Dance As If No One Were Watching

A few nights ago Grandma and Grandpa took all of us to see The Princess and The Frog and it is a very good movie. Perhaps my favorite part was during one really exciting jazzy song my daughter turns to me and loudly whispers, "Hold my popcorn. I need to dance!" Then proceeds to give me her popcorn and dances right there in front of her seat in the movie theater. She then danced again at the very end of the movie. So it was a big hit for our family.

Out Of Commission

Sorry for the looooong lack of posts. Our pretty new, sleek laptop broke. I took it in and as it turns out that enter key Greg pulled off ended up messing up the whole keyboard and the LCD screen also needs a total replacement. I swear we didn't do anything to it, but hp swears that's the only way this could have happened. So now we're waiting on the parts and everything. I had to get out our old laptop. This thing has serious issues that make it rather impossible to do anything. So I'll probably be unplugged until the new one returns home.

Terrifying

Today Charlotte went to the dentist for the first time, which is so not the terrifying part to this post. In fact I enjoy going to the dentist very much. But that's where the story begins. We were going to the dentist. Our neighborhood is set up very much like a lot of city neighborhoods were around the time it was built. The houses ring a block that has an alley intersecting it so our backyard looks onto our across the alley neighbor's backyard. That alley way is the access to people's garages or parking pads so you don't have to park on the street and worry about getting parking tickets each month during street cleaning day. Who can even remember when street cleaning day is? I can't so I'm really glad we have an alley and back parking area. I like the set up a lot. In fact it has facilitated me getting to know a whole slew of neighbors that I normally wouldn't have seen and quite a few handymen/maintenance guys that regularly use the alley for access to whatever house they're working on. But none of this is the terrifying part to my day. Back to the story.

I backed out of our parking pad and then pulled forward so that I could get out and close our gate. As I did this I noticed some man walking a ways further down the alley. I thought nothing of it because people use the alleys as short cuts all the time. So I put the car in park and jump out to close the gate.

When the gate is closed I turn and look towards my car to get back in it, but said man who I thought was much further down the alley is now loitering at the front passenger side bumper of my car. As I step toward the car he walks across the front of my car and starts sauntering down the driver's side of the car. Of the running car that my children are strapped into. My stomach flips upside down and my heart is in my throat when I casually say, "Hey." Usually when I say that even people who I previously thought were shady will say "How you doin?" and suddenly turn friendly. Not this scary man. He just keeps sauntering down the car looking in it and then down the alley ahead of him and then back in it.

I have made it to the back of my car and would have advanced into the driver's seat but for this figure who makes no motion to show he even sees me. Luckily he doesn't decide to steal the car and kidnap the kids. And I receive a momentary lull in terror. Then as he reaches the end of the car he drifts back to the center of the alley, which means he's heading in my direction. What am I going to do? Just as I'm in full panic mode he walks on.

What was going to happen? If the kids hadn't been in the car would I still have a car? What if he had taken my babies? What if he had attacked me? What if he was just on some sort of drugs? I have no idea, but as I got into the car my whole body was shaking from our brush with disaster.

**UPDATE**
After reading comments I just thought I'd add that I DO feel safe in my home and on my alley. I know who my neighbors are and our neighborhood. The city of St. Louis is big and noisy and diverse, but I have grown to enjoy it quite a lot. Moving here I have had to learn to really listen to my instincts about people to avoid and when to realize what I'm feeling is just preconceived fear of the unknown. I don't think that it would be a good idea to let one crazy experience in our alley jade me against living here. My more important lesson is to not be in such a hurry that I don't analyse any situation.

As far as hand guns or any other weapons I personally wouldn't feel comfortable carry them on my person. Also, I can't ever see myself feeling comfortable shooting anyone, ever. For me I think it would be good to practice and get comfortable using self defense of some nature. Or I could get my mom's T-ball bat and wear it as a necklace? If you want to carry a weapon, more power to you, but its just not for me.

Warm Fuzzies

There are probably about a billion better things you could be reading right now, but I just wanted to take a minute to tell everyone how much I love my husband at Christmastime. He loves Christmas. He loves everything about it and wishes it would snow every year for him. Unless you know him very well you would never know he is so passionate about the season because he has a very quiet, subtle passion. But when you know it seems like a little secret you share with him and the others that know him and it adds so much to the holiday spirit. I catch him humming "It's the most wonderful time of the year!" in his little hum all the time and I just love it. I love how he's instilling that joy and excitement into our kids. I also loved listening him tell Charlotte the Christmas story the other night while doing dishes.

