Chores

Yesterday, I started a project that I have been procrastinating. I began putting together our revised budget for this school year. Since it is seven weeks into the school year, that says something about how much I've been looking forward to this project. The more I put it off, the larger of a project it became, and the more I didn't want to do it. But now that I'm in the middle of it, I have embraced it, and I'm up for the week-long challenge of organizing and catching up on our finances. Like most chores for me, once I get the motivation to start them, I'm okay with the work involved.

There are some chores that are more enjoyable for me than others. I like cooking. I don't mind doing the dishes, as long as I don't let them get out of hand. I don't mind doing laundry, as long as I keep up on it. I don't mind grocery shopping, besides the fact that I always spend way more money than I want to. I don't think anyone likes cleaning the bathroom (myself included), but I don't mind it too much because I like having a clean bathroom.

However, I do have a few chores that I just don't like. Apparently I'm pretty vocal about them because when I asked Spiff to guess my least favorite chores, he listed them off to perfection without hesitation. I really don't like dealing with our cars in any way. I don't like gassing them up, washing them, getting the oil changed, and especially dealing with mechanical issues. I also don't like doing the budget/checkbook, or cleaning the floors.

Of course, I do them anyway. They're chores, and there are always things I would rather be doing. But it's life, and they have to be done. And I'm curious about other people's favorite or least-favorite chores. I bring this up because I was surprised to discover recently that one of Spiff's least favorite chores is emptying out the clean dishwasher. That's not a chore that I mind at all. I guess now that I know that, I'll try to be sensitive to his dislike of this chore and empty out the dishwasher more often. Maybe he'll take care of the cars for me.

Call

My pediatrics rotation requires that we spend every 5th night on call, and at least two of them be overnight. Being a glutton for punishment, I decided to take my two overnight calls this week to get them out of the way. Monday went as follows:

630-730: pre-round on my patients

730: huddle with senior resident and discuss any issues on the patients

800-830: Morning Report which is a 30 minute didactic conference for medical students and interns

0830-1130: rounding with the cardiology, pulmonology, and clinical medicine (general peds) teams.

1130-12: quickly do anything that needs to happen before 12, i.e. check on labs, order studies, etc..

12-1: noon conference which is a 1 hour didactic session for MSIII's

1:15-2:15 another didactic session

215-6: follow up on my patients and wait around for admissions

6-630 dinner in the cafeteria, which was some not so pleasant pizza

630-9: study and wait for admissions

9-11: admit 1 patient for potential bacterial/viral meningitis, rule out Bell's palsy

11-230: sleep fitfully in the resident lounge, missing a page at 130. Called intern to see if she was still admitting the patient, but she was done.

230: moved to a place in the hospital where I would get better cell phone reception.

230-5: sleep in 20-30 minute increments on a chair in the lobby, checking my phone for pages.

5: Get fed up with not sleeping and start rounding on my patients

5-12: repeat from monday morning.

12 (tuesday): Go home, 2 hour nap, groggy afternoon with studying

9pm: bedtime

Last night was very similar, only instead of sleeping fitfully in a chair, I made sure the intern had the phone number to the wall phone in the lounge, which was very loud, so I wouldn't snooze through a page. We had one admission at 7pm, but after that it was very quiet. I fell asleep at 11 and slept pretty well on the couch until 530, when I began rounding. I forgot, however, that medical students don't have to round with the team in the mornings on the weekend, so rather than going home at 12, I was able to come home at 8 and go to church.

Overall, my two overnight calls were pretty easy, all things considered. Since I don't have the authority to write orders, or answer questions regarding orders, I don't get paged frequently for those reasons, unlike the interns. The interns on our team work about 80 hours a week, which is the ACGME maximum. Last week I think I worked something like 75 hours, which includes my two overnight calls.

