It sure feels like we lived it a few months ago; as crazy and chaotic as life was then, it didn’t compare to this new life with 3 wild toddlers, a pregnant intern for a mom, and a dad who sporadically travels to a far away coast to wine and dine potential investors.  This week was hard, really hard.  I pretty much didn’t see my kids for 3 days, didn’t sleep more than 5 hours any night this week, and probably cried 6 of 7 days.  <sigh>  I am really sad to say I don’t like medicine very much right now, and I hate what I’m having to sacrifice to be in it.  I’m tired of missing out on my kids lives to be at the hospital watching people die.  It’s depressing on both fronts.  Internal medicine is not really my thing.  About 75% of internal medicine patients are over 75, and that is not really an exaggeration.  And I’d say 75 would be on the young side for the hospital service I’m on right now.

On top of other stress, I had an exposure yesterday that really freaked me out…a possible infectious disease that, as a pregnant intern, I have been afraid of encountering.  After researching shingles in pregnancy, I think my risk of badness is extremely low, especially since I’ve had chicken pox and even if I hadn’t, it’s still not likely my pregnancy would be affected.  But it was enough to make me worry for a few hours yesterday and have to spend a little time looking it.  I didn’t need that. 

Today was my day off.  It was an AWESOME day off, all the way until this evening when Fin fell off a chair at Chipotle and cracked the back of her head open.  I didn’t realize she’d hit her head until I scooped her up and felt something wet spilling onto my arm.  I was pretty sure we were going to have to take her to the ED for stitches, but Travis and I got the bleeding to stop without that.  Fin is the toughest little thing on the planet, thankfully.  She just wanted to eat her burrito and drink a “beered” (beer) to make her feel better;)  So we went home and did just that.  Before you call CPS, Finley thinks Izzy with lime in a frozen mug is a beer, so it’s all good.  [what you can’t see in the picture, nor could she, thankfully, is the blood matted hair on the back of her head]

As for the good parts, we went to the Dragon Boat Festival today in celebration of Asian Pacific heritage.  We’ve gone every year we’ve been here and we always love it. 

Travis’ mom is out here with us, which is a great thing for the kids and has been very helpful to us too.  Travis left for Boston at 3:30am on Friday morning and came back at 2am that night, so she was here to help our nanny, Jen, with the kids that very long day until I came home. 

Anyway, the festival was fantastic.  Afterwards, my MIL and I had a chance to run to the mall while the kids napped today and I finally got myself some pants.  It’s weird how fast this pregnancy is going, but I swear, it’s been ALL OF THE SUDDEN that this huge belly has popped out of nowhere.  I’m 21+ weeks now and the belly band over my regular dress pants is becoming uncomfortable.  And because I have such incredibly kind people who read this blog and offer support, I have had people send me maternity clothes too!!  Can you believe that?  I am SO grateful, I can’t even begin to tell you. 

So, after the Chipotle drama, we did a fun little dessert craft with the kids.  Worms in mud.  If you don’t know what I’m talking about, just get some gummy worms, chocolate pudding, and oreos.  Let the kids mash the oreos with mallets (they love that part), put them at the bottom of a clear plastic cup.  Then put a chocolate pudding layer on top.  Last, have them drop the worms in the mix and stir it all up.  It was disgusting to watch, but Jack, Shane, and Fin had such a blast searching for and eating their worms and the mud / dirt.  Especially since they’re still obsessed with pretending to be baby birds!

Here are a few other pictures from the past few weeks that I’m just now getting off my computer.  The first couple are from my day off last week – took my MIL and the kids up to Boulder Creek on the most beautiful day and had a wonderful time.

My kids have been playing “doctor” a LOT lately.  The role playing is adorable, and Finley goes around saying to everyone she meets, “I’m a dot-tor.”  Sadly, I kind of hope my kids are only role playing and I never hear any of them say that for real.  Maybe that’s just intern year talking and I’ll change my mind down the road, but for now that’s how I feel and I’m just being honest about it. 

I love this picture of my Yiayia and my Finley:

That’s all for my stream-of-consciousness ramblings tonight.  Sorry if it was a downer…again.  Hopefully I’ll snap out of it soon?  Like next year when I’m no longer an internal medicine intern?!!  Ahhh, just got keep banging my head against this brick wall for now.  I’ll eventually crack it.  The wall I mean. 