Tonight, even though he has to take the shelf exam on Friday, when I asked that we drive around the town to look at Christmas lights he agreed. Also, when I started singing Christmas songs in the car (something I'm sure my sister would have said, "let's listen to the professionals" to) he chimed in and the two of us key surfed our way through a half hour of the songs. He even suggested some of his own. No wonder Charlotte loves to sing in the car. (Her favorite one right now is the "pum pum song" which is The Little Drummer Boy. After days of singing this song over and over she asked us tonight if the boy was "hitting his head" which put an interesting new twist to the song.)

I am just amazed at what a wonderful leader he is for our family and I love him for it.

What's Not Getting Done

When I came back from Thanksgiving break I realized that I had litterally two weeks to "do Christmas" at our house before heading back to family for the holiday. And you want to know what happens when you have a two year old, a six month old, and two weeks to get everything in? A lot of stuff doesn't get done. Because I hosted Joy School this week, and went to the library story time that Charlotte loves, and cleaned up after three accidents in the bathroom, and other errands that I do on a regular and an irregular basis we didn't make Christmas cookies. In fact, Daniel made us some peanut butter cookies with mini kisses in them and I think we might call that good. Since next week we have Christmas parties, finishing making some presents, more Joy School festivites, dentist appointments, flu shot boosters, Daniel taking the shelft, Music Makers and getting ready for vacation errands I probably wont be doing extra stuff then either. We're pretty lucky we have our decorations up at all. Most of what I'm not doing is stuff I didn't want to do anyway, but there's one thing I'm pretty sad I'm not fitting in. I'm not doing Christmas cards this year. After we went and got great family photos and everything. I just can't fit it in. So Merry Christmas to everyone I love.

In His "Off Time"

Just look at what my sweet husband installed last weekend!

First the before:


The fireplace surround is cement pressed into a broken brick pattern and then painted red.

And then the after:


Doesn't it look beautiful? In case you can't see it we picked 3"x6" travertine tiles with smaller tiles as accents. Then Daniel, who is incapable of just doing something plain, installed the tiles on the floor in a herringbone pattern. We ended up with only 4 tiles to spare. Pretty good judgement I'd say. Also, he installed a working, ventless gas log insert! It is so much fun to actually have a fire in our fireplace!

A Popular Subject

Wow! I guess a lot of you liked the last subject so I guess I'll flush out our thoughts on residency a little more. Dan wants to go into Orthopedics and is thinking of maybe specializing in either knee and hip replacement or pediatric orthopedics. Those specializing opportunities sort of color our preferences for residency since he'd need to do a year fellowship in pediatrics if that's the route he wanted to go. It would be really nice to have a year fellowship at the same place as his residency since we wouldn't really want to move our kids that much, but then again kids bounce back and he's not totally sold on the pediatric business.

Keep in mind that Dan has a list of somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 programs he's going to apply for. I once made the mistake of asking him where they all were, but then stopped listening at around 15. There's just too many possibilities and we really have very little say over where we end up. That's why I've chosen to focus on three. Three seems to be the number that my brain can actually handle.

Anyway, Daniel talked to his advisor after she'd met with someone from University of Colorado and she said it was sort of a long shot for him, even with his good board score and grades. There's just a lot of applicants and there's only really two spots open for students who didn't go there for medical school. She said though if we even wanted a shot at all he'd have to do an away rotation there. We'd really like to live in Denver because it's close to my sister and easily within driving distance to Dan's brother. We could also drive to other extended family on both sides even though that would be a long drive. Also, they have a pediatric fellowship and Daniel really likes how the residency program is set up. Knowing nothing about the programs I have no comment on that. On top of that Colorado is awesome.

She also raised concern about U of U. It is a little less difficult to get in, but, like Janelle said in the comments, their reputation is to stay away from our demographic (that being married with children and active in the Latter-Day Saint religion). Luckily Daniel didn't attend BYU as an undergrad because we've heard they really shy away from those students. I have no idea anything about the program other than Dan said it was "really good." We'd like to be in Salt Lake because it's fairly central to both sides of our extended family. Plus, I have a Grandma in Salt Lake that I'd really like to be able to live close to for health reasons.

The Mayo Clinic is also very competitive program, but each year a few students from Daniel's medical school go there for residency. They don't have a pediatric fellowship though so that's one drawback. But Daniel pretty much loves the way their program is set up. It has a lot of one on one instruction. I have heard NOTHING but positive reviews from people who have lived or vacationed there. Everyone loves it. The only cause for concern is that I looked Rochester up in my gardening book and it has the same climate zone as Siberia. SIBERIA! My husband is thinking of taking our family up to Siberia to become frozen Popsicles. He knows what a wimp I am.

