more wonderful moments

Clare is such a good older sister. Always has been and hopefully always will be.

 We stopped for doughnuts one morning after cleaning the church and then our house.

 Dave sometimes accuses me of not feeding Jo enough. She is 0% for weight (17 lbs at 15 months). So, I give her peanut butter and other fatty good food whenever possible to prove I am doing my best to fatten her up.

She loves these little peanut butter packets.  she is the cutest little thing. I can't get enough of her!

One of the funnest parts of gymnastics is going on the bungees. The older kids use them to practice tricks without worrying about falling on their head. The little kids us them to swing around and have fun and in Lexey's case, practice flipping if possible.

Dave took Lexey to open gym for a daddy daughter date a couple of weeks ago. While they were there one of the coaches picked up lexey and said "I'm going to do a fear check on her" and he proceeded to tell her to stay stiff and straight while he threw her up in the air for a flip. She did not move a muscle. He thought it was pretty funny and declared that she has NO fear whatsoever. We didn't need a gymnastics coach to tell us what we already know about little Lex. She is a fun one! That being said, she does actually have a couple of fears #1 spiders #2 coyotes.

unloading the camera

I keep my little point-n-shoot camera in my purse and take a few pictures here and there. I think it has been a month since I copied the pics onto the computer.

These will be super random...

Jo still takes two naps a day which means it would be easy for me to set up my day with lots of nap time but never able to leave the house. This is great for a well rested baby and a clean house and meals planned but I also try to get out at least one day a week to do something fun with the girls. on one morning we went to Lake Poway for a few minutes. Lexey is a good older sister. It is fun to see Jo growing up and enjoying playing on the swings, slides and with her sisters.

 

Monday afternoon Lexey has speech from 2:30-3pm. Jo and I sit around and wait for Lexey and then Clare gets out at 3:15. It is a lot of sitting around. If I am lucky Dave is home working and I can leave Jo home sleeping while I get the girls and read a book or catch up on phone calls while I wait.

We like to go to the zoo on some Friday mornings, especially when we meet Lexey's friend Maggie there.  The girls decorated this exhibit for a good 30 minutes while we watched the orangutans hang out.

 We went to the national gymnastics day and saw the boo hoo crew band. The kids had fun participating even though it was super hot that day.

Lexey caught a bug on her chest.

This is the kids' favorite activity at a mall nearby. It is like a game on the ipad or iphone but you play with your feet.

Tressel and jo are beginning to notice each other a little more. Tressel is very attentive to jo whenever she has food because he knows she will eventually drop something or quit eating and give him her leftovers.

Jo is starting to notice Tressel more too. She'll be walking around the house and come across him sleeping somewhere and say "oohhhhh" and go to him and pet his face. He is very patient with her and knows that in the family rankings she is way above him even though she is just a little pip squeak.

The lady I visit teach got his hard top lexus convertible. Dave would love a car like this (after loans are paid off and we have a nice piano).

We recently had a military father who was deployed for 9 months arrive home. It was very exciting. Ward members decorated the house and left notes for him on the garage.

Dave took the girls to the rodeo!  They had a blast! They met Pete/Jess and Parker and Glen there.

Dave and I went to see Jekyll and Hyde. It was not nearly as good as it was 15 years ago when I saw it in new york but still a neat experience. Gharadelli sundae afterwards was delicious.

Pretty much died when I saw this turtle mounting another. The guy working at the zoo says the turtle gives it a try about once every 30 minutes (but only really happens once every couple of years)

Lexey and Maggie again.

Jo has major stranger anxiety but still loves my friend Jenn. There are two baby giraffes at the zoo right now that are just darling. Also a baby elephant at the wild animal park which is just about the cutest thing I have ever seen in my life.

Kids painted in between conference sessions.....Jo eating.

safety concerns with doctors and recent AIDS scare

One thing that I do to keep myself grateful to have a busy Dr. husband is compare myself to the ladies whose husbands are deployed in the military. I think to myself "at least my husband is nearby, at least I could get in contact with him if I had a real emergency, at least I know he is safe and not in harms way....."