Hope you all are doing well, and I hope you understand why I’m so out of touch if you’ve emailed me in the last few weeks and I haven’t responded.  Almost forgot – PLEASE check out our SkinnyKidz sale!!!  LOTS of our belts are on sale as we get ready to bring in our fall prints, which are adorable, btw.  Don’t forget to check it out. 

Nothing in medicine is more painful, more torturous, more heart-wrenching than providing futile medical care to a patient who is suffering.  I am not talking about a person who carries a terminal diagnosis but is still coherent and choosing to pursue experimental treatments, even if they are hail mary options.  I’m talking about the patient who is no longer mentating, who needs modern medicine to breath for him and a tube to feed him, who is developing decubitus ulcers all over his body from laying in a practically vegetative state, who moans if the ativan and morphine wear off, who has to have the suction jammed down his throat to remove the sloughing mucosa from the back of his dry, blood-crusted oropharynx, who is barely recognizable because fluid has left the intravascular space and pooled in every dependent area of tissue, leaving him swollen and water-logged.  I’m referring to the patient whose family members STOP visiting his bedside because even they can’t stand to look at him like that anymore.  Yet they still want everything done to keep him from dying. 

Talking and pleading with families in the most compassionate way I know how becomes a frustrating effort when they continue to believe a miracle might occur.  In one breath, they realize that if God wanted a miracle to occur, he would make one occur.  But in the next breath, they aren’t confident enough in their God to allow us, the medical team, to stop prolonging the patient’s suffering and just leave it up to God. 

I know it often takes people a long time to come to terms with a family member’s death.  I don’t ever want to be in those shoes because I can’t imagine how painful it must be.  I never know the people I take care of before they became ill, but for me to show up and see them in a state of suffering day in and day out while their families debate pursuing aggressive, futile medical treatments, is really hard.  Our 1st obligation as physicians is to “do no harm,” but I can’t think of anything more inhumane than prolonging death under those circumstances.  Yet, in this country, we are virtually powerless and our hands are practically tied.  We aren’t able to say “I’m sorry, I cannot / will not put a feeding tube down your father’s throat because it will only cause him more discomfort and there is truly no benefit to him.”  In an ideal medical world, I would be able to say “I’m sorry, but it would be against the medical oath I have taken as a doctor.”  But we don’t live in Europe, we live in a highly litigious country where doctors are puppets out of the fear of a lawsuit.  So we go on torturing patients when they’re families demand us to.  And we bring in palliative care, case managers, hospice, the ethics committee, and so many other people to try and help us make our case.  But in the end, we bend to the families’ wishes and allow the antibiotics, the feeding tubes, the blood draws, the suctions, beeping alarms, the rib-cracking CPR, the defibrillator, the breathing machines to continue to prolong suffering.  It’s truly disturbing.  And in the end, the patient dies a painful death, and all that is gained goes to insurance companies – the  hundreds of thousands of dollars our futile care costs. 

If you don’t have a living will, even if you are 30 years old and healthy as can be (believe me, I’ve had this patient who was hit with something out of the blue too), sit down with your family and talk about these things.  Everyone who sees these patients always says “please don’t ever let me go like that,” but it’s so hard for the family members left behind to make such huge decisions when they haven’t explicitly had these conversations with their loved ones before tragedy befalls.  No one wants to be responsible for saying “ok, withdraw treatment and let him/her die in peace.”  So everyone defers making a decision, and the patient just lingers and suffers.  Something to think about.  Here’s a site to help you think through these things if you haven’t before: http://www.yourcommunityhospital.com/LivWill5wishes.cfm

Because my kids are so damn funny, of course…ahem.

Yesterday, I came home from the hospital in time to play with the kids, eat dinner as a family, and tuck everyone into bed.  It was fantastic.  While eating dinner, Jack asked, as he does everyday / night when I get home: “how was your day at the hops-ital mom?  Were there lots of sick people?  What happened to them?  Did you help them get better?”  Then he said “dad, are you a doctor?”  Travis then said “wellllll, yes, kind of.  But daddy helps people get healthy using technology…with his computer.”  Jack let out this hysterical laugh and said condescendingly, “daaaad! Computers don’t help people; they have buttons, and are used for things like games and PBSkids.org!”  We laughed so hard. 