I Run Because I Must

Since I ran my half marathons in the spring, I will grudgingly admit that I have been less than motivated to run. I have been lucky to make it out once a week during the past several months. And while my body is imploring me to run, to stretch, to work, to be outside, to breathe in fresh air, and to enjoy the early-morning Summer weather, I have been all too willing to ditch out of a run for a variety of valid reasons ("It's storming." "I went to bed too late." "Gunner kept me up all night." "My running partners are all out of town." "Spiff has to be at work early, and Gunner is still sleeping."), all under the assumption that I would try again tomorrow. Tomorrow would come, and I would be all too happy to stay in bed, or lounge around my house in my jammies, getting less and less in shape by the minute.

Well, and of last week, I have recommitted to running. My partner and I went out three whole times last week. Impressive, I know. I realize as I'm writing this, that one of the real reasons I haven't been as diligent in my running lately is because of the sacrifice involved. It is difficult sacrificing sleep, time, and comfort for some voluntary hard and painful work.

In fact, this morning's run was a huge sacrifice. I actually woke Gunner up to take him running with me, since Spiff had already gone to work, and I had to make it to the meeting place on time. I never realized before I had Gunner how emotionally difficult it is to wake a sleeping baby. Knowing that he'll probably be tired and grumpy at me all day because I chose to wake him up, makes it the very last thing that I ever want to do. He wasn't super happy about it, and although he was pleasant during most of the ride, he got very upset about a mile from home, causing me to push that stroller faster and get a more intense workout than I bargained for.

So, I find myself asking the question, "If it's so hard, and you have to sacrifice so much, and now you're making your son sacrifice along with you, why are you still doing it?"

I just have to remind myself that I know I love it. I have already started, and I don't want to ever have to start over from scratch, so I can't just quit. It is one of very few actual hobbies I have. I feel healthier when I do it, and it's good for me. I love being outside. I love the social time with my running friends or with Spiff, but I also love running alone with just my thoughts. I know that Gunner also enjoys being outside, so it's good for him, too, even if I have to wake him up occasionally. I also have a huge respect for runners and the sport in general, and I think that running makes me a better person. Even with all the sacrifice, it's a good thing, and I'm glad I still running.

On a side note, this week marks the 2-year anniversary of my running partnership with my awesome, dedicated running friend, Angela! Here's to two years of sweatin' in the elements, training for and running two half marathons, and running through most of our latest pregnancies, and meeting new running friends along the way!

On another side note, I stopped a stranger in the park today and got her phone number. We have seen this girl running in the park for the past two years. I have also seen her walking in my neighborhood, and we always smile when we pass each other. I recently decided that the next time I saw her, I was going to stop and meet her. Turns out that she lives a block or two away from me. She seems nice, and I got her number so that I could get in touch with her. I can't really decide what to do with it now that I have it, and I hope she doesn't feel weird that this stranger in the park has her phone number.

The Dumbening

When I was an undergrad and on the crew team, I used to wake up at 450 am to get to practice. I combined this pre-dawn awakening with a late bedtime because of my job. Needless to say, I was severely sleep deprived, and intimately familiar with the cognitive deficits caused by lack of sleep. I recall a severely impaired short-term memory, so much so that you could ask me to do something like vacuum, I would walk out of the room to get the vacuum, and in seconds not even be aware that I was supposed to be doing something. Besides impairing my ability to do household chores, my grades naturally suffered as well. Currently, on in-patient pediatrics, I have been sleeping less than I have in many years. Slowly I can see the onset of the memory deficits that plagued me a decade ago. As an undergrad I was pretty blasé about my grades, but now I need to learn information in order to apply it for the treatment of patients and my porous memory is not helping. It doesn't help that by the time I get home in the evening, I don't really feel like studying, even if I have the energy. I think that the impending shelf exam will change my motivation, however. I'll write about my first overnight call in my next post.

-SS

Peds Inpatient

I just finished my first week on the peds inpatient rotation. I'm on the Red team which means we cover the pulmonary, cardiac, and also general peds patients. Aside from the specialty patients, the clinic-med (general peds) patients we have fall into two categories: the mysteries, and cellulitis. There was a rash (forgive the expression) of Staph skin infections this week, but none under my care. My patient was in the mystery category, and since he was completely non-verbal, it was pretty tough to figure out why he was in pain.

