I was lucky enough to score this awesome painting set for my son, Jack, and we have been very impressed with it.  Ever since we got this Faber-Castell art set in the mail last week, Jack has requested painting as his art project every single day.  The set says ages 5+, but at 3.5yrs old, it’s perfect for Jack, and even Shane (2.5) and Finley (22mo) love to paint with the fun brushes included.  The set comes in a great little clear, zipper case with handles that Jack calls his “art bag.” 

It has 5 different types of texture paint brushes that are varied in color and rubber based, so they’re super easy to use and just as easy to clean (a plus for Jack AND his mama!).  It also includes a bowl for mixing paint, paper, and 5 colors of non-toxic tempera paint.  Jack has been experimenting with mixing the paints to generate secondary colors and his own unique color concoctions.  He loves mixing different amounts of red and blue to alter the shade of purple, etc., so that has been very educational.  The textured brushes are really neat, and Jack has used them to make things he calls “waves, flowers, fireworks, tire tracks,” and other designs he wouldn’t have been able to create with the standard paint brushes that just glob color onto paper.  I love the Faber-Castell kits because they make arts & crafts so easy for parents and so fun for kids.  Their website also has a craft of the month page that provides creative ideas for little projects parents can do with their kids.  I highly recommend this painting set, which retails for $17.99. 

I have 1 Young Artist Texture Painting Set to giveaway.  GIVEAWAY winner will be announced Tuesday, February 16th.  Here are the giveaway entry rules:

• Must be 18 or older and a resident of the US or Canada
• Drop a comment on this post telling me a product you like from Faber-Castell’s Creativity for Kids website
• Earn extra entries (up to 3): blog about this giveaway, tweet it, or facebook it; don’t forget to leave an additional comment for each extra entry. 
• Total of 4 entries per person.  Winner will be selected by random.org and announced on 2/16.

Don’t worry, we’d NEVER get a Cocker Spaniel, even if we were crazy enough to ever get a dog (and we’re not that crazy yet)!  I’m just referring to my youngest child in the title. 

Not surprisingly, Finley has a peanut-sized bladder.  She is totally hysterical with the potty training stuff.  Her latest craze is her underwear.  She got to pick out 3 pairs yesterday and chose: Princess and the Frog, Yo Gabba Gabba, and Fancy Nancy.  She pronounces the latter pair “Fancy Pancy,” who is the character from her favorite book series.  Every time she talks about her “Fancy Pancy” panties, Jackson cracks up.  It’s so cute; he’s not laughing AT her, he just thinks she’s cute when she says that and it tickles him just as much as it does us.  Love their little relationship. 

Anyway, the annoying part about potty training Finley, in the words of her daddy, is that “it’s like potty training a Cocker Spaniel.”  For 1) she has a TEENSY bladder, so she has to pee every 5 minutes or she’ll have an accident, and 2) she’s hyper-excitable and is so proud of herself that she’ll leap off the potty before she’s 100% finished, leaving a few small drops on the floor each time.  Unlike Jack when he was potty training though, the #2 part is flawless.  Another potty training strategy we’ve used is giving ALL 3 kids get M&Ms when Fin poops on the potty.  So every time she has a success, the boys are high-fiving her and telling her “good job Fin!”  It’s adorable and adds some extra motivation for her, since the greatest thing in her world is being praised by Jack! 

Before I forget, one more Fin story – she is obsessed with “chopstick.”  She likes to have chopstick on her lips at all times to keep them nice and moist through our dry Colorado winter;)  The boys are also fans, and Jack of course thinks it’s hysterical when Fin says “chopstick.”  He tries to correct her, but he’s usually laughing so hard he can’t accurately enunciate the word through his snorts and giggles!

Well, this is turning into a bit of an update.  Might as well before I forget all this cute stuff!  Jack saw Travis and I doing “paper-rock-scissors" over who had to change a diaper, and he’s now really into the game.  [Though you can’t tell from these pics, he knows how to be the paper and the scissors too;]

The other game the kids are all into right now is pretending to be a family of birds.  Their “nest” is the down comforter on our bed, and every damn day we have to have flying lessons.  They flap their “wings” and jump off the bed.  Sound dangerous?  Well, yes, yes it is.  They get the biggest kick out of us pretending to feed them barfed up worms (don’t worry, they are very good as using their imaginations for this part!). 