Later, we put the kids to bed.  About 10 minutes after tucking them in, we heard Finley yell and start crying, so Travis and I ran upstairs to find her with barf everywhere.  We scooped her up, cleaned her off, and Travis rocked her in the chair.  She begged him to sleep in the rocking chair next to her bed, so he shot me the look.  I said “fine, bring her in our bed.”  A strange, Grinch-like smile curled across her little face.  When we got her into our bed, I laid down in bed with her, patted her hair and stroked her face until she started drifting off.  Then she said, in this scratchy little voice, “hey mom?  I stuck my hand down my mouf so the barf would come out.”  Sneaky little shit.

Our Frenchie can be a royal PITA, but he often provides much needed comic relief around here.  The dog is a clown.  My mom was out here visiting us this past weekend and really wanted to take Henny home with her.  Even though being dogless for a few weeks might’ve made life easier for us right now, we couldn’t part with him.  Our kids would have been devastated, for one.  And Travis and I have grown pretty fond of him, for two;)  Here is just a little taste of the comic relief he provides:

Our kids are rather amusing as well.  They’re so darn cute but I swear, the ages and stages we’re going through right now are really really hard to be going through all at once – there is RARELY silence around here.  The volume escalates so quickly and Fin’s temper usually means there’s 1 kid screaming through the house, running for his life, with a hot-head lunatic chasing closely behind him with her mouth wide open in case she catches him.  Not so peaceful.  Lots of quick tempers (ours included), and typical 2-4 year old behavior.  Drama drama drama.  I can’t even IMAGINE throwing a newborn into this mix. 

But they’re also at ages that are just so hysterical and cute to watch.  They sit and chat about stuff during mealtime.  They’ll ask each other questions and have little conversations, they’ll trade food, hold hands spontaneously, and sometimes help each other and share just because they like one another.  That’s my favorite thing to see. 

First of all, please go enter the SkinnyKidz giveaway hosted by Mrs Broccoli Guy.  We introduced a “big kid” sized belt (6-10), as many of you requested, and her kids were the perfect little demo models!  She wrote an amazing review for us too.  Thanks Christina!  Also, our new charity partner this month is a UK-based organization, Just a Drop, which works to bring clean water to Haiti.  It’s staggering to consider that diarrhea is still a leading cause of death worldwide…mostly due to lack of clean water.  That is so sad, and so preventable.  Please consider donating to this organization, and/or doing so through the purchase of this adorable belt (I think the print Jena chose for the Just a Drop belt is my favorite yet):

If I sounded overwhelmed in my last post, well, that was nothing.  Since then, the virus hit all of us except my little boys, thank God for them being spared at least.  It hit Yiayia on Tuesday night, so I was up most of the night with her / worrying about her.  She took a bad fall during one of her bouts that scared the living crap out of me.  Travis was able to stay home the next day to make sure she was ok, which thank God she was.  The next day, the same bug hit me just minutes after I signed my patients out and was trying to leave the hospital.  I was heading for the door…had to turn around and run for a bathroom, which I proceeded to barf ALL OVER.  I felt SO freakin bad for the poor janitor who was unfortunate enough to be pushing the mop bucket down the hall when I came out.  I apologized profusely and RAN to the car to race home before the next bout hit me.  I made it, thankfully, but was up all night again and totally dehydrated by 4:45am the next morning (when my alarm went off).  It sucked.  I wasn’t about to call in sick, as 1) that’s frowned upon as a resident or doctor, and 2) it would’ve taken a day away from my maternity leave. 

I made it through the day at work, although I felt like hell, but had to suffer through a 30 hour call shift the very next night.  It was rough; I was in my call room LITERALLY for 40 minutes, and I got paged about 4 times while I was in there, so I didn’t sleep a wink.  I’m still dragging ass.  I napped for 2hrs while the kids did when I got home Saturday afternoon, but that was it.  I worked later than I should have yesterday because all my patients were totally unstable and I could not get out of the hospital with them all like that.