It's surprising how little we contribute as 3rd years. I hadn't realized just how little we actually do. There are 4th year students doing sub-internships who are in charge of admitting patients, writing orders, etc, and I though that the 3rd years would be doing things more like that, but we really just do H&P's, and fill out oceans of paperwork. It's not for nothing that 3rd year rotations are called clerkships. Our children's hospital doesn't have an EMR, so everything is done in paper charts scattered all over creation. I really don't care for writing things out longhand, and I can't read half of what the attendings write. If you're going to take the time to write something, why not make it legible? If you don't, you might as well not have written it at all. Generally, I do enjoy the inpatient side of things better, even though my role is less useful than it was in outpatient.

Tooth Fairy

Gunner got up at 5:30 this morning. He was just too excited to sleep. The Tooth Fairy brought him a tooth last night, and he couldn't wait to show it off this morning. His bottom left tooth has popped through the gums! Pretty exciting! Crawling and a new tooth. That's a lot of work for one week. I can understand his excitement, but I cringe to imagine the timing of our wake-up on Christmas morning in a few years.

By the way, why is it that kids only get a prize for loosing a tooth? Isn't it much more work to get one than to loose one?

Mobile

Gunner is crawling! He just figured it out a decent army crawl a couple days ago, and just this afternoon, he decided to go exploring. As of 4:00 this afternoon, he refused to stay in one place, and he refused to go anywhere he is allowed to go. In other words, he explored the less baby-proofed areas of our living space, including three bookcases where he pulled books on top of him and tried to eat the paper. He crawled over a barricade of pillows I put up. He explored the area behind the rocking chair, crawling over the large air intake vent on the floor to get there. He crawled towards the garbage can before I grabbed him. He pushed a rolling chair around the hardwood floor and enjoyed crawling around underneath it. He found the pointy cable hook-up wire that is sticking out of a hole in the floor. He also crawled under the computer desk because he was enthralled with the vast number of wires. I pulled him out several times, gave him a stern look and a "No, Baby!" He proceeded to think that my reprimanding him was hilarious. Maybe he will respond better to my very hardest of stares.

Minutiae

During the first two years of medical school, we are taught volumes about disease, pathogenesis, presentation, and a little about treatment. Often, the diseases we learn about are obscure and rare, but illustrative of a particular physiological principle. There are certain vanishingly rare metabolic diseases which every student learns about, but will never see because only a few dozen people in the world have them. I used to groan and gripe about how these obscure diseases were worthless, that I would never see them, why should I learn about them? Well, I am now formally eating those words. Here is a list of the unusual conditions that I have seen on outpatient pediatrics, usually in the specialty clinics.

Cutis aplasia

Hypomelanosis of Ito (I diagnosed this one!)

Congenital adrenal hypoplasia (not hyper)

Diabetes insipidus (nephrogenic)

Gordon's syndrome

Congenital Central Hypoventilation Syndrome (Ondine's Curse)

Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome (in my NICU time)

4 umbilical hernias in 1 day (apparently they are more common here than elsewhere in the country.)

Bonus points for the readers who at least look on Wiki what these things are.

-SS

Enjoying the moment

We are having a Saturday night at home. Our baby is ready for bed and in his jammies. I wish you could see how happy he is right now. He is thoroughly enjoying this evening's pre-bed activity: dancing with Mom & Dad. So far, we have bebopped to "Sing Sing Sing" by Benny Goodman, waltzed to "So She Dances" by Josh Groban, rumbaed to "Fallen" by Lauren Wood, and we're currently swaying to "Anything You Can I, I Can Do Better" by Bing Crosby and the Andrews Sisters. He especially loved the slightly awkward three-person waltz and the big twirls under his daddy's arm. I hope that I can play this scene back on my life-reel when I die and remember my sweet little 9-month-old baby, his fat dancing body, and my happy little family.