So last night after reading the email from his advisor Dan said, "I guess I'm going to have to ask her what she thinks isn't a long shot for me."

Pushing Ahead

We're about halfway through third year in medical school and do you know what that means? Well neither do I when it comes to the actual schooling aspect of medical school. I guess my question should have been, do you know what that means for me? because honestly, that's way more interesting than say plugged sweat glands. Which, by the way, if Daniel ever starts to talk about those you should plug your ears and run away. At first you might think it could be one of those gross but oddly captivating stories. Then you realize that you just wish you didn't know what you now know. Trust me on this one. Saddly I know what I'm talking about.

Back to the point. Half way through third year. What happens now is that everyone starts seriously thinking and talking about where they want to apply for residency, where they want to realistically live for residency, where they'd be OK with living for residency, where they would rather poke their eyes out, but would live anyway if that's where they got matched to in residency. You know why all our friends are talking about this? Because next year they do away rotations, which is basically a month long interview where the program gets to see you at your very worst because you're still learning this stuff, but you want to make a good impression. Good luck with that one Sweetie.

Anyway, the point here is that we're talking and thinking and looking forward to moving, but we're still not done with our projects here! Or maybe that's not the point I was meaning to make, but it doesn't matter because it certainly is true. Maybe I'm seeing all these projects and getting a little panicky because I got home from vacation last night to realize that I have literally two weeks to get all our holiday stuff done before going back on vacation. Aaaaahhh!

I remember what my point was supposed to be now. My point was that I was thinking about all these places to live and realized that it doesn't really matter to me where we live as much as I previously thought it would. I think I can say with pretty good confidence now that I have lived in a variety of places in the US. Corvallis, OR-small college town filled with big-store hating, tree loving outdoorspeople. Clarkston, UT-filled with, well I don't think you can say that any place that has a population of 750 is "filled" but mostly you've got farmers. Spokane, WA- good sized city in the northwest, pretty average America I'd say. St. Louis, MO- big city. Lots of people. Lots of differences.

Anyway, I can pretty much say that I have loved every place I've lived in. Truly loved them all. Mostly people who know me can't believe that I spent a year living in a single wide in the middle of nowhere, but I loved that too. The middle of nowhere has great people living in it. So does St. Louis. I love the sights and sounds of the city. I love the sights and sounds of the country. I love it all. So I guess it doesn't really matter where we end up for residency.

PS. But just for the curious. As of right now the tops of our list for away rotation applications are:

• Mayo clinic in Rochester, MN
• University of Colorado in Denver, CO
• University of Utah in Salt Lake City, UT

Travelling Alone....Sort of

Our flight left at 6 AM, meaning we had to be at the airport at 5 AM, meaning I had to get my two children out of the house by 4:30 AM. Torture, but that's what you do for family. Plus, my daughter's excitement to see Grandma pretty much made up for it.

I had packed cereal cups to eat for breakfast and when we got through security I bought milk. We made our way down to the gate and I opened up Charlotte's cereal and got her settled as a man came up to gate check the stroller. He said we'd have about 20 minutes tops to eat our breakfast. I figured that would be fine. That is until Charlotte looks up to me and says the words every potty trained child inexplicably knows to say at just the wrong time, "Pee pee Mommy."

I look around at all the carry-ons that we had set down and rifled through to get breakfast out and wildly tried to think of a way to get all of them, our stroller, and us down one story to the bathrooms, have her go and be back up in time to eat breakfast before we had to board. My mind quickly ground to a halt, realizing that there was no conceivable way this could be done. I'm there mumbling, "pee pee...uh.....pee pee. Ok, hmm..." when a wonderful good Samaritan stepped in. A young woman sitting next to us heard the whole interchange and said, "I know I'm a stranger, but I can stay with your baby while you take her to the bathroom." Without even thinking I said, "Thank you!" Took Charlotte and ran. I got her squared away and back in enough time for her to finish her Lucky Charms and run right onto the plane. It wasn't until we were in the air that I realized I probably should have been a little more wary, but sometimes you just have to rely on the kindness of strangers and I am so very thankful.

Other than that our trip was surprisingly uneventful. Greg slept through over half of both flights and Charlotte only got antsy about getting out of her seat about half an hour from the end. Greg did like to do short, loud yells so that people would look at him, which was slightly embarrassing, but at least he wasn't awake for very long and also he wasn't screaming his head off.

So we're here at Grandma's house and settled in. Now if we could just adjust to the two hour time zone difference.