Shane has become quite the vocalist around here.  He sings or hums about 14 hours a day.  If he’s not singing a nursery song, he’s humming along perfectly to the music his toys play when you push the buttons.  I don’t know why, but his sleep has been very off lately.  He’s been stumbling out of his bed at all hours of the night.  Travis and I haven’t been sleeping much, so usually we just see him making his way down the steps and carry him back up.  But he’s also been getting up before 5am, which is a problem for all of us.  He’s a kid whose body NEEDS a lot of sleep, so this is just badness all around.  I think I’m going to let him sleep in our bed for a few nights.  Travis isn’t thrilled about this, but I think Shane needs some mommy time.  He was having a hard time at night when I was traveling, but when I’d get home, he’d sleep through the night again.  I think he’s just up a lot now to check and see if I’m home or if I’ve disappeared again.  I feel horrible about that, so I’m just going to need to reassure him for awhile I think.  If that means co-sleeping for a bit, I’m in. 

I am DYING laughing as I write this.  I think my crazy ass kid might have potty trained herself in 2 days.  The first day was largely successful, but Travis and I realized there was a slight problem with our approach.  We offered these as a reward to all kids when 1 of the babies peed or pooped on the potty:

Sounds like a good idea, unless you have a kid who can will ANYTHING.  A kid with a determined, stubborn, outwitting personality.  A kid like Finley.  She was so obsessed with the M&Ms that she would sit on the potty and dribble every 5 minutes, then demand her reward.  TOTAL abuse of the system that neither Trav nor I saw comin’.  So after she peed 6 times in an hour and had rainbow drool spilling from her smirk, we had to change it up.  She was PISSED and had a few major meltdowns over our new “no M&Ms unless Shane pees or Fin poops.”  But we had to set the bar a little higher or they’d have all had tummy aches and rotted teeth the 1st day of potty training.  Shane didn’t have much success and was totally NOT into it, so we backed off and will ease him in more gently.

We woke up today with a new vigor for potty training.  Fin peed 4 times the first hour and was happy with no treat.  I did promise her that she could have M&Ms if she pooped on the potty though.  So guess what?  She pooped twice on the potty within the first 2 hours.  Go figure.  So sad that I captured this moment of Fin’s first true potty victory, but what can I say?  I like to document all the fun stuff.  When my kids grow up, they are going to KILL me for never missing a moment;) 

The thing that really stinks about potty training is having to stay close to home until they really get the hang of it.  So today, we painted, played games, and used our basement playroom a ton. 

Lots of nakedness around here, which is pretty gross; but I can’t really tell Finley NOT to sit anywhere, nor can I really forbid her from her rocking horse.  I just have to be constantly wiping things down.  LOL!

Fin is very acrobatic, which is normally entertaining.  But then throw nakedness on top of that and it’s just down right hilarious.  She’s all about naked headstands off the slide!  How impressive is this little action sequence:

On another note, I got a very unexpected (to be honest, they’ve all been unexpected!) derm interview offer yesterday.  I am very excited about it, but it is really complicated.  I have to fly out tomorrow because it’s on Thursday.  The part that’s bittersweet is that I promised the kids I was all done traveling.  EVERY time we see an airplane, Finley chants “no more airplanes for mama!”  She says that every time I put her to bed, get her water in the middle of the night, or get her out of bed in the morning or after nap.  Now I’m a liar, and I feel terrible about it.  I feel like I’m about to ruin some level of trust between me and my kids, and it’s going to take awhile for us to recover from this breech.  I do have to go though; I am in NO position to be turning down derm interviews.  This one makes 8, which statistically gives me very good odds of matching, so I’m thrilled about that (although rationally I know it has nothing to do with how many; it’s quality, not quantity and all it takes is 1 in theory).  Anyway, I’m just dreading telling the kids we’re on our way to the airport again tomorrow.  The boys have not been overtly angry with me, or talked about me going away like Finley has, but I can see that my absence has affected them.  They are very clingy to Travis and when he’s gone, they are constantly asking about him.  Thank God he’s been home with them 100% while I’m away. 

Speaking of Travis, he got a job!  A sweet job, actually, that has totally flexible hours and really awesome pay.  It’s an MD/MBA internship with a big health organization, and he’s working in addition to taking his MBA classes, doing medical research with the ophthalmology department, and working his other part-time job (that he can work from home anytime) doing research for some MBA professors who are writing a book (as well as his stay-at-home gig, which we share;).  We needed the income to keep afloat this spring, and it’s great experience for him too. 

A few people asked what Travis will be doing next year if I match.  The answer is finishing his 4th year of medical school (during my intern year).  He’ll graduate next May with his MD/MBA and then start residency too.  If we move for my intern year, he’ll be doing most of his year as elective rotations away from his home medical school, which is the same thing I did (spent majority of my 4th year in Colorado even though I was a Georgetown med student).  He will try to do his required rotations at Colorado before we leave (if we leave), so that he will be free to move when I need to start intern year.  Lots up in the air, but we’ve got it sorta worked out!  Now I just need to match.