Outpatient = Impatient

So going into medical school I had a suspicion that I wouldn't care for outpatient clinic very much. I didn't ever have anything to base this on, but it's what I thought would happen. Sure enough, it's true. At least based on my 3 weeks of outpatient pediatrics, I don't care for clinic very much. The most excited I got for school this week was the morning I spent in the cardiology clinic reviewing echocardiograms and following up on catheter procedures. Outpatient peds interventions are just much more long-term and lifestyle oriented. Vaccinations, lifestyle, diet, safety, and prevention are the mainstays of successful health, but they just don't get me fired up. I'd much rather be the guy guiding a cath or anesthetizing someone. I'm a pretty control oriented kind of guy, and I'd rather have the outcome of a patient depend more on my own skill and knowledge than on their willingness to follow through on my instructions.

Self-Indulgence

Spiff and I went on a date on Saturday. An actual date! We went somewhere, the two of us, just for fun. My awesome friend, Maggie, watched Gunner so that Spiff and I could go to the new Harry Potter movie. We haven't been on a date since we had the baby nine months ago. Well, we did go for a twenty minute walk while we were on vacation in June, after Gunner had gone to bed and my parents had agreed to listen for him. Can we count that?

I had a great time, and Spiff cooks up a great date. We went to a really cool theater that was originally a Shriner's Temple and has been converted to a single-screen venue. There is a balcony, ornate decor, chandeliers, and a dome in the ceiling. The crowning glory of the place is the floor seating...rows and rows of plush leather couches! Yes, we watched Harry Potter cuddled up together in front of the big screen on a comfy leather love seat. Very cool! I liked the movie a lot, and I loved my time with husband.

The weird thing is that while I enjoyed my time with Spiff, and some freedom from mommy responsibilities, I found myself missing Gunner. After being engrossed in the movie for a bit, I found myself looking around, expecting to find Gunner rolling around on the floor in front of me. Or I would look at my watch and think to myself, "Gunner should be up from his nap any moment," and then I would prepare myself to pause the movie so we could go get him...before realizing that he wasn't with us at all. I guess that's what happens when you spend almost every moment of the last nine months with a baby attached to your hip.

It's also strange to me that something that was so commonplace to me for so long, such as spending one-on-one time with my husband, has become so foreign. We do spend time together, after Gunner has gone to bed. But we haven't been outside of the house together, without the baby, and I admit that it felt strange to have an empty car seat in the back of the car. I also felt strange about asking my friend to give up her Saturday to watch my son, along with her own two sweet kids. I'm so grateful to her for giving Spiff and me the time together, but since the movie was so long, I felt like I was taking advantage of her. She has definitely earned some brownie points, and some IOU's of babysitting with me.

The new stuff

I'm nearly done with two weeks of third year, but have yet to post on this here blog.  

Week 1 was spent in the healthy newborn nursery at one of our sister hospitals here.  The day started at 0630 and lasted until 3-4 if we weren't on call, or until 9 if we were on call.  We would do exams on any babies that had been born during the night, write up the H&P, and write progress notes on any babies that we were following from previous days.  At 0830 we would round with the attending, giving him a brief synopsis of the infant's pre-natal history, any significant physical findings, and discharge plans.  I have to admit, we were pretty spoiled because our intern had a sheet that spelled all this out in the order in which our attending wanted to hear it.   The one night of call I had I spent in the NICU.  There was an infant born at 29 weeks gestation who weighed about 2 lbs, and there was another infant born with hypoplastic left heart syndrome. 

 This is a relatively rare congenital heart defect in which there is almost no left ventricular tissue.  In lay terms, that means the heart is not really able to pump blood to the systemic (as opposed to pulmonic) circuit.  As a result, the child can only receive blood from the right ventricle via remnant of fetal circulation.  In the fetus, there is a connection between the left and right atria, known as the foramen ovale as well as between the pulmonary artery and the aorta, known as the ductus arteriosus.   In this infant with a hypoplastic left heart, we keep these open with a substance called prostaglandin E2 (PGE2), until such time as the infant is able to survive the three open heart surgeries necessary to enable life.  Without the PGE2, the ductus arteriosus will close in a matter of days and the infant will die.  