Pajamas

This Saturday my two children and I will be flying across country without the aid of my husband. Our plane leaves at around 6 AM. Any suggestions? Also, do I even worry about the fact that my two almost three year old will be in her pajamas all day?

Daddy's Little Girl

A while back a friend of mine whose hobby is photography asked if she could try her hand at photographing a family, our family. I said sure. We went out last Friday. She just sent me a link to the album she created for us. I think they look awesome and I'm sure we will use one for our Christmas cards. Then I got to see the last one in the album and my brain practically exploded with how beautiful it was.

Thank you so much Kara!

The Stats And Another Funny Quote

We had Greg's six month check-up.

Height: 26 1/2" (50%)
Weight: 20 lbs 2 oz (90%)

So he's not extremely tall, but boy does he pack a punch! The doctor said that what Charlotte had last week was most likely H1N1 which actually gave me a little relief from worry. I'll probably still vaccinate her, but I don't have to worry so much about our air travel during the holidays. (Note: If you are thinking of commenting on how I might still want to worry, don't.)

Dan is currently on family practice rotation which is an absolute dream for the family. He has breakfast with us and is home for dinner. He only works a half day Mondays (he spends the other half studying though). And get this! He only has to work every other Friday. AWESOME. So last weekend since he got housework in on Friday we all went out Saturday late afternoon and evening to the zoo. We let Charlotte pick where we went so we went to the bird house, which she has taken a fancy to lately. As we were going by each cage she would ask me what the bird was and why this bird couldn't get out ("I told you the last time. The wires keep the bird in.") Then we came up to some guinea foul of some variety and instead of asking the kind of bird she says, "That's a pirate bird, Mommy." Who knew?

Glad It Happened Now

Guess who turns into a banshee screaming zombie when he teethes? For a solid 48 hours nobody slept in our house. The only positive I can think to this situation is at least it happened now and not say on the airplane on the way to vacation.

Also, Dan put in light switches upstairs! Honest to goodness hard wired light switches. For all the lights. And he's in the middle of installing a fan light for the bathroom! It's amazing how much you appreciate the simple things.

Also, Dan uttered the phrase I have been waiting for a year for him to say a few days ago. After he finished the last light switch box he turned to me and said, "I think I'd be OK with buying a newer house next time." Yahtzee! It's a whole lot easier to do voluntary projects to give your home "character" than it is to fix plaster walls, re-plumb the bathroom, and wire and entire floor.

Caution: May Impair Judgement

When your six month old only takes a total of an hour and twenty minutes of nap in a day, then by dinner you may have this happen. I've entitled this one "fine then eat it yourself."

And this one Charlotte named "My project"

Wishing for Photographic Evidence

In my ongoing battle against the trumpet vine suckers that keep popping up into my vegetable garden I hit a new high and a new low today. You see after going to the botanical gardens last week and seeing how perfectly their vegetable beds had been cleared and readied for winter I decided I had better take the opportunity this nice weather is giving me and do the same. The more I work now, the easier it will be in the spring right?

So I started digging up the overgrown weeds and ends of the vegetable plants last week. Turns out we had loads of carrots in there that I knew nothing about. That's what you get when you let a two year old plant the seeds for you.

It's been pretty slow going. Not because of the leaves that have fallen on top of everything or the grass that has encroached the withered pumpkin vine, but because of the evil trumpet vine. You heard me. EVIL. They must have powers from the devil since they seem impervious to roundup!

Anyway, today I went out thinking I'd at least get another one foot strip done in the thing. I came upon five trumpet vine shoots coming out of the ground together. It has been my experience if I just dig deep enough all those shoots will eventually converge onto one root stem that I can then pull out. So I dug and I dug and I dug (or is it digged?) until I hit what I thought was a huge rock. I showed it to Daniel as he was leaving for work (he's in family medicine right now) and he said that it wasn't a rock, but the root and I should just try to wedge the shovel under it. Well, it took me another 15 minutes to get the right leverage, but then the beauty came up!

Picture this if you will: two feet long, three inches in diameter, a foot and a half underground. I had dug up a LOG! Well, not really a log, it was indeed the root for the trumpet vine. In my heart I felt victory, and defeat. I had truly unearthed a huge part of the problem, but if that's how big the root for five tiny vines was I am in real trouble. I will never win to this plant. It will eventually overtake the lawn, and then start creeping up the walk to the deck. Finally it will engulf the entire house and we will never be able to step foot out the front door. Good news, we're moving before that could ever happen.

Oh and picture this as well: Charlotte was delighted when I finally got the log out of the ground because she could then fit herself into the hole in the ground. She called it her chair. She sat in her chair and found a worm coming out of one of the clumps of dirt she covered her skirt with. She uncharacteristically picked the worm up and called it her pet. Boy was she really miffed when I told her that she needed to get out of it so I could fill it in.