This one’s for the grandparents;)  The kids are all at such precious ages right now.  Jack is now closer to 4 than he is to 3; he turns 4 end of June.  Shane turns 3 a week later, on the 1st of July.  And Finley just turned 22 months.  We only have 2 months left of 3, 2, 1.  My gosh, it’s flying by.  Here are some updates about our little characters.

JACK:

Jack has become our social butterfly.  I haven’t had the chance to write about his development lately, but OH MY GOSH.  I have written about how crazy unique his brilliant little mind is, and I’ve also written about our reasons for delaying his start in school.  We chose to hold him back so that he’ll be the oldest in his class, which gives him some extra wiggle room to mature emotionally and socially.  Something we think will be important for him both in these early years, as well as his teenage years.  But one thing that has happened over the past 4 months is an incredible amount of social growth.  Jack used to have a hard time socially; mostly because he was totally awkward around other kids, and they would then ostracize him or say things that were really hurtful to him.  He is a VERY sensitive kid, and he would relive those interactions a million times because he’d feel so bad about himself afterwards.  We took a step back from those situations and just decided to keep him close to home, rather than in any part time school-type program.  We have focused heavily on his relationship with Shane and Fin, and just let the rest work itself out.  He has become an awesome “big” brother, as is evident by how much Shane and Fin idolize him.  But during this time, he has also become a very outgoing little guy who now walks with relative ease in social settings.  Thank gosh.  It’s not that I care if he’s the most popular kid in the world, or if he is the dorkiest kid on the planet.  But I don’t ever want any of my kids to be uncomfortable around people or have difficulty relating to others around them.  I just want them to have confidence and be able to navigate social environments with comfort.  And it seems I can check that one off the worry column for my Jackie Pants.  I think my bigger worry should be containing all the cuteness that pours out of this boy because it could make him quite the challenging teenager;) 

Tonight I wasn’t feeling well after dinner and I told Travis that my stomach hurt.  Jack butted in with “mom, you MUST see a doctor!”  So I said “Jack, did you know that mommy is a doctor?”  He looked at me like I was a lunatic, shook his head, and said “uh, no.”  I get no respect;)

This is what Jack gave me today when I asked him to strike a pose…good thing we don’t live in harlem; I’m pretty sure you can get shot for throwing signs like these:

Aunt Heather would be proud; I’m pretty sure Jack’s doing the sprinkler here:

The dynamic between the kids is so cute these days.  Jack and Fin have a very unique relationship, and Travis and I love watching them interact.  He gets just as much amusement out of her as she does from him.  They joke around, and he giggles lovingly when she mispronounces things like “panastics,” instead of “gymnastics.”  Jack and Shane have a very different relationship that is also very cute to watch.  Now that Shane is talking more, we are noticing that he plays with his siblings much more.  Check this out though – we busted out Mario Kart on our Wii and let the kids go nuts with it.  Leave it to Fin to turn her controller into a microphone, but the boys were pretty into it.

SHANE:

Shane is doing awesome.  Really and truly.  He’s made such huge strides in language development lately and is now speaking in phrases with some full sentences.  He’ll communicate his needs by saying “my hungry,” or “my thirsty.”  He still says “no fanks” anytime he doesn’t like what’s going on, which is hysterical.  He calls Jack and Finley by name, or his versions of their names, and has the deepest voice ever.  It’s really cute.  While I was traveling, he often asked Travis “where’s mama,” and would point to pictures of airplanes and say “mama.”  Shane is really into singing and humming.  He sings “Pinkle Pinkle Leetle Taaar,” the ABC’s, and Old MacDonald.  He can identify almost all his letters and all numbers 1-10.  He is really inconsistent with knowing his colors; sometimes he’s flawless, and other times it’s like he has no idea.  His ACT team evaluation a few weeks ago went really well!!  He tested within the realm of normal for everything, and even slightly above for motor skills!  Yay Shane!  The developmental pediatrician is coming this week, so we are really excited about that visit.  Hopefully we can close this chapter and just focus on his progress since he is making forward progress.

Shane has been sleeping on the floor a lot lately.  No idea why, but he’ll get in and out of bed a bunch of times after we tuck the boys in (Shane doing this doesn’t seem to bother or distract Jack from falling asleep).  We always peek in on the kids before Travis and I get in bed, and we’ve been finding him passed out on the floor fairly often recently.  We just scoop him up and lay him down in his bed, and that’s that! 

Shane is a SNUGGLE BUG.  I LOVE this.  He comes in our room in the morning and hops in bed on my side.  He likes when I stroke the palms of his hands and he’ll just let me snuggle him forever.  His favorite game right now is “Bear’s Comin’.”  He sometimes plays the bear, and other times Travis is the bear and Shane, Jack, and Fin are hiding from the bear.  They get so wild and worked up when they play this game.