Well, there are three safety concerns with Drs which are very serious and leave us dr. wives up worrying at night.
 #1. Driving when completely exhaused. There are several resident deaths every year reported. Even with the changes in work hours to try to limit time in the hospital, it is just the nature of the profession that Dr's work to exhaustion sometimes. We had one resident in our program fall asleep at the wheel and fortunately for him, he was not seriously injured. Dave has never fallen asleep as far as I know. Once he was too tired to drive home so we went to pick him up at the hospital.  Once Dan picked him up at the hostpial. Other than that, he braves the road by himself and uses tactics such as open windows, snacks, radio, needing to go to the bathroom, etc. to keep himself awake. 
#2. Driving in the middle of the night. Some of the worst accidents Dave reported seeing in his experience as a dr. on call were car accidents where a truck got on the road going the wrong way in the middle of the night or a drunk driver wreaking havock in the middle of the night. When a dr. gets paged in at 3am, you know that there is nobody on the road besides the truck drivers and the people who have been out partying all night.  Dave is a very defensive driver at night but it is always a concern that he will be hit by somebody who should not be on the road at those hours.
#3. Exposure to patient diseases in the Operating Room (OR) and in the hosptial. I usually only worry about Dave bringing home germs when I have a newborn baby. Aside from those times I am usually a tiny bit understanding about daves disgusting scrubs and shoes all over the house.  The second and very serious exposure comes in the OR when operating on "dirty" patients with Hepititus C and HIV.  I apologize in advance for my very unsympathetic view of life but I hate that Dave has to work on patients who are prisoners, drug seekers and totally ridden with diseases which they have earned through thier their filthy lifesytle.  About 6 weeks ago Dave was nicked with a bloody scalpel while operating on one such dualy diseased patient (HIV and HEPC).  He scrubbed out and checked his gloves and sure enough he had a small nick on his knucle. His attending (who was not supposed to have a scalpel in the field while Dave was inserting a rod into some spine screws) apologized and took him to the ER. There is a protocol for such accidents and Dave spent the rest of the day doing paper work and other appointments. He had his blood tested to make sure he didn't already have HIV and HEPC.  Dave started some anti-retro-viral medication which has potent side effects and came home to tell me what had happened.  Dave admitted that he would have rather not caused me to worry and not even tell me what had happened, but since we was concerned that the meds would make him really sick and we had to take precautions so that I wouldn't get it, he had no choice in the matter. So like a good wife, I worried sick about this for the last 6 weeks.  The medication was a 4 week course and made dave feel tired and lethargic and achy, but not nauseus or really sick like some. That was nice.  This week Dave was able to have his bloodwork done and found out that he does not have HIV. What a relief! The chance of him contracting the disease under the circumstances was very remote but it is still a worry.
Only 19 more months of Dave operating on adults and then he will be a pediatric surgeon and will only operate on children.  There are lots of reasons that this is wondeful and one of them is certianly that he won't have to operate on "dirty" patients.

dave and his research

We have had an interesting year this past year with Dave doing research. He spends a lot of time at home working on the computer analyzing data. Sometimes when he is doing brainless work like chart review he will watch hulu (daily show, bachelorette, the office) while he works. 

This is where they get the term "scaring the crap out of . ..."  

This is one of dave's lab rats. He goes in to the lab once or twice a week to do various things.  The rest of the time he does data analysis and paper writing.


Dave's 1st love is me. His second love are the kids. His third love is his bike.  He loves his bike.  It is a true kindness for him to hook up the kids to his most precious possession and bike around the lake with them.

4th love is ice cream. :)

Dave is never short on visitors (girls) when he is trying to work. The girls love him!

Epseically Lexey. She loves to visit dave and make him listen to you tube songs. She loves "AND I WILL ALWAYS LOVE YOU." and "Firework" and who knows what else! I always tell him he should just tell her no and kick her out but he is too nice.

after dan left we moved dave into dan's old room.

 This was dave's office before. (Calvin's old bedroom painted orange and blue with Michigan stickers all over the walls!)

Prior to moving downstairs to these two offices, dave was upstairs in my bedroom (yes, it is his bedroom too...) Having him upstairs didn't work at all. He was in my way, I was in his way and the girls really never left him alone. It works well that he has "an office" and then the girls occasionally visit him but know he is at work. Once he is upstairs he is not working anymore.

Residency update:  Somebody asks me at least once a month "how much longer do you have?" or "where is dave in his residency now?"

