Category — photography

Nothing melts my heart like watching Jack with Griffin.  I’ve never seen anything so sweet and adorable.  Jackson is the best big brother and takes so much pride in having Griffin as his little brother.  He’s gentle, thoughtful, and genuinely interested in Griffie.  He’ll stop whatever he’s doing to come and sit with Griff, show him a toy, or try to make him laugh when he’s fussy (which is rare, admittedly).  He brags about his brother who never cries, etc. For being so indifferent towards Griffie as a newborn, Jack has truly embraced his big brother role these days; it’s so precious.

Thanks for all the Finley well-wishes.  She’s doing great; you definitely wouldn’t think she was sick just looking at her.  Travis bought the kids a huge trampoline the other day, which fits in our basement.  It’s essentially a wrestling pit.  The kids refer to it as “the snake pit,” don’t ask me why.  Anyway, she’s all about wrestling in the snake pit – business as usual.  When something grazes her face it clearly hurts, but otherwise she’s the same rough and tumble kid as always.  But the size of the mass is unchanged after 24hrs on antibiotics.  We’re holding our breath and hoping for a huge improvement by tomorrow.  We’ll see.  Thank you for your prayers…keep ‘em coming.

Anyway, this is just a little photo dump. SO many adorable pictures of Jack & Griff…and their daddy too.  Here are just a couple.  This is my favorite recent picture of  Jack.  Honestly, they don’t get any cuter than this boy.

Below are some pics of the world’s most contented baby. Seriously, we just look his direction and he smiles.  Apparently, when you’re #4 you have low expectations!  Sad but true.  I cannot tell you how many times we’ve come home from someplace, gotten the “big” kids settled, and then one of will be like “uh, where’s the baby?!”  And we’ll realize he’s sitting in his carseat by the back door, right where we’d set him down an hour earlier when we’d walked in the house.  He’ll just be hanging out, still strapped in, cooing at the ceiling.  I adore this child.

Travis and I had a much needed date night 2 nights ago.  Our nanny shared a movie night with our “big kids” and Travis and I took Griffie with us down the street for dinner and a few beers.  It was SO nice to actually feel like adults and experience the simplicity of parenting just a newborn.  MAN is that a piece of cake;)  We talked about a lot of stuff, especially Travis’ career and general direction since that’s on his mind a lot lately; it’s all happening so fast for him right now and I can tell his mind is always spinning.  Somewhere in there though, I brought up the question of “did you mean it: are we really done growing our family?”  I know both of our answers logically should be yes.  And that is my answer.  I think.  Still, there was something so sad about hearing Travis say it so confidently, and knowing in the back of my head too…that we are probably done experiencing moments like these:

Above is the amazing birth image I was talking about.  It’s Griffie’s little nogging in Dr. Warner’s hands, emerging (look closely if you can’t see his face at first – it’s on the right).  His first breath was seconds later followed by the most beautiful sound I prayed to hear in the OR.

There are SO MANY things we want to do with our lives.  Our life.  Honestly, adding kids to our family has been the most incredible experience and we love every one of them for the unique dynamic they each bring.  We are the luckiest parents alive.  There’s no adventure more amazing than adopting a child or bringing a life into the world, and we’ve been blessed to have done both twice.  The everyday process of raising our kids is quite the adventure as well!!  But continuing to grow would mean saying goodbye to a lot of other adventures in life.  And as Travis reminded me, life is about chapters, seasons, stages…very often one has to end so another can begin.  So now it’s time to move on with the beautiful kids we have and start dreaming of all the things we’ll do as a family.

