Thursday, April 30, 2009

Terrible Twos

We knew it wouldn't last forever.

I am not sure if it is her way of adjusting to her baby brother invading her well-marked space or just the age, but our little princess has officially entered the Monster stage of her development. I hope I live through it.

Over the last couple of weeks Rileigh has taken to letting us know she is "all-finished" eating by launching her plate (behind her head, or across the room, or simply tossing it over the side of her chair) and having it crash down splattering food all about the room. Joy.

We have tried several methods of dealing with this- all with less than effective results:

  • A serious look and a stern "NO" in my most intimidating "dad" voice- usually met with the "cute doe-eyed face" and the phrase "I dropped, I dropped" ( as if to blame it all on gravity) This method was modified from the previous one that consisted of me yelling an assortment of expletives- Kathy informed me that this was not going to enrich her development and may only serve to expand her vocabulary- good point.
  • A brief trial of not yelling at her, but "explaining" that it is not nice to hurl plates of food about also failed miserably. She would usually stare at us intently and nod her head in complete agreement and say, "I know". Still the plates flew.
  • Even a little spank on the offending hand was only met with a pitiful confused look and continued aerodynamic testing of our dinner wear.
  • My lovely wife even advocated a trial of "ignoring" the dish as it flew past. This plan never got off the ground- the other day Kathy was in the middle of trying to calm down a screaming Dylan while Rileigh was having lunch. I was in the back room reading , when I heard my wife yell in frustration.
Lately we have decided to be more pro-active and employ what I call the "microwave popcorn" approach. This consists of being vigilant during meals and snatching the plate from her whenever the popping eating slows down and there is more than several seconds between bites and she gets that "I'm finished" look in her eyes. So far it has worked pretty well. Until tonight.

Apparently we had let our guard slip down just enough and.... oh look, it's raining rice, corn, peas, and chicken cutlet!



I went back to my stern-face-"NO"-routine and put her in her crib for a brief "time-out". She has recently learned to say, "I'm sorry" and after a few minutes I got her out. I was about to clean up the mess when she walked over and looked down at her handiwork and employed her latest tactic:

Plead ignorance, blame it on someone else, and when all else fails, dazzle them with cuteness.



Tuesday, April 28, 2009

A Beautiful Tuesday

Today I forced myself to take a break from some incredibly painful phone calls (trying to straighten out some student loan issues) and go for a walk to the playground with Kathy Rileigh and Dylan. The weather has been exceptionally gorgeous lately and it felt great to get outside.

Some pictures from today:

Rileigh taking a break during our walk to hop up on a bench and demand, "Cheeeeeese", which is of course Rileigh for "Father, would you please take a photo of me"



Such a ham!




Rileigh enjoying the swings:






Meanwhile Dylan napped:


Free Hugs...Almost

Came across this video and it made me giggle... a lot.



Friday, April 24, 2009

Kinkos, Eat Your Heart Out!

Today was the last day of my surgery rotation!

At the hospital today we had to "sign-out", a process that involved an oral exam with one of the attending physicians, a review of our case logs, a card where we had the procedures that we performed signed-off and turning in our pagers, keys, evaluation forms etc.

Several of us had our oral exam yesterday and it wasn't as bad as we had heard. Anyway, a few students and I were in the library where I was completing my patient logs (a requirement for school) when fellow student and friend Jersey Pete walked in.

Me: Hey Pete

JP: What are you doing? Oh, patient logs huh.

Me: Do you need any blank ones or are you finished?

JP: Nah, I'm gonna print mine out- I did them in Excel.

Now, for those of you who don't know Jersey Pete: this last sentence was the mental equivalent of hearing Snoop Dogg covering a Puccini aria! Whiskey Tango Foxtrot indeed!

He walked away and headed toward the back of the library toward the printers.

JP is not exactly what I would call, the most" tech-savy" guy I know. As a matter of fact, he was notorious for only checking his email account once a semester or so. Rumor had it that it took his computer that long to log in. And recently when I was at his apartment his "laptop" was the computing equivalent of a rust-eaten 1974 Ford Maverick. He asked me to take a look at it because in his words it was "running a little slow". While the full extent of his computer problems probably deserve their own post, suffice it to say that I half expected to open up the case and find either a small Asian boy with an abacus or a gerbil furiously running on an excercise wheel about to give up the ghost.