FIN:

Fin’s favorite book right now is Fancy Nancy.  She loves to say the fancy words, like “merci,” and she insisted Travis drink his coffee with his pinky up the other day.  Fancy Nancy really cracks us up around here.  This is our favorite page:

She also likes the book The Bear Snores On, and will pull out one particular line from that book ALL THE TIME.  She’ll say “too damp, too dank, too dark,” and then crack up at herself.  This kid has a personality that continues to grow 10x faster than her actual body.  She’s trouble, this one.  It is insane to me how much she talks.  She really NEVER. EVER. quiets down.  She has tons to say about anything and everything, and if I had a nickel for every time she’s said “whatcha talking about mom/dad?” I’d be a very rich woman.  She’s still obsessed with fruit snacks (the gummy crap that is like toddler speed), and will do just about anything for them, including her famous “teapot dance.”  She loves to say “check this out baby” right before she busts a move she thinks is cool.  The other day I was cutting Shane’s crack nails (I swear, they grow like weeds) and Finley stepped in and wanted hers cut too.  I realized I hadn’t cut her nails in, ooohhhh, forever.  So I told her to step on up.  Then I saw this: nubs.

Dear God, she’s not even 2 and she’s already got her mama’s nail gnawing habit.  It’s terrible.  Another thing that is so funny is Finley’s belly dance routine.  I can make my tummy do this wave thing where my stomach literally makes a wave from the top that travels down to the lowest part.  Finley is totally obsessed.  She has been practicing this art religiously; she’s constantly sucking in and pushing out her little gut.  It’s a riot.  Someday I’ll get a video of her doing it!

Finley also started having pseudo nighttime anxiety, telling us “I’m scared of the dark.  Leave my door open just a crack.”  I think Jack probably started some of that for her, but we played along and acknowledged her fears.  Finally, we got her a nightlight.  Now she’s so excited to go to bed each night because she gets to see her monkey light.  She’s also become quite the hypochondriac.  She’ll say in a really pathetic voice only a child pretending to be sick would use: “mommy, I don’t feel good.”  I’ll say, “oh, that’s too bad Fin.  What hurts baby?”  She’ll then make up something bogus that probably sounds brilliant in her own little mind, like “my finger!”  Every time I go to the bathroom, I hear Finley outside yelling to me: “hey mom, you got diarrhea?”  What a hysterical little nuisance.

She also has this really funny patch of hair on the back of her head that’s persistently tangled.  No More Tangles is no match for this mess, trust me.  That would be because her other nervous habit is twirling the hair back there.  We call it her “gnarly patch.” 

Finley got her haircut last week and Jack decided he wanted “spikey hair,” but didn’t want it cut.  So we got him some hair gel and he decided to play around with it today.  First we put it on “purple bear,” his descriptively named teddy, and then on Jack.  Here’s his phohawk (that was an intentional misspelling for my friend, Mark!) from today:

I got home from an interview trip last night and Jack told me he was really mad and really sad, and that he didn’t want me to be having fun on airplanes.  I told him I really didn’t like going on airplanes without him, and that I understood why he would feel angry at me.  I apologized a kazillion times, and explained that I was looking at another city  we might move to and that I was off searching for the perfect school for him.  That’s usually what I tell him when I go on interviews, and it seems to appease him slightly.  Then he insisted I kiss Travis.  After that, he initiated a big group hug, pulling Fin and Shane in too.  It was sweet.  He let me hold him for a long time, and forgave me.  I told him I just have 1 more airplane to go on and then I’m all done traveling without him.  I didn’t tell him that there are 2 days of interviews in that one last location:(  I’m so ready to be done with interview season.  3 interviews to go, and then a waiting game until Match Week, which starts March 15th. 

Sometimes I just have to look at my kids to remember how fun the little stuff in life really is.  I mean, when was the last time you had THIS much fun on the potty?!

Or felt this damn proud of an accomplishment?! 

Or went about your life totally uninhibited [as a side note, a little inhibition goes a long way…but screw that when you’re a toddler!]