Today is my “day off.”  It’s also Travis’ and my 7th wedding anniversary.  We laid low and got to see our friends Kaakpema and Sara briefly this afternoon when the kids swam in Sara’s parent’s pool.  The other day when Yiayia fell, she landed pretty hard on her chest, so although today was my 1 day off, I was in the hospital anyway.  I’ve been so worried about her and her pain has gotten pretty bad, so I took her to get some xrays, which thankfully were all (-).  She’s an ass-kicker and that makes her a pain in the ass patient – too tough for pain meds, too busy-bodied to rest herself, etc.  So thank God nothing is broken.  Yiayia is going back home on Wednesday, which is going to be especially hard for Fin and Shane who get so much snuggle time from her.  Finley has been an emotional WRECK, to put it lightly, so not having Yiayia here anymore to give her extra love and comfort is probably going to send her for another loop.  When I say “wreck,” I really can’t put it into words.  The poor child is so smart and so articulate, so she’ll tell me that she’s angry and sad that I work and leave her all day, but expressing her emotions verbally doesn’t stop her from expressing them physically in addition.  She’s been melting CONSTANTLY.  I almost peed last night from laughing so hard when I heard Yiayia thinking out loud through her geneology and saying “now, let me think, who in our family was a little on the kookie side?” 

It doesn’t make things easier that I happen to be on the grim reaper service right now - 1 of my patients died last night, 2 went to the ICU, and a bunch of others to hospice (plus another for whom we’re providing futile medical care because his family hasn’t come to terms with the terminal nature of his state…so he’s just suffering).  Depressing.  Also on a depressing note, when I came home from work yesterday, Jackie asked “hey mom, how was the hops-ital?” (he can’t get that word right – so cute).  I said “it was good, but there are lots of sick people there I have to take care of.”  And his response?  “My belly hurts, maybe I could come to your hopsital and you could take care of me!”  It’s so sad that my kids realize I no longer take care of them, just the sickies in the hops-ital.  I can’t wait until this year is over. 

Sorry for being a downer.  And this coming weekend is my “black weekend,” so termed because I have the overnight call on Saturday, meaning no shorter days or off days.  All this for less than the wage a garbage man makes.  Since I’ve held barf bags for my patients, held up the pannus of my 415lb patient so I could examine the skin fold (and was almost knocked over by the smell of bacteria & yeast living under there), and done some other pretty gruesome things lately, I think I have earned *at least* a garbage man’s salary.  <sigh> 

On a HUGELY positive note, big big things happened for Travis’ career last week.  He was offered COO of a really exciting health IT start-up.  Buh-bye residency.  Thank God too because I really don’t think I could live through him going through residency too.  He’s really excited about the speed with which his career is taking off, and as usual, Travis finds himself in the right place at the right time.  Part of his agreement with this company is that he finish his medical degree, so he’ll be COO / MD/MBA student all at once.  Part of his agreement is also that he will work remotely, with sporadic travel to Boston when necessary for meetings and workshops.  If you remember, my favorite derm program was actually Brown (45min from Boston), but Travis vetoed me ranking it highly since he had this “thing” about East Coast medicine.  I seriously almost strangled him the other day when he said “too bad you didn’t match at Brown, that would’ve made things easy!”  My heart went into asystole for a brief moment. 

That’s our story.  It’s a crazy one and feels like it’s getting crazier every day.  My belly popped this week; I’m now 18+ weeks.  By “popped,” I mean you can now tell I’m pregnant.  It’s still sort of truck-driverish, but it’s definitely round and now noticeably spilling out of my pants and shirts.  Since we’re still in financial trouble, I’m making do with the belly band for as long as possible, but it really is almost time I move to maternity clothes.  If anyone has any cute maternity clothes you’d like to sell, hit me.  I don’t have time, desire, or money to shop for new maternity clothes but I do need work attire that’ll fit over this belly. 

Well, I should be asleep but I wanted to post some pictures that will otherwise rot in my rarely (anymore) used camera.  Can’t remember the last time I actually edited pictures, so these are without any fancy touches. 

I gotta get to bed now; Fin is up barfing AGAIN.  Travis had it all night last night, and now it’s back to her.  Weird.  I’m PRAYING no one else in our house gets it.  Not to sound selfish because I REALLY don’t want Yiayia or the boys to be touched by this either, but if I get this bug, it’s badness…you can’t really just “call in sick” as an intern.  It’s sort of a big to-do if you do that.  Plus, it’d mean 1 less day of vacation (pseudomaternity leave) when the baby is born.   That time is already so limited that every day matters hugely.  So pray for us that Fin’s 2nd bout is short-lived, that we actually get some sleep one of these nights, and that no one else is affected by the barf bug.  Poor Fin, she woke up saying “I bawfed in a pot again.  I don’t wanna bawf anymore.”  She conned her way into our bed tonight though, so now I KNOW there’s no chance of rest for any of us.  Actually, while I’m asking for prayers, REALLY pray that Travis is done with the barf bug.  He’s the world’s worst patient.  As I told my friend Jena, there’s a reason God put uteri in women, not men.  They could never handle the discomfort of pregnancy or the pain of childbirth.  Never. 