There’s just something that’s been making me so sad about closing this chapter, even though I’m so overwhelmed with joy and love right now.  It’s a weird dichotomy of emotions.  I guess that’s the “baby blues” – so much excitement, anticipation, and energy around that one moment when the baby arrives.  It’s incredible.  But then, just days later, there are business calls to take, residency paperwork to submit, bills to pay, laundry to do, and somehow life just marches on.  Ready or not.  We had to reenter reality so abruptly.  I wish it would all just slow the hell down.  Or freeze completely for me right now since I’m just not ready for the world to keep spinning , and neither is Griffie. <sigh>

The baby blues have not been even a fraction of what they were when Finley was born, thank God.  I feel pretty “together” and fairly in control of my emotions.  I’ve cried over silly things a couple times, including 2 days ago when I found myself inappropriately crying over how precious Jackson was in his school’s holiday performance.  I had tears streaming down my face when everyone else was laughing and clapping…that’s when I realized I might be experiencing some post-partum hormones;)  Every now and then I feel sadness creep in just a little – usually over the baby chapter closing, or the thought of returning to work, or sometimes for no identifiable reason at all.  Jack has a little Christmas countdown calendar he made with my mom, and each morning he X’s off another day in December.  And each time I see that adorable little hand cross off the days, I take a deep breath, gulp, and swallow the sadness that comes when I think about the passing time.

As a suspenseful side note, there was a moment in the OR when our OB was closing me up and asked us if we plan on having any more kids just so she’d know if she needed to do an extra layer of stitching in my uterus.  Without hesitation, we both replied “just do it.”  We’re crazy, irresponsibly spontaneous, and sometimes a little unpredictable, but I think we were just playing that one safe.  Because as Griffin taught us, ya just never know.

These photos are just a little glimpse into our newborn and family session with our birth photographer, Kim.  We are so lucky to have had her in the OR with us capturing those precious moments, as well as in our home taking pictures of us as a family of 6.  There’s a sneak peek of our session on her blog too.  I saved a few of my favorites for Griffin’s birth announcement though:)

The picture below cracks me up every time I look at it – Jack LOVES to pose funky, so this was his “sweet move” for Kim’s camera.  Clearly the boy should be enrolled in karate, yoga, or something that requires crazy balance.

I can’t believe I didn’t take a single picture to document it, but our really close friends, Sara and Kaakpema, threw us a beautiful baby shower last weekend at their gorgeous home.  We are SO lucky to have such awesome friends.  The icing on the cake was that my mom, Christy (my older sister), and Angela (my little sister) flew in for it.  I’d worked until 12am the night before, so they’d gone to bed in our basement before I’d gotten home.  I came downstairs the next morning to see them in the kitchen making breakfast for the kids and was TOTALLY confused and floored!  I couldn’t figure out what was going on.  It was the coolest surprise ever.

It’s funny, but the shower somehow helped make the whole “we’re really pregnant” thing a little more real to us.  I keep thinking it’s going to hit us and we’re going to feel “ready,” but it’s still so surreal.  Travis still has this look of shock and horror when he sees my profile and remembers I’m about to delivery a baby.  I finished my final ER shift last night, so I’m sort of “off” for awhile – I’m on back-to-back derm elective months with my mentor.  Since I have some book chapters that are written but not yet edited, I can use the time to finish those and get elective credit that way.  I don’t have to be back in the hospital until Jan 23.  I don’t want to think about that yet though.  I just cannot process the fact that we’re going to have a newborn in 5.5 days or less!  That is just wild.  The kids are so cute and sweet with my belly – they rub it, kiss it, and talk about the baby all the time.  I’d give the excitement and newness of having a new baby brother/sister about 2 days for them once Quatro is actually here;)  I’m also kind of shocked that I went full-term.  EVERYONE predicted I’d deliver early because of the stress, lack of sleep, and craziness of being a pregnant intern.  But nope, my body once again proves it likes to hoard babies and NOT let them out…hence the scheduled section.  I am HUGE (close to my pregnancy weight with Finley) and really would have been thrilled to be unpregnant about 2 weeks ago, but I’m also very grateful my Little Bun got a full cooking. 