Yes, we are potty training two kids at once.  Like a bandaid.  They are both showing signs of readiness; Shane will come tell us when he pooped, and Fin will tell us before and after she does.  She’s been ready for awhile, but we’ve held off because she’s a little scary with it.  Finley actually attempted potty training when she was about 16 months old, but became so freakishly obsessive over it that we thought she was going to push an internal organ out.  She’d turn purple from pushing, and I’m pretty sure she would have done it until she passed out if we didn’t pull her off the potty each time.  So we stopped letting her sit on the potty.  When I told my mom about that, her response was “oh honey, you did the same thing at 17 months…pushed so hard you had a terrible fissure and we couldn’t let you sit on the potty until it healed because of how you obsessed over controlling your bowels.”  Well, I don’t know what is wrong with me, but apparently my daughter inherited the “control freak” gene too [though I’m REALLY trying to go away from that with my whole “mean to be” stuff;].  And the above picture of a toddler biting her toenails?  That could have been me as a child too.  Eww.  Today when she peed on the potty, the first thing she wanted to do was run to the basement to tell Jack.  So cute how badly she wants her big brother’s praise.  Shane’s interest in potty training is more normal in that he is excited to sit on the potty, but bored after about 30 seconds.  At least he likes to be clean, unlike Jack at that age who would have preferred sitting in crap all day to having to pause his playing for a diaper change! 

The other little milestone we have hit around here is an interest in anatomy.  Fabulous.  At 21 months, Finley is all about calling out peni$es and va9inas.  Every time we’re changing a diaper, she’s right there commentating.  She’ll run through everyone she can think of and assign either a peni$ or a va9ina to them (accurately, I might add), saying “Shane have a peni$, Jack have a peni$, daddy have a peni$, mommy NOT have a peni$ (sometimes she’ll say what we DO have), etc.  I’m waiting for her to start pointing to men and women on the streets and yelling “there’s a peni$” or “that one’s a va9ina!”  I’m just FLOORED that little kids get the concept of gender at such a young age.

Tomorrow morning we have a big evaluation for Shane.  We still have a whole team of people working with him, and tomorrow he has another cognitive evaluation with a child psychologist that was requested by the developmental pediatrician who is now part of our therapy team.  It’s slightly different that the one we did last year, but the results will probably dictate our next step, diagnostically and therapeutically, to some degree.  I am so amazed at how awesome our county’s services are – the developmental pediatrician will be doing a home visit with us in a few weeks to see Shane in his normal environment, at home, with us.  Shane is a tough nut to crack.  He SHOCKS us all the time with how much he knows.  He sang me the ABC’s last night (to the tune, and using sounds that resemble the correct letters).  He can identify just about every letter in the alphabet.  He knows his colors.  He has definitely shown us that he knows a lot more than he can communicate to us.  That said, we still aren’t 100% sure his is a purely expressive language delay.  We are just praying it’s something we can overcome with therapy, and that we can get him caught up before he’s school age.  But whatever it is, he’s our Bug and we will do everything possible to help him thrive.

First, a random but amusing story.  Jack told a joke yesterday in an attempt to make friends his first day of gymnastics class.  It went like this:

“Why did the chicken lay so many eggs?  Because he did a big fart and lot of eggs came out.”  He can thank his daddy for all the new friends he made.  It was 100% Jack’s own joke, but I credit his dad with the source of the potty humor.  It has GOT to stop, or no parent is going to let their child hangout near mine and none of us will ever have any friends!!  LOL!  And to think…I always worried it would be the F bombs.

Travis and I have had a lot of conversations / debates recently about the concept of “meant to be.”  I used the phrase recently when talking to Travis about the Match because I honestly feel like whatever is meant to be will happen.  It’s not that I’m ok with the thought of not matching this year, but it’s more that I feel powerless since I’ve done all I can do.  The rest isn’t really in my hands now.  I guess I selectively apply that “meant to be” mentality though.  When Travis heard me say it, he couldn’t figure out how I could just shrug my shoulders and resign myself to the idea that it is up to someone else.  He hates a fatalistic mentality because he assumes it means that it doesn’t really matter what we do; the ending is predetermined.  I don’t believe that the ending is predetermined, but for some reason, I find comfort in the idea that some things are just meant to be, and others are not.  I am hopeful this is meant to be for me THIS Match cycle, but believe me, I’m not done trying if it doesn’t work out for me here and now.  I have just learned that things don’t always go as planned, no matter how hard we try, and I like to think every unexpected detour has a purpose.

As I’m nearing Match Day again this year, I have been reflecting upon this time last year.  I was not in the Derm Match, but I did apply to 2 competitive local intern programs.  My plan was sort of a$sbackwards, but it seemed solid at the time.  Then, I didn’t match and it hit me like a ton of bricks.  Mostly because it was unexpected.  In retrospect, I can’t even believe I almost went down that road.  I would have missed out on so much this year.  I have loved my research opportunities, the mentorship I’ve received from derms in the field, and the spark I’ve started to feel again because I’ve found a career in medicine I am passionate about.  For awhile, I went through a phase of relating to the Dave Mathews song “Gray Street” (when all the colors mix together to gray, and it breaks her heart).  [As an aside, I know I’ve re-written some lyrics in the past, so I made sure to check those;]  I think I needed the time I’ve had…away from medicine…to remember why it was I wanted to be a doctor so badly. 