I hate feeling like a minion, which is why being a medicine intern sucks.  Or one of the reasons anyway.  No one likes to feel incompetent on a regular basis, but in medicine, I guess it’s just the norm until YOU’RE the one who’s been in practice long enough to think everyone else is just dumb for not knowing the answers all the time. 

So my first few days were rough, the 1st day especially.  I came onto a service full of very sick patients, picked up 7 my first day, then had new admissions that day on top (each team admits everyday in my program, and then we admit for ALL teams on our call nights – every 4th night).  It was beyond overwhelming and I got home ~7pm, missing my kids, missing Trav, and absolutely sobbing.  I could not pull it together that night.  I literally didn’t think I was going to be able to open my eyes the next morning I cried so damn hard.

Let me back up.  Travis left on a red eye flight Tuesday night to Boston – sort of a last minute business trip.  There was no way to pass it up; it was the opportunity of a lifetime for him and one of those now or never offers.  Of course he went, but that left me alone the night before starting my first day of intern year.  I was terrified and an emotional wreck – not pretty. 

Thank GOD I wasn’t really all alone.  My Yiayia to the rescue.  I am blessed with an amazing family.  I was joking with Yiayia the other day about how ironic it is that of all our family members, the one who has been there for us, doing all the “heavy lifting” in our greatest time of need is her - my 80 year old grandmother.  She is one hell of an Yiayia.  She cooks for us, cleans for us, takes care of our kids when we can’t, etc.  While Travis was gone, she’d get up when I’d leave for the hospital to assume care for the kids until Jen, our nanny, arrived.  The new nanny has been here too, obviously, but Yiayia has filled in on numerous occasions.  She has been wonderful and I don’t know what we would have done without her.  I’ve always known and been made to feel that we, as her grandkids, are her world, and I am so lucky to have that kind of love.  I know my parents would do it for me in a heartbeat too if Yiayia couldn’t, but they have a LOT on their plates as is with their own young kids whose needs are still very high. 

I get 1 day off a week, and that was yesterday for me.  I had that feeling of “Sunday night dread” all day and did my best to let go of it, but it was tough.  Unfortunately, Fin was up all night last night barfing too.  Thankfully Travis is home now and slept on the rocking chair by her bed, hauling her to and from the bathroom.  It killed me that I had to leave so early when she was still sick.  That didn’t feel very motherly to me; I really hate leaving my kids.  I’m on-call tomorrow, which means I said goodnight to my kids tonight and won’t see them now until I get home from work on Tuesday evening.  Sorry to be so negative, but medicine is a tough life.  Thank God for derm.  Still, getting through this year is going to be really freakin hard for me.  Here’s what my upcoming week looks like and what they’ll all look like, for those crazy enough to be contemplating a career in medicine or are just interested in what it takes to be a doctor (mind you, this is after 4 years of college which included required years in biology, chemistry, organic chemistry, physics, calculus - yes, I passed calc Jena;) – plus 4 years of painful hours as a medical student and a whole ton of abuse during that time). 

A day in the Life of a Minion

5:45am start pre-rounding; figuring out what happened to my patients since I last saw them, cehcking labs, etc.

7am get signout from the overnight team to find out what patients were admitted to my service overnight;

7:15-9:30 scrambling to see new & old patients, write orders, & follow up on labs before attending rounds;

9:30-10:30 rounds with the attending and team; answer questions about the patients’ disease processes and management (in medicine, we call this getting “pimped” – you’re in the hot seat getting grilled and trying not to look dumb)

10:30-11:30 morning report (mandatory; we present cases to other residents and attendings); “pimping” is also very much a part of this

11:30-12 finish writing notes and touching base with attendings;

12-1pm noon conference (mandatory education time);

1-4pm check in with specialists and consultants, discharge patients, follow-up on studies, and continue admitting new patients that come in.  One day a week we have rounds in the late afternoon with the chair of our program for 1hr (another session in which we get “pimped”).  This means less time to get work done for patients, which means I leave even later those days.

4pm – in theory, could signout to the on-call team…in reality, this doesn’t happen until ~6:30pm for me each day;

—-every 4th night——

4pm-7pm – on-call, admitting new patients for all the ward teams; since we take admissions until until 7, if one comes in at 6:55, it means I’m stuck there until the patient is stable and the admission process is done (which still takes me HOURS). 