Anyway, after a few minutes, Pete returned form the printer area and sat down next to us- but it was no longer the same friend I had met 3 years ago. He was somehow...different- the flicker of light that lived behind his eyes had dimmed ever so slightly- but noticably. He was no longer "good old Jersey Pete".

The pressures of medical school it seems has claimned another victim. Some people turn to violence as in the alleged "CraigsList Killer" and others are so radically transformed that they are barely recognizable as the people they once were. Allow me to explain...

When Pete came back from the printer he wasn't carrying a standard stack of 8x11 printed pages, no this was something alltogther different. When he sat down what he placed on the desk in front of him was thing that Legends are made of. It was a binder, nay , a bound masterpiece that any OCD patient would be proud to call his own. Pete had somehow printed and compiled not only his Patient log, but his Surgery Case Log, his Patient Case Write-Ups, and a List of ALL the cases that were discussed during our "morning report", the hospital's version of grand rounds. Not only this- but each section was separated with neon-brightly colored tabbed dividers and he EVEN INCLUDED A TABLE OF BLOODY CONTENTS on the first page!!! But my meager descriptions fail to do this epic tome justice; so allow me to present:

The Jersey Pete Complete Surgery Rotation Compendium and Reference Manual Vol 1
(Click on the pictures to enlarge)

(drum roll..........)



Notice the glossy polyvinyl cover, and that personal touch of orange highlighter on the spine!



No longer do you have to aimlessly flip pages (all 30 of them) to find what you need! This semi-automatic Table of Contents will guide you there in a jiffy!



Is that 100% Naugahyde© ?



It certainly makes a handsome addition to any bookshelf. A treasure to be cherished for generations!

My fellow students were excited beyond words to be photographed with this Masterpiece:






The Creator and his MASTERPIECE:



Now, to fully understand the transformation that this represents, consider the following facts:

  • For 11 of the last 12 weeks, Jersey Pete's lab coat has resembled a Jackson Pollack masterpiece of stains. I often joked- that to find out what the cafeteria has for lunch, I just look at JP's coat. He has had a series of coffee stains so absolutely prominent I thought he would be mistaken for a Holstein cow. The man walked around with a soy sauce stain in the shape of Africa on his sleeve for 3 weeks! I bet that one could culture his lab coat and produce a whole new species of life never before encountered on this planet.
  • One morning Pete showed up to rounds late, and without pants- well, to be fair- without SCRUB pants. He decided to "borrow" a pair of white Tyvek pants from someone in the maintenance department and walked around proudly all day in his (see-through) white disposable pants.
  • At any given time during our rotation Pete had the equivalent of the entire New York Metropolitan Area Phone Book jammed, stuffed, folded, wedged, and hidden in his various pockets. Every time he tried to pull something out of a pocket, the ensuing eruption resembled a bulimic Pica patient who had been locked in a paper factory.
  • Through no fault of his own, for the last month, JP has been living in an apartment with no electricity. An ongoing dispute with his landlord and the electric company has left our poor hero, literally, in the dark. Despite several offers by yours truly to come stay with us, he has been living by candlelight- which makes the above book even more impressive!
Please, don't get me wrong... Pete is an incredibly bright and knowledgeable guy who I would feel safe having treat my family, but to say that a color-coded, Table-of Context-ed, neatly printed and bound complete collection of all pertinent data is a tad "out of character" would be quite the understatement.

Clearly, his were balls that needed to be broken.

Mission accomplished!

Tuesday, April 21, 2009

A Flicker of Light at the End of the Tunnel

Last night was my last on-call night during my Surgery rotation, and , unless the shiny happy people of Pediatrics have some sinister side I do not yet know about, it is the last on-call of medical school!

Looking back, Surgery has been one of my favorite rotations so far. The hours were "less than ideal" but I felt like I really learned a lot and enjoyed myself during most of it!

Up next is Pediatrics and then a series of shorter 4 week elective rotations if scheduling goes well I should be finished all of my rotations by January/ February and will graduate in April!

Friday, April 10, 2009

Calgon Take Me AWAY!