Travis and I have been talking a lot again lately about our long-term dreams of working overseas, which was what drove our desire to pursue medicine all along.  The devastation in Haiti fueled some of our discussions.  My brother, Jeremy, and I went to Haiti with a medical mission group right before I started medical school.  It was one of the more impactful experiences of my life, and when the news of the earthquake hit me, I couldn’t help but wish I were in a position to get on a plane and do something.  Travis felt it too.  Although we let go of any plans to ever joining disaster relief missions once we had kids, we still intend to work in areas of need in the developing world. 

My point is that I am excited to learn what is around the corner for me, career-wise.  And as nail-biting a process as the Derm Match is, I feel eerily at peace.  Maybe it’s cognitive dissonance to take the “whatever is meant to be will be” approach, when clearly I’ve tried to control as much of this process as was humanly possible when I could.  I just figure, at this point, I clearly have no control, and stressing about it could drive me nuts. 

So, do you believe in “meant to be” endings, or do you think that’s a cop-out?  Is that a belief that only religious people hold?

Also, please take a second to check out my friend Brandy’s Etsy site, especially if you’re looking for a cute baby gift – she just put up some really adorable items and is trying to raise money for her first adoption.

Here are all our holiday photos in a slideshow.  I am also putting highlights below the slideshow:

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

Here are a few of my faves from Disney with my brother, Jeremy, who looks disturbingly like my husband (Jer is 6’3, Travis is 6’0, and Jeremy is much bigger than Travis in general; but they look alike in the face).  Finley looked at these pictures earlier and yelled “it’s me and daddy!”

Jack isn’t in the picture below because he was terrified of Buzz, but Shane was all about Mr. Lightyear.

This is what the end of a day at Disney with CRAZY crowds (see below) and 3 toddlers looks like:

The crowds we braved:

We had a seriously awesome time and the kids are still talking about “THE Castle” at the Magic Kingdom.  Travis and I had planned to run the Disney Marathon, which was last weekend, but we failed to anticipate the craziness of interview season, so we were unable to run it this year.  I think we’ll run one in the spring around here instead.  We were SO lucky Jer took us to Disney.  For 1, it’s outrageously expensive, so it’s pretty sweet to have a “balla” brother who adores his niece and nephews enough to want to take them all for their first magical experience!  And 2, we realized while there that we couldn’t have ridden any rides without Jer.  Our kids all needed to be with an adult on each ride, so being outnumbered would have presented a challenge!!  For 3, the first day we got to Orlando, Disney was “at capacity,” so we had to find a place to stay for the night so we could go the next day…Jeremy has a “friend” (who the rest of us LOVE and think should be the future mother of his kids;) who hooked us up with an employee rate at the Hyatt, even though every nice hotel in Orlando was full!  It was sweet.  Plus, we got to see her, and she’s just the coolest, most beautiful girl ever…and, as it turns out, she’s fantastic with kids too.  And 4, Jeremy is just a blast to be around, so he made the trip all the more fun.  Thanks Jeremy!  I have the best “little” brothers in the world, and my kids love being with them just as much as Travis and I do.

We headed back up to my family’s beach house in St. Augustine after we left Disney, and I again made that (and Jacksonville airport) my jumping off point for more Derm interviews.  But before that, Gramma and Aunt Heather came up to join us for a few days, which spanned the New Year.  It was SO nice to get concentrated time with just us and them, and the kids really enjoyed it too.  They are so devoted to the kids, and both Lynn and Heather have established really strong bonds with all 3 of our monsters.  I don’t think there is a more patient person in the world than my mother-in-law, and Travis realizes that too now that Finley has shown us what a challenging child Travis probably was;)  Not to blame it all on him because apparently I was a few hands-full as well…so she’s like doubly devilish, but we love her that way!  Thank God Jack is such a parent-pleaser and Shane is so easy-going!  Travis recently told me though how much he is able to appreciate everything his mom did for him (her patience and her unconditional love) now that he is a parent and sees how difficult that job is.  I feel the same way and am incredibly grateful we both grew up with such loving parents.  Travis’ little sister, Heather, is also a wonderful person in our kids’ lives.  She is a ball of energy, like our kids, and is such a natural with them.  There are lots of people who don’t have that natural gift, who aren’t instinctively maternal, or just aren’t very warm with little ones, but Heather is extra gifted like that and we are so lucky to have her in our kids lives.

Check out the full moon view from our porch on New Year’s Eve! 

