application strategy is to apply to 16 anesthesia programs, 10 medicine prelim years, and 10 transitional year programs. Of the anesthesia programs, 3 are in the pacific northwest, 2 in the mountain west, 2 in Ohio, 1 in new hampshire, 2 in Boston, and the remainder are scattered around missouri, michigan, minnesota, and wisconsin. I don't know if 20 is enough preliminary years, I hope it is because I don't want to have to scramble into a prelim surgery year somehwere, that would be pretty awful. For the readers who are not intimately involved in the drama of ERAS and the NRMP (electronic residency application service and national residency matching program, respectively), the difference between medicine and transitional years is that medicine programs are just that, medicine, and the transitional year is a mix of medicine, surgery, ER, and elective time. There are some pretty nice transitional years that I would love to go to, although interview invites have not yet come for those.

Mid-night Heart Breaker

Gunner crying in the middle of the night:

Momma!...

Momma!...

(pause)

Blue Car!!!

Gunner Speak

Love how this kid talks! If you're ever around him, here's a translation guide to some of his more obscure phrases:

On, On--Means, "Give me your hand (yes, "On" means Hand), and come here, now, please."
Lul You--Love you (usually accompanied by a kiss on the cheek and followed by a melted heart)
Cop-Ter--Helicopter (this is something he exclaims every time he sees or hears an airplane or helicopter in the sky)
Uh, Yah!--(accompanied by smile and bright eyes), means Yes
Huh?--UhHuh, also means Yes
Wuddy?--This means that he wants to play with the cardboard race track Spiff made for him, meaning, "Ready, Set, Go!"

Morchee--More please

Beenoon--Balloon

Beenoon-a-beenoon-a-beenoon-a-beenoon...--means there's a balloon over there that I need to run across the room to get.

BlueWhiVreen--Blue, White, Green

LellowWhi--Yellow, White

Blue Car/Car Blue--his new Dinaco Blue Lightning McQueen car. He has seen the movie but doesn't really get the whole character thing. He just loves the color, size, shape...everything about this little toy. He carries it everywhere with him, and sleeps with it at night.

The Next Few Days

So, it turns out that this surgical procedure actually bothers the patient more than the doctors and nurses say it will.  It also turns out that a toddler who has just undergone a surgical procedure, and who is feeling terribly sore and awful, is very very cranky.  Also, I feel horrible when I'm taking care of his wound site and he is saying, "Ow. Ow. Ow." and then hobbles away in obvious pain.  It also turns out that even though I feel very badly for him, and I am very sympathetic towards him and what we made him go through, my patience unfortunately has its limits when dealing with the cranky child.

Today was a very very long day.  I'm looking forward to the end of the week when the wound isn't so fresh.

Also, Happy 29th Birthday, Spiff!

Post-Op

Gunner's surgery went well! The surgeon was very pleased with the results, and he said that Gunner handled everything incredibly well. I was impressed with the staff at the hospital, and the nurses and doctors were all great. The first patient of the day didn't show up, so they were able to get us in early, so we didn't have to make Gunner fast for so long. And since it was an outpatient procedure, we were done and home before 1:00 in the afternoon.

Gunner did great with everything, although the longer we were there doing pre-op stuff, the more wary of everything and everyone he became. He was absolutely terrified of the scale, and he absolutely refused to sit in the crib. They gave him some medication to help calm him down, and he was hungry enough to ask for more of it. The meds worked like a charm, and the nurse told me that he was asleep before they even put the anesthesia mask on him.

The procedure took slightly less than two hours. I went back to the PACU to be with Gunner after he woke up from the anesthesia. As the nurse took me back, she told me that he woke up great, just quietly opened his eyes, which was a relief since I was expecting hysterics. When we entered the room, I glanced around the room and saw several little babies on stretchers. There was one in particular who looked especially small, and I was amazed at how young the baby was to be having surgery. Then I realized that particular tiny little guy was mine! He looked so small on the stretcher, and so pathetic lying there so placidly, hooked up to an IV.

I was very grateful when they let me hold him, and when we got back to the recovery room, Spiff and I took turns holding him and helping him come out of the effects of the anesthesia. Amazingly, after that wore off, he perked right up, and was running and jumping around the house just a few hours later. Today, he acts like nothing happened at all. Amazing!

I'm so glad it's done, and that it went well, and I am incredibly grateful for the great doctors and nurses who helped him yesterday.

Gunner's Surgery (Pre-op)

Our little boy is having surgery tomorrow.  It's an outpatient thing, relatively routine, and I'll tell you the details if you ask.  (I don't want to post them on a public setting.)  But even though it's supposedly a common thing and the recovery is supposedly not bad, I am insanely nervous.  Spiff is cool as a cucumber, and I assume this is because he has seen countless procedures and sees this as no big deal.

But it is a big deal.  Poor little Gunner has no idea what's coming, and I guess that's a good thing.  I am mostly worrying about the logistics of the whole thing.  He can't eat breakfast in the morning prior to the surgery, nor can he have anything to drink past 6:30 in the morning, which means that he probably won't get anything at all since he'll still be asleep at that point.  This also means that we will be dealing with an incredibly hungry and cranky toddler who is in a strange place and dealing with strange things and people.  Not a recipe for success.  And then there are the logistics of taking care of my post-op toddler.  I don't know what to expect about how he will handle it, what he will need, or how he will feel.

I just hope that he responds well to the pain medications, and that he doesn't really remember the whole experience.  I also have to deal with the guilt I am feeling about putting him through this in the first place.  It needs to be done, but I still have horrible guilt about taking him to the hospital to "be hurt".  And I feel so badly for him and his sweet little self to go through something like this.

Please say a prayer for us.

Stake Conference In Utah

I went to Stake Conference with my sister's family yesterday. Russel M. Nelson was in attendance because their stake got a new presidency. I'm sure he gave a wonderful talk at the end of the session, but I'll have to take it on faith since Gunner was a crazy person yesterday morning and was absolutely not in the mood to sit through a two-hour meeting. (Who ever is, really?) I walked the halls as he ran them, and I was able to catch a few sentences of the talks here and there.

But, here is the cool part...

I took my niece to get a drink before the meeting started. As we were walking down the hall, Elder Nelson was standing in the hallway with just one other guy. I said Hi to him. He looked right at me and said, "Good Morning."

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah! He practically said Hi to me!

I didn't have the guts to ask him to shake my hand, but I did drop down to my knees after we passed him and explained to my 3-year-old niece (who couldn't care less) that "That guy over there is Elder Nelson, one of our apostles! Can you believe he's standing Right There?! Isn't that neat!?"

So, that's what you might get for going to stake conference in Utah, where apostles still attend the conference in person instead of attending via satelite. Very cool. Sure wish I could have heard his talk.

Away rotation

So I'm going to go into anesthesia, and I'm currently doing a rotation at my number one choice, Major Medical Center in the midwest. The trouble is, as a newcomer, I don't know who anyone is or where anything is. Major Center has a rigid dress code of suits and ties all the time, but the residents still show up to the OR in regular clothes, change into scrubs, and leave in regular clothes. Should I do the same? or should I be the sore thumb who stands out in a suit when the residents go to lecture in mufti? I err the side of formality. The whole point of doing away rotations is to see if the program is a good fit, if you like the area, and if training there will help you accomplish your professional goals. I like being at Major Center, it's got world class resources and faculty. The problem is that I have no idea where I stand. I don't know if I"m doing the right things to impress the right people. I hate being 'on' all the time. Who should I ask for a letter of recommendation? I hate all the ambiguity. I will probably rank Major Center #1, but doubt very much that I will match here in March.
-SS