—–when the 4th night falls on a Friday or Saturday, it’s an overnight call—–

4pm – get signout from all the other teams.  This means ALL their patients become my responsibility overnight.  So I all of the sudden have all my patients, my new admissions, and the other interns’ patients (~20-40 patients) who I get  a few sentences about from my fellow interns as they signout to me – that’s called “cross cover".  My first overnight call is this Friday, and I’m terrified of cross cover.  Bad stuff always happens overnight, and when you only know a 1 liner about a patient and you get called by a nurse saying they’re crashing and wanting to know right then what to do about it, it’s freakin scary. 

We had a talk last week by a girl who just finished her intern year and told us about the tragic death of a cross cover patient who fell through the cracks.  The intern on-call didn’t realize how sick that person was, didn’t know that patient (we never really know the cross cover patients), and it ended up resulting in her dying.  It was a mistake anyone could have made, which makes it even scarier.  Intern year is just stressful all around so far. 

This poor baby in my belly is going to come out with no fingernails, gnawing on its own arm or something. 

It’s finally here.  All the dread in the world couldn’t keep it away I guess.  My clinical responsibilities as an intern start on Wednesday of this week, and just to kick it off with a bang, my first call as an intern is on Thursday.  I’m really not excited.

This was my last weekend off for the next several months, so we tried to make it count.  We packed in a party with my program on Friday afternoon (our kids crashed it;), the Greek festival Friday evening, then Yiayia and I took the kids berry picking Saturday morning while Travis gave a big presentation to the ophthalmology department.  We picked 10lbs of strawberries for ~$20, and we had a great time doing it.  If you’re local, and you don’t know about Berry Patch Farms, you HAVE to check it out.  Where else can you take a hayride out to pick berries, eat all you want in the fields, then come back and listen to a live bluegrass band while sitting in a rocking chair or eating lunch at a picnic table nearby?!  Love that place.  Later on Saturday, we took the kids to see Toy Story 3 in 3D, which was AWESOME.  Then, today, Emilie and Chris came over with the girls and we set up their GIANT waterslide on our sidewalk just to provoke the HOA…it’s been awhile and we kinda miss the drama;) 

It was a blast and Jack was especially wild about it!

Then we all headed up to Evergreen for the rodeo.  My kids are big rodeo fans, and we turned Yiayia into a rodeo junkie too!  Ya gotta love Colorado in the summer; I think there’s a rodeo in one town or another just about every weekend.  How cute is little cowgirl Juneau:

Shane-Bug and Emilie:

Fin’s twin, but the sweet version, Nova:

Finley, of course, loves the music in between events the most.  She was doing the most hysterical, funky little dance and then when everyone would cheer the next cowboy on, she’d assume the applause was for her!  Ahh, my little girl. 

So, it was a great weekend.  We ended it with Yiayia taking Travis, the kids, and me to dinner for Father’s Day.  I have 2 more days to savor before the real chaos begins.  Our nanny situation is working out well so far.  The kids are adjusting, but the stress on them has been coming out in other ways.  For Fin, it means we’re back to FREQUENT wake-ups, on the order of 4-6/night.  For Shane, it means when I’m home he perseverates and sounds like a broken record saying “mama, mama, mama, mama” until I feel like my head is going to pop off.  Jack has sort of been a rockstar through the transition so far, but he’s always harder to read and a bit more subtle with his reactions to things like this.  For example, his acropustulosis has been flaring…that’s also heat-related, but stress plays a part for sure. 

I, on the other hand, am not so subtle with my emotions.  I know I’ll be a wreck again by mid-week.  I’m trying to take it all in very small pieces.  This week, my goal is to make it to Friday without melting.  I’m intentionally NOT thinking about how I’m going to survive the spring, leaving a newborn (in addition to my 3 other babies) to return to q3 overnight call in the ICU.  I’m just not going there yet.  First I have to get to Friday.  I don’t get all of next weekend off, but I will get 1 day since my first call falls on Thursday (& next call is Monday).  Wish me luck.