Our little New Year’s Eve party animals:

After New Year’s weekend, Grandjoe came up for a visit.  I didn’t get to spend time with him, since I was back on the interview trail, but he and Travis did a really beautiful hike with the kids and I’m really glad they got to do that with him:

Travis drove back to my parents’ farm with the kids, and I eventually caught a return flight to South Florida to meet him there.  Here’s another hike he did with the kids in my absence on his drive from the beach house to the farm…it was in Ormond Beach and the kids loved playing on the old Florida oaks and seeing the wildlife.

Here is Finley’s favorite horse at my parents’ house.  Her name is Baby Girl, and Finley talks about her incessantly.  She is obsessed with potty stuff right now, so she talks about Baby Girl pooping about a hundred times a day.  My parents also have a horse named Poncho that has a serious gas problem.  The horse coughs, and then passes gas so audibly you can hear it for miles away (literally).  The kids thought that was hilarious.  Finley now imitates Poncho’s sound effects (cough then a fart sound with her mouth), and then cracks up with laughter at herself.  Travis is clearly winning the battle of potty humor versus polite little children.  I don’t think the horses helped my cause.

Hope you all are well.  Feel very out of touch with half the world, and my traveling is far from done.  I leave again this week for an interview, then 3 interviews the following week (although 1 of those is local, thankfully).  I’m in the homestretch though, so to speak, since all my traveling will be done the last day of January!  We’re enjoying these days together now that we’re home in Colorado though.  We went for a beautiful trail run yesterday, and let the kids out of the running strollers to hike afterwards.  Can’t beat 50-60’s and sunny in the dead of winter! 

I’ll try to explain the Match process, as promised, in my next post, but to answer the question a few of you asked, yes, it is possible we’ll have to move twice (once for my intern year, and again for my derm residency).  That is not what we’re hoping happens, but it is a possibility.  And it’s not the worst case scenario either (worst case is that I don’t match – which would be a huge setback and suck very badly!).  Nuts, huh?!  I just keep telling myself that the craziness would be a temporary thing en route to a lifetime profession, and Derm is my dream.  Thankfully, Travis is onboard with that too! 

I said I was going to get back into posting regularly, catching up with holiday pictures, and all that…and then I went silent again.  Life has been CRAZY.  I pworded my previous post because it’s all about my interviews / ranking / matching process.  I am NOT pregnant.  I realized that might be what people would assume with a title like that on a password protected post!  Good golly, no.

Anyway, I am going to attempt to recap our holidays, and I’m going to do it in chronological order starting with a few days before Christmas.  My mom wanted to take all the kids (Angela, George, Jack, Shane, & Finley) to Build-a-Bear, so we made a morning of that.  When we got there, all the kids were picking their animals to stuff and Travis tried to exert some HEAVY, but subtle influence on Finley to steer her away from the pink stuff…you know how he hates girly $hit.  I swear, our kids are going to be so confused.  We rolled into that place with a 3.5 year old BOY wearing a hair bow he refuses to take off (not that we’d ever ask him to though; we think it’s pretty darn cute too), who winds up choosing a CAMOFLAUGE colored bear wearing a beret and a military outfit.  Then, like a stab in the heart, Finley, who will NOT EVER allow a bow to touch her matted hair and often walks around sporting her brothers’ hand-me-down clothes, chooses a PINK UNICORN.  My mom and I about pissed ourselves laughing so hard!  Travis was beside himself with disappointment :)  Fin’s Pink Unicorn:

Shanie, our little love-bug who could care less about stuffed animals, needed a little help honing in on something.  His favorite part was pushing buttons on the keyboard to register his firefighting frog!

Jack decisively named his bear “Dave.”  This would be the source of much confusion, since my dad’s name is also “Dave.”  Jack took to calling my dad by his first name towards the end of our stay, since he’d hear my mom calling to him in the barn, yelling “DAAAAAVE!”  Then Jack would say something random about “Dave,” so we’d have to ask “Dave the Bear, or Dave your Papa?”  Jack would always answer in a certain tone, like he might as well have just called calling us morons.  But sometimes the answer was “Dave the Bear!!” and other times it was “Dave my Papa!!”  Here’s Jack with Dave…the Bear.

The whole gang:

Then came Christmas Eve, which we spent with Travis parents and his sister, Heather.  It was incredible to share that occasion with both of his parents, in the same place at the same time, laughing together and enjoying our kids in peace over a delicious meal and some glasses of wine.  I cannot even describe how much it meant to Travis (and me) to see his parents interact that way, and a few times we looked over to see his mom watching his dad be a grandfather, or vice versa, genuinely enjoying sharing their grandkids.  That was just priceless to us.  It was the best Christmas gift they could have given us and our kids, and we are so grateful for that day with them.  I wish I had taken more pictures, but it was one of those times you just wanted to live it instead of watching it from behind the lens.  And even without pictures, it was unforgettable.  Here are the few moments I did capture – the kids got tons of fun stuff from Aunt Heather and Gramma.  Heather works at a daycare and always knows the best kid toys!  She HOOKED. IT. UP.  They also got us almost an entirely new book library, which Travis and I are the most excited about.  I love when our kids get new books, something we can all enjoy!