Well into his second week of life, Dylan already has both the lung capacity, and vocal range of a well-trained opera virtuoso. Just this morning in fact, he entertained us wit his interpretation of Mozart's, Marriage of Fiagaro. Quite impressive! I mentioned to the bride at about 3:41am that his version sounded remarkably like the great Luciano Pavoratti's rendition. (if of course Pavoratti was crawling through a wood chipper and gargling broken glass while singing)

Other times our darling son is not so musical, sometimes his wails are an homage to every horror movie he has never seen. It sounds kind of like Tom Waits playing Jamie Lee Curtis' scream queen part in Halloween. Frightening to be sure.

In any case, sleeping around here has become more of a nostalgic curiousity- sort of like those old-fashion glass curvy coke bottles- sure, you can occasionally find one- but it is rare.

Not to be undone, our little angel Rileigh has decided to get in on the nighttime entertainment. For 2 of the last 3 nights she has woken up and out of desperation, we put her in bed with us to try to get her to fall back to sleep. It worked....almost. Her and her brother have some sort of shift-work rotation worked out where one will nap while the other cries and then they switch several times per night. It's really cute, especially at 4am!

So this morning, after a particularly trying night of scant little sleep for everyone in the house, I woke up and found everyone still asleep after 10am! I thought I would enjoy the quiet solitude during my day off and have a peaceful bowl of cereal for breakfast. I no sooner had my MultiGrain Cheerios out of the cabinet when I heard my little cherub beckoning from her bedroom, "Mo...meeee...............Mo..........meeee" Being the supportive father that I am and all, I decided that I would not let her wake up anyone else in the house and rushed in to get her. What transpired next will haunt me for years to come!

As I opened the door to Rileigh's room I saw that she was sitting up in her crib naked as the day she was born. This by itself is not entirely shocking because she has lately been fascinated by zippers and buttons and is often trying to dress and undress herself. But as I took my first step into her room my senses were assaulted! The smell of ...of...well, DEATH kicked me square in the nose. In slow motion, I could see my beautiful little girl sitting up smiling, her little curls bouncing as she said something to me. It took a few seconds for my ears to register what she was saying, but my lip-reading skills immediately started to sound alarms in my brain. Her mouth was making the words, "I............... POOOOO................... PEEEE..............." and as my eyes darted around the crib I discovered, to my horror, that my little angel was telling the truth!

What follows is what happened in my head for the next several seconds:

In the name of all that is holy........Oh My ... is that GREEN! ...Well I guess I know why she was up all night...oh the smell.....are my eyes watering?.....there is no way I am touching any of this.....Where can we buy a new crib, mattress, sheets, and little girl today?.....I think I just vomited in my mouth a little....When did we have corn?....NO NO NO don't TOUCH IT SWEETIE!!!!!!!!!! Am I too old to learn Spanish and move to Mexico before Kathy wakes up?... Is it in her HAIR?!?!?! OH my GAWD!!...It IS in her HAIR!...HEEELLLLLLPPPPP!

After a few seconds of terror, my Dad instincts took over and I picked up my beautiful poop-covered daughter and made for the Haz Mat Decon center of our bathtub. On the way I whimpered for my wife and let her know what had happened and let her know about the Toxic Waste Site that Rileigh's bedroom had now become. I scrubbed the child while she tackled the bedroom- I got the better of tht deal for sure!
After what seemed like a half-hour of scrubbing-rescrubbing and rinsing, Rileigh was once again clean and shiny, as beautiful as ever and happily chanting "I pooped I pooped I pooped" while smiling that heart-melting smile. Gotta love her. And where was our little screaming creature-boy during all of this? Soundly sleeping of course!

KIDS: Because you can no longer afford drugs to make you stay up all night and have you smell like shit the next morning.

Friday, April 3, 2009

Homecoming Day

Rileigh is way too excited that her mommy and little brother are home from the hospital!



The Big Sister Welcome Committee sends their first delegate:



No Daddy, I PROMISE I won't drop anything on him [wink]



Poor little guy has no idea what he is in store for around here!

Wednesday, April 1, 2009

Gratuitous Baby Pictures

Some more pictures of the latest latest member of our little tribe...

The 'Smirk Gene' rears its ugly head on Day 2:






So, Let's get a few things straight...



Awww:



It seems we share a barber:



Hey, hey, hey, LOOK AT ME:

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