6 months

Today my son is six months old. Can you believe that? I sure can't. In the future when people ask me how third year in medical school went I will say quickly.

Charlotte came down with a fever last Saturday night and it hasn't really left her yet. I thought it had, then she woke up from her nap today with a return of the fever. I waited an hour thinking maybe she was just hot from sleeping, but it never went away. YUCK.

Then last night when Dan went to get Greg so I could feed him before going to bed we discovered that he had been throwing up on himself. When he picked the little guy up we realized Greg wasn't asleep, he just wasn't wanting to move his body at all. He didn't want to hold his head up or lift his arms and he didn't want to nurse. Or have his pacifier in his mouth. Or take tylenol. When we got it in him he threw it up 2 minutes later. You could tell Greg was scared too because of the look on his face as his body was heaving. I was really scared and I knew it was bad because Daniel was really scared too. Turns out this morning he's fine, but that was pretty much the scariest thing that's happened with him so far. Nothing equates to the fear you feel when your infant is sick and scared in the middle of the night.

Chicken N Dumplings

Last night I made chicken and dumpling stew. It was wonderful. I love dumplings. love. love. love. Charlotte I thought would love them too since they're mostly just flour, which she has taken to eating all by itself lately (gross). She didn't.

Dan: "Charlotte you need to finish your dumpling."
Charlotte: "No I don't."
Dan: "You need to eat three bites of carrot and two bites of chicken then. And be done with that sass."
Charlotte: "I'm not done with the sass yet."

I'm pretty sure she wasn't really clear on what sass was, but it sounded much better than chicken or carrot.

To Be Human Again

Boy it's sad when the titles of your posts come from Disney. Oh well. I do feel human again. And you know why? I slept. I slept and slept and slept. And the family rejoiced. Or at least the husband portion of it anyway. I'm fairly certain the child portion doesn't register much in the way of the mommy portion. Except one funny conversation that my daughter had with a friend of mine who was watching her.

Charlotte: "What's wrong with your finger?"

Friend: "I burned it."

Charlotte: "When Mommy burns sheself she gets mad."

And it's so very true. So at least she notices some things.

Our Halloween went well. (I was going to try to segue that, but I couldn't think of anything. So I decided you could just follow me along.) Charlotte was perhaps the quietest lion you have ever seen and Greg was a ghost.

She wouldn't let me comb out her hair to be the mane which was the crowning part of the cotume, but she's two and a half so, whatever.Apparently the best part of his costume was his ability to eat it.

I'm the only one in the family not in a costume. Daniel went as a logger. When an hour went by and nobody asked him what he was I told him that proved you can't just wear your normal clothing and call it a costume (even if your clothing is a costume for other people).

And because I got such a great response (thanks Grandma Jane and Grandpa Mel) to the other two videos I posted, here's another little one. I like to call it Guarding the Pumpkin.

Conspiracy Theory

My family is trying to kill me. Do I have hard evidence of that? No. But I give you my reasoning:

Why would my sweet child, who had previously been sleeping at least 5 hours at a time if not 7, suddenly decide to revert back to 3?

Why would my husband have to work evening shift last week and then night shift this week at the hospital catching babies? Or is he just saying he has to work, but really he's in cahoots with the non sleeping child? Maybe he's going over to someone else's house. Someone who has a sleeping child. Then he comes back home at 8 AM and goes back to bed to sleep for six more hours just to throw me off the scent.

Why would my sweet older child decide to get sick right at the same time? Requiring me to wake up multiple times a night and get her water so she doesn't cough until she throws up. This means I have gotten no more than two hours of sleep at a time.

Why also would my sweet child decide that he no longer can self soothe when waking up too early from his afternoon nap? Then my dear husband doesn't know how to soothe him so I must then wake up from the only nap I've had in DAYS in order to get said child back to sleep.

Then to top it all off, I'm awake from soothing said child so I pick up the house. Dear husband doesn't want me to get too suspicious so he helps pick up the house. Then what does dear husband do? Goes to sleep!

You may say that I'm crazy. You may say that all of these just happen to coincide at the same time. But I know the truth. They're slowly but surely trying to kill me.

It's A Pack Pack

We went shopping on Saturday and Charlotte found another thing she's in love with. I took a video.

She wore it around Eddie Bauer for a good five minutes before we made her take it off.

Strange things my daugher loves:

• Unsharpened pencils
• Buckets
• Water bottles
• Rulers
• Pack Packs