I have to share a REALLY funny Shane story from Christmas Eve.  When we got to Lynn and Heather’s house (my MIL and SIL), there were presents all over and little stockings with adorable teddy bears peeking out.  Jack and Fin claimed theirs quickly, but Shane was busy with something else he’d found.  As a preface, he’s totally NOT a teddy bear kind of kid.  He’s never had an object that’s soft and furry that he’s wanted to cuddle with.  He mostly just tries to bring CAT construction trucks to bed!  So Heather finds the teddy bear that’s his and says “Shanie, this one’s for you!”  She hands him the bear, which he reluctantly accepts, takes 1 quick look at, hands back to her, and politely says “No fanks!”  It was adorable.  Actually, Shane says “No fanks” in response to EVERYTHING he doesn’t like or want, and says it when he’s just not happy about stuff in general.  It’s so cute that he’s polite even when pissed off (he literally throws temper tantrums yelling “no fanks, no fanks!”).  I love this picture of Shane; he wore this Santa hat for about a week straight:

Christmas at my parents farm was awesome as well.  Our Christmases are a little over the top, and holy cow does Santa spoil us!  There are SO MANY people in my family that I think even if our Christmases became a little more modest, as my mom swears they do each year, there’d still be presents spilling into other rooms of the house.  The kids were awe-struck and had a blast tearing through every present they came across, theirs or not.

This picture of Finley dressed in a princess gown, sipping a yard of beer, might be a fairly good representation of the kid:

Finley’s balancing act with her “stage face.”  Very dramatic:

My dad and brother goofing around with Finley, who adores them both:

We’re never going to get these guys married off ;)  They really crack us up though!

“Umpa Owex,” as his only / favorite niece, Finley, calls him:

This truck was the jackpot for Shane-bug!  He’s fairly predictable like that.  He opened a truck and a box of various sporting balls and we didn’t see him for the rest of the morning.  He couldn’t have cared less about the rest of the presents; he got all he could ever dream of getting under that Christmas tree!

One of Finley’s favorite presents…her cowgirl boots.  She says “yeehaw” every time we put them on her and starts dancing like a maniac:

My younger sister Nastia, Fin, and my older sister, Christy (aka: Critter)

Everyone hanging around the kitchen eating lox, cream cheese, capers, & bagels…my fave!

The boys got games, trucks, tools, cowboy boots, tub toys, Playmobile sets, and tons of other fun stuff.  Finley got a dress-up kit that she and the boys love.  She also got a TON of baby dolls and accessories (crib, high chair, stroller, etc.).  Here she is, tending to her young…

One of the baby dolls she got burps, farts, crawls, etc.  Fin was totally FREAKED by that doll.  It started crawling towards her and Fin began frantically scooching backwards yelling “NO baby, don’t push, don’t push!”  Which is what Fin says when she doesn’t like something (her version of “no fanks”).  We hear stuff like “No daddy, don’t push my fruit snacks” if Travis won’t give her fruit snacks, for example.

One more funny story about Finley on Christmas morning.  Travis and Bill, my sister’s husband, each got these really nice blazers from my mom. When they tried them on, Finley decided she did NOT like them.  At all.  So she started yelling, “NO!  Take it off; I don’t like that.  Don’t wear that.  Take it off now!”  She didn’t shut up until they both took the jackets off.  What a funny little dictator.  Travis put his on again on New Year’s Eve and she had the same reaction and told him to get it off.

The best part about being at my parents house was that they insisted on us getting good nights’ sleep, so they set up a crib in their room.  Finley woke up throughout the night and my mom would sing a song in Greek to her, my dad would get her milk, and we wouldn’t even know she’d woken up.  It was pretty amazing.  Finley LOVES LOVES LOVES her Yiayia and those Greek songs.  Travis and I even got a date night out to an oyster bar, which was so awesome.

Ok, I’m going to have to take a break!  I have an interview tomorrow morning, so I need to get some rest.  Actually, I have a few paid research writing projects I need to complete to help defray the cost of this insanely expensive residency interview process, so I should be working on those!  My next post will be Disney with my brother Jeremy, New Year’s with Lynn and Heather, and more fun stuff with Grandjoe and then my parents.  Hope you all are well!