Dave is in his 6th year of a 7 year residency.  This year he will finish up his research time and then mid-June will start his chief year. In the neurosurgery residency here since there are so few residents everyone has a chance to be chief.  It will be a busy but fun year since Dave will get his choice of the great operations going on at any of the UCSD hospitals. He is excited.

Post -residency plans:  Dave is going to do a one year fellowship in pediatric neurosurgery after his chief year. So, next fall, one full year from now, he will be interviewing for fellowship positions.  He will likely interview at 5 or so pediatric hospitals.   Dave will probably have the opportunity to stay in SD if he chooses to but I don't know if he will do that or not. WE LOVE SD but there is value in diversifying the operative experience in residency/fellowship so it may be wise to go elsewhere.  We will be distraught and heartbroken to leave SD.

There is a MATCH for fellowship. I can't believe we have to match again!  I am getting to old for this! I am pretty sure match will be just after Christmas next year. 

Tressel - 3 1/2

The dog is now part of the family. We all love him. Dave loves him most for sure!  Sometimes I get really fed up with him -- he's in the way, he stinks, he poops in the neighbors lawn- and I think I want to get rid of him. One day I said something about wanting to get rid of the dog and Clare ran to get dog food and fed him (one of the dog chores I don't like) even though it was only 3 in the afternoon.  overall, he is a really good dog and now that he is done with his puppy days he rarely runs off and is pretty loyal and obedient.

Lately he is driving me crazy with all that he is getting into in the kitchen.  He is a big dog so of course he can graze the counters and I am always careful not to leave food out. But lately he is being insane. He totally shredded Clare's lunch box (there was no food inside but it smelled like food so he tore it up looking for food.) I keep snack food stashed in my room and he at 15 packets of crackers in my room. He ate a loaf of bread and some tortillas of the counter. He ate oatmeal packets. Every time he eats something he takes it from the kitchen and hides behind the couch and shreads the wrappers and crumbs all over. IT MAKES ME CRAZY. I dont' know why he is being so crazy right now. He is getting exercise. Normally  he is only crazy like this when he isn't getting exercise.  Sometimes he drives me nuts.

Anyway....

About 6 weeks ago Tressel got attacked by another dog at dog beach. It was not a fight, it was a full on attack from the other dog. Tressel and Dave were running full speed down the beach and a dog came from the side and viciously attacked Tressel, taking a huge bite out of his side. The dog continued to try to go at Tressel until the other dog owner could pry him off of Tressel. Tressel was not at all interested in fighting the dog. He just wanted to get away so he could go play. It was a Sunday morning so we had to take Tressel to the emergency pet clinic.

Here is the bite right after it happened while we were still at the beach.


The day after the bite. At home with stitches

 and a cone....
The first day or two tressel laid around. He probably didn't feel that great.  After the first few days he was back to his usual self but still had the cone on.

A few days later the wound started to weep. This is when the girls really freaked out.  They didn't want blood to rub off on them or their clothes or their bed. I can't say I blame them. It was so gross.

Then, the stitches busted open. I was so bugged. The crazy vet used tiny sutures. Dave says he would have used bigger stitches on a 3 year old child, let alone a huge dog with a wound under tension. I was really worried that it would open all the way up or that he'd get infected. The vet wanted me to put him back on antibiotics but when I stopped by the vet office and they tried to charge me $80 for them I said "NO WAY!" and decided to take my chances.

Clare drew this picture of Tressel! So sad!  By this point the kids were pretty weirded out. They didn't let Tressel in their rooms for fear he would get blood on their bed or clothes.

By about the 3 week mark it was looking  a little better. Everything was healed except for the part that had opened up. 

 Dave took the stitches out.  (love his tools? Teasers and finger nail clippers?)  The vet was totally insane and there was no way we were going back to her. She was very inefficient and so slow so it wasn't worth the return trip to get the stitches out there.

Another week later, and it was all scabbed over.

After about 5 weeks....

almost fully healed

Now almost 2 months later there isn't much change. The scar is pretty big. I will be interested to see how it changes with time. Hopefully it will be a little smaller.

 The dog that bit tressel was an Anatolian Shepherd. It looked a little like this but with shorter hair.

The dog was a little bit taller than Tressel and probably about the same weight.  When the bite happened, the other dog owner said he'd pay half. I told him he'd pay in full, which he eventually did. The vet bill was $950. If we were paying in full we would have had dave sew him at home. There's no way we would have paid that.