 As an MS3, my role was simply to stand in the background, ask questions, and not contaminate anything.  We resuscitated these infants right outside the C-section room, and prepared them for a brief trip down the hall to the NICU.  It was pretty hard for me to see the dad of the hypoplastic heart baby because he was filming his brand new baby with his iPhone because I knew we were both aware of the fact that those seconds of video could very well be the only keepsake these parents get to have of their baby.  Being in the NICU in general was challenging emotionally because I mentally place Gunner in the little isolettes and had little daymares of terrible illnesses that could have befallen him.  I don't know why we were blessed with a baby who didn't have any problems, but I am grateful. 

Week 2: 

I've been in outpatient pediatrics this week.  Outpatient clinic is a combination of general pediatrics as well as specialty  clinics.  I've spent about half the week in U Peds, our general peds clinic, and about half in specialty clinics.  I've been in the cystic fibrosis (CF), asthma, diabetes, and allergy clinics.  Generally I enjoy the specialty clinics more, since there seems to be greater emphasis on the patient's disease and its management, rather than in Upeds where there are a lot more social issues in addition to any pathology.  I don't consider myself to be anti-social, I do enjoy being with patients and talking with them.  I just don't relish trying to fix all that is wrong with their lives that is not health related.  I realize that there are social workers who can bear most of this burden, but trying to find a car seat for someone or help them get WIC or TANF (welfare) isn't very gratifying.  Thus far, actually, I haven't seen very much pathology, at least that is grossly visible, our work has mostly been well-child visits and maintenance checkups for chronic conditions. 

In other news, I got my board scores back yesterday and I was very pleased with the result.  There should be no difficulty, from a scores standpoint anyway, pursuing whatever it is I choose to do. 

Cleaning house, Petunia Dursley Style

"The kitchen door had opened, and there stood Harry's aunt, wearing rubber gloves and a housecoat over her nightdress, clearly halfway through her usual pre-bedtime wipe-down of all the kitchen surfaces."  (from The Half-Blood Prince, p. 46)

I used to think that Petunia was obsessive and overboard with cleaning.  I used to think that a daily wipe-down ritual was crazy and time spent on something far too unpleasant.  That's what I used to think...

Until I got home from my three-week vacation to find ants in my kitchen.

Gross.

Spiff thinks that I over-react to the teeny, tiny little insects I found marching over my kitchen floor.  However, I remember all too well the ant infestation in a house I shared with roommates, that centered around the kitchen sink.  I remember the sight of thousands of little insects constantly framing the sink.  I remember thinking that the kitchen sink was moving, if I caught a glance of it out of the corner of my eye.  I also remember feeling that if I consumed anything that came from the kitchen, the food must also be crawling with little marching creatures.  It still makes my skin crawl and my stomach turn to think of it.

This is why I no longer think that Petunia Dursley is crazy, at least about kitchen cleanliness.  I have taken to wiping down all kitchen surfaces and mopping the floor with bleach water every night.  I also spray any little beast I find swarming over dropped pieces of ramen noodles with Lysol, and then I mop, mop, mop my cares away.

So, if you drop by my house around 8:00 in the evening, you might find me donning my housecoat and my rubber gloves, with Lysol in one hand and a bucket of bleach in the other.  We're aiming for an ant-free kitchen here!

Vacation

We had a great three-week marathon vacation.  Here's a quick summary:

• Oregon for a week, where we fit in all the family and friends we could handle (dinners with friends, wedding preparations, bridal shower & bachelorette party, the wedding, and a day on the coast, and even a could bike rides for the boys).  
  
• Utah for a few days of the other side of the family, some family pictures, and a whole lot of Wii Mariocart.
  
• Home for two days, just enough time to see Spiff's mom (who happened to be in town), and to pack for another vacation.
  
• Michigan for a week of fun at the cabin on the lake.  The weather turned out to be unseasonably cold, so there was no swimming, no boating, and mostly just huddling together and trying to keep warm.

We are back from vacation, and I am glad to be home.  Gunner is also glad to be home.  We completely wore him out, and he has spent the past few days sleeping and sleeping.  Spiff is working again.  Our three weeks of freedom were great, and I'm not sure it has hit me that he has started his 3rd year.  It still sort of feels like he's still just studying like mad for the boards.  I'm sure it will feel different tonight when he gets home from call after 10:00, and after being at the hospital since 6:30 this morning.  We have to get used to a new normal for the next few years.  