I’d have to say, it’s not a perfect reward / discipline system, but I don’t believe there is such a thing…however, the sticker charts have been easy and pretty effective for us so far.  I was worried the very 1st day when Fin bit Jack, then realized since she’d already lost her sticker, she might as well say “screw it” and just keep biting every time she got pissed.  I thought she’d cracked our system, but we seem to be back on track now (though she fell off the wagon once today).  Like I said, it’s not perfect;)

So guess whose last 3 poops have been on the potty?!  Shane’s first ever potty success was just yesterday, and it was quite exciting!  He had been trying so hard to go on the potty (we told him that was worth 5 stickers!) that it had been 2 days since he’d gone at all…so it was like twice as large.  After he labored and delivered, we cheered and everyone ran in to ooh and ahhh over its size.  We ran out to T@rget to pick out some big boy underpants for Shane.  Jack saw all the attention Shane was getting and said “maybe I could get new underpants since I pooped on the potty too,” then he added, in a melancholic tone while shaking his head in defeat, “but it wasn’t huge.”  Yes, everyone was impressed with Shane’s work.  He definitely earned those 5 stickers.

So it turns out, the secret to potty training is to just do nothing; if you wait long enough, eventually kids just potty train themselves and it’s totally stress-free that way.  For some (Fin) it happens by 22 months, for others (my boys) just before they turn 3.  As I tweeted, it’s one of those times when parenting can coexist with laziness.  A beautiful thing.  So the end of diapers is FINALLY in sight…until December.  I can’t believe we’re starting all over again!

So speaking of Shanie, we had a little family birthday celebration for him tonight (a few weeks early, but wanted to do it before I fall into the blackhole of residency…orientation starts tomorrow).  He got a basketball hoop, which we knew would be a huge hit.  He’s been obsessed with basketball for awhile (so random considering we’ve never exposed him to it).  He was adorable and SO SO happy with his little gift.  We let him take his basketball to bed tonight, so he’s up there snuggling with it right now.

I’m off to bed, but before you head there too, please visit Nicki’s blog!!  She’s running a SkinnyKidz giveaway right now, plus she wrote the best product review ever.  And don’t forget we’re having our Independence Day sale at SkinnyKidz right now and offering a super cute 4th of July belt, along with 2 other prints, for 25% off.  You have to order by June 28th to get them in time for July 4th, so hurry!

I wanted to update you all on some fun SkinnyKidz stuff that’s going on this month.  I have 3 big announcements.  First, we are having an Independence Day sale so you can deck your kids out for the 4th of July for cheap.  Jeans / jean shorts, a red, white, or blue top, and an adorable, Fabulous Fourth SkinnyKidz belt!  Voila: July 4th themed matching outfits.  This is the Fabulous Fourth belt we just introduced:

And a picture of Jena’s kiddos modeling it:

Our sale is 25% off the belts we think are “July 4th attire.”  They include the belt shown above, as well as the Play Ball belt and the Denim belt.  Just enter the coupon code “July 4th” at checkout (no quotes).  Order deadline to guarantee arrival for the 4th of July is JUNE 28th!

Secondly, I’d like to announce this month’s charity partner: Elephant Energy.  Elephant Energy is a really neat non-profit started by a friend of mine, Doug Vilsack, that promotes rural development and nature conservation through the dissemination of small-scale renewable energy technology.  Our donation will be earmarked for a project that will impact women and children specifically.  EE’s most recent project was bringing solar powered lights to a village in Namibia that has no electricity.  We picked a belt for this charity that would symbolize Elephant Energy’s logo and motto, and we think it’s super cute!  We’re offering the Elephant Energy charity belt with different button options:

Remember, if you buy this belt, 100% of proceeds will go to the charity.  Additionally, if you buy any other belts this month, 10% of the proceeds will also go to Elephant Energy, since EE is June’s charity partner.  It’s a great time to shop!

Thirdly, we are SUPER excited to announce that we have launched a bigger belt size!!  Many of you inquired and requested, so we took it to heart and have designed an X-large SkinnyKidz belt to fit kids who are ages 6-10.  We have heard from a lot of parents, particularly with kids in school uniforms, that it is a challenge to send a kid to school with a belt that matches and isn’t a pain for the teachers to put on and take off at bathroom time.  Enter the SkinnyKidz solution!  We are now offering the size XL in solid colors (denim, khaki), as well Camo and the Fabulous Fourth print (that way even your big kids can be coordinated with  / match your littles on July 4th)! 

Thanks for your support and encouragement.  We are hoping for another good month.  We would love for you to add our SkinnyKidz blog to your RSS feed, follow us on twitter, facebook, or join our newsletter!