The highlight of our trip was Spiff's sister's wedding.  She was stunning, the wedding was beautiful, and the party was fabulous.  Check it out:

The happy couple.  She is beautiful!  

(And he looks great, too.  But come on, seriously, all eyes are on the bride on her wedding day!)

Sister Sassy (the bride) herself made these stunning cut-paper centerpieces.  This is only one of four sides, and there were about eight(?) designs.  They were lit from the inside, and absolutely stunning!  My sissy is so talented!

The Cake!

Seven amazing layers of deliciousness.

The Centerpiece.

Mouthwatering Indian food and fruit bar.

The dance floor before the lights were dimmed.

I took these pictures to capture how vibrant the saris were.

Turns out, the whole thing looked even more amazing when the lights were out.

Third Year

I start my third year of medical school tomorrow.  My first rotation is pediatrics, and the first week will be spent in the neonatal nursery.  Since this year will be unlike any of my previous schooling, I am a little apprehensive.  As the previous post mentioned, I was able to spend a day in the OR with my friend back home. While there, she let me intubate a patient, put in an LMA ( which is another airway device), and start an arterial line (analagous to an IV, only intra-arterial).   I have to say, it was way cool.  Anyway, not much more to say other than hopefully this blog will become exponentially more interesting now that I'm doing more than just studying day in and day out. 

-SS

Vacation

We are in Oregon for Spiff's sissy's wedding! We're on vacation...finally! And what is Spiff up to today? He is at the hospital, shadowing our anesthesioligist friend in the OR. It's great experience for him, especially since she is the doctor who really inspired him to be interested in anesthesia in the first place. So, he's taking a working vacation today.

What I am enjoying on this trip:

1. Spending time with Spiff.
2. Seeing our family.
3. Seeing our beloved friends.
4. Fabulous Oregon weather (it's cool, breezy, and I don't automatically break into a sweat when I step outside).
5. And of course, I'm excited about the wedding! I can't wait to see what Connie has cooked up for the reception!
   

The wait

Well, I took the exam on friday. It took just over seven hours to complete. The exam is administered in seven blocks of 48 questions which you have an hour to complete. There is 45 minutes of break time as well, that can increase if you finish a block early, as I am prone to do. My strategy was to do four blocks, take lunch, do two, break, and finish the last block. By the end of my fourth block, I was pretty tired and my brain was starting to feel fuzzy. Block 6 was really difficult, either because my brain was foggy or because it truly was tough. There were many times when I could narrow it down to two answers, and would just have to take a semi-educated guess. The difficult thing about Step 1 of the USMLE is that there are 336 questions, but not all 336 are graded. The exam draws from a random assortment of questions from a huge question bank. In order to deem a question worthy of being included, it must be presented as a trial question for several years, which means it is included in the exam, but not scored lest it be an unfair question. Consequently, I could kill myself for several minutes on an insanely hard question that may not actually be part of my grade. The challenge lies in not knowing how many and which of my questions are not "real" questions.

I really don't have a very good feel for how I did. During practice exams I could usually tell how I did based on the inverse of my emotions. If I finished a practice block feeling good, then the score was usually lower than if I finished feeling apprehensive. All of the questions are blended together in my head though, and I really don't have a good feel for how I did. I would really like to do as well as my practice scores at the end of my studying, but I'm not too sanguine about that. Again, I don't know if that's realism or if I'm just psyching myself out in case I don't do as well as I would like. Here's a graph of my progress that I made using my practice scores.
As you can see, there is generally an upward trend, at least if you look at the lowest scores. Overall I improved significantly from my beginning scores, but who knows if that bears out in the real thing. I'll post in July when I finally find out my score, and that will settle things once and for all.

Verge

I take the boards tomorrow. Step 1 of the USMLE will, to a great degree, determine my options for residency. It is doubtful that I will score well enough to do dermatology or plastics, which fortunately do not appeal anyway. It is also doubtful that my score will consign me to the least competitive specialties. I've worked my butt off for 2 years, and doubly so for the past 5 weeks. Like many hard workers, I think that medical students are prone to overestimate the time they actually spend working. However, for the last 5 weeks, I have spent between 10-12 hours a day, 6 days a week reviewing and learning what I spent 2 years studying. That means conservatively, I spent 300 -360 hours studying for this exam. I'm not boasting or bragging, just recounting what I have done for the last 5 weeks. Board studying is an insatiable beast. I can never "be done". Everyone always says "oh, you'll be fine, just take a break, you know everything you need" etc... Nope, there's always some cytokine that I've forgotten, some immunodeficiency syndrome to review, some drug side effect (thank you very much, psycho-active drugs) to learn and re-learn, and re-re-learn. At some point, which happened at 9:30 this evening, I admit that the time for preparation is over.
-SS

Inherent Flaw

I have done a little clothing shopping lately. I don't usually shop for clothes, due to lack of funds. In fact, the last dress I bought was my wedding dress 4 1/2 years ago. My wardrobe is full of old, worn, dated clothing, and with my changed post-baby body, I have found that some of it just doesn't fit me anymore. So, I am trying to find some items that will give my sad little wardrobe a small boost to get me through the next few years. I have a few requirements, and I don't think I'm picky. I still can't find what I need.

Dresses: There are about a zillion dresses for sale. I would say that 80% of these are of the sleeveless/spaghetti strap variety. The others are too short, too low, too old, too young, or just too expensive. The dress I found for my sissy-in-law's wedding is cute, but it had to be altered just a bit to make it modest (Thank You, Maggie!).

T-shirts: I believe that these requirements are simple. I want something that is comfortable. Not too tight, too short, too low, or too wide in the neckline, or expensive. Am I asking too much?

Here's the flaw, as said sissy-in-law pointed out: Most women don't actually have the bodies that fit the clothing that is being sold. Most of us don't have fabulous upper arms, so why are all the dresses sleeveless? Also, I would say that the majority of women don't want to dress like skanky chickies. So, why are all of the shirts tight and low?

Progress Report

The Binkie:  It seems as if we have gotten rid of our crutch.  Gunner hasn't taken a binkie in three weeks.  I still have them around, just in case, and I have reached for them in times of desperation.  But, he doesn't suck on them anymore.  He chews on them, and them takes them out of his mouth and waves them around in the air.  He treats them like a little chew toy.  And now I know that he no longer needs them at all.

Sleep Training:  Gunner is sleeping better these days.  I don't want to jinx it by announcing it to the world, but I have to acknowledge that he has done very well during this past week.  We have changed our bedtime routine a bit, and he has been responsible for putting himself to sleep at bedtime.  We have also decided that it is not hunger that wakes him up before midnight, and instead of rushing into him to quickly rock him back to sleep, he has to figure it out on his own.  I think that we had been over-stimulating him at these wakings, and the effect was hours and hours of crying (for all of us!) because he just couldn't get back to sleep.  This hasn't happened in over a week!  Nap times are getting better as well.  He has taken some good naps this week, and it usually doesn't take him too long to settle himself down for a nap.  Also, if he's asleep and wakes up while we're transferring him to his crib, he knows how to get comfortable enough to go back to sleep.  That has been a good good thing.

Again, I'm not trying to jinx anything.  Nor am I blowing my own horn by saying that we have done something spectacular that has solved all of our problems.  I am completely aware that this could be a week-long phase.  Maybe his problem was that he was teething (he doesn't have any teeth  yet), and it hasn't been bothering him this week.  Maybe he's in a growth spurt and he needs to sleep more.  Or maybe...just maybe...he is figuring out how to comfort himself.

Whatever the case may be, we have had a good week of sleeping.  It seems that this long, difficult five weeks of sleep training has done some good.  It couldn't have come at a better time because Spiff's big test is tomorrow.  And it sure has been nice to get a few good nights of sleep!  I sort of forgot how it feels to sleep for more than three consecutive hours.