Anyway, we had an awesome little getaway to Keystone a few days ago with Kaakpema, Sara, and our friend Shane (affectionately known as “Big Shane” to my kids).  Big Shane, Kaakp, and Travis are business partners and have some very exciting work in Africa as well as Colorado in the field of health IT.  It’s so neat to finally see Travis engaged in work he feels passionate about, and it’s clear this is the field in which he was meant to work.  He initially thought he went to medical school to be a clinician, but he’s realized his strengths and potential are far greater in health IT.  His MD/MBA was the necessary educational path to open the doors he is now walking through, and Kaakpema and Shane are the perfect partners to balance him out.   On a somewhat related note, my kids are obsessed with Big Shane – they adore him.  Here is Big Shane with Little Shane (as my baby calls himself when in Big Shane’s presence):

We had a great time with everybody in Keystone!  Like last year, I used this opportunity to snap some cute holiday pics of my babies (sans Quatro).  Here are my favorites so far…please excuse the water mark on some of these; my lens needs cleaning and I don’t have time to edit the spots out.

Fin got some baby practice while we were in Keystone.  You may remember our friends, Kaakpema and Sara, had a baby ~4 months ago.  His name is Desmond, and he is ridiculously PRECIOUS!  Fin was tickled pink to hold him and it gave us a glimpse into the overbearing “helpfulness” that will accompany her transition to being the big sister of a poor unfortunate soul;)  Seriously though, she was so attentive to Baby Desmond and gentle with him – it was super cute. 

Please ignore my man hands in the following pics.  But they do match my hobbit feet, in case you were wondering.

The next 2 pictures cracks me up…they demonstrate Finley taking her duty as drool wiper VERY seriously.

The last picture is of Jack trying his hand at big brother to a teeny tiny baby again (it lasted all of 45 seconds, when he became bored and gently nudged the baby off his lap and back onto mine:)  Shane, on the other hand, is rather indifferent to babies as it turns out!  When asked if he wanted to hold the baby, he just responded “um, no thanks.”  Uh oh.

I LOVE fall, and I absolutely love fall in Colorado.  I love every season in Colorado, but fall is my favorite.  I know there’ll be pumpkin patches in Wisconsin too, but they won’t have mountain views or the same crisp, dry air with the bluest skies like we have here.  Still, I can’t wait to live there.  I’m just REALLY looking forward to the end of this year. 

I’m a big fan of fall festivals, and since today was my day off, I took the kids to this one, which was fantastic because there weren’t too many people there and there was tons of open space.  We picked pumpkins, went through the corn maze (twice), jumped in the bounce house, played in the “corn box,” and the kids got their arms painted (face painting is lost on little kids because they can’t see the artwork).  It was pretty fun.  Travis had to round on his patients at the hospital, but he was able to meet up with us for a late lunch.  Travis and I just finished watching a movie together and now I’m doing the countdown (6 hours until I have to get up for work tomorrow).  8 days until my next day off…

Finley talked this poor artist’s ear off!!

I swear this boy just gets more and more beautiful every time I look at him.

Shane is too cool for school with his spider tattoo:

This picture pretty much sums up Finley - petite in stature but LOUD in personality:

I love this picture of Shane – does he not have the most gorgeous skin?!  As a derm-to-be, I can appreciate the fact that it is FLAWLESS.

This picture of Fin is so cute and I had fun playing with it in Lightroom:

I started nightfloat on Monday, meaning I am on a month long rotation where I work nights instead of days (and night).  For the first 2 weeks, I work 7pm-7am (in theory, reality is more like 7pm-8am, but this morning I got a late admission and was stuck there until almost 9), then I’ll switch to 4pm-4am (4pm-5 or 6am).  It’s grueling but actually comes out to probably 15-20 fewer hours worked each week.   I come home, try to nap 2-3 hours, then have lunch and play with the kids until their naptimes, when I lay down with them for another 1.5hrs.  It’s REALLY hard on the body, but the bright side is I actually get to see my kids.  By this morning, I was SO exhausted from being on my feet all night and sleeping ~4 hours a day between shifts.  Nights at the hospital are CRAZY busy and I seriously don’t even sit down except in the ED when I’m admitting a new patient.  But the beauty of nightfloat, and the reason I paid one of my co-interns to swap me a wards month for a nightfloat month this spring, is that you get 2 days off per week (we get “weekends”).  Probably doesn’t sound too exciting to people with normal jobs, but it’s one of the only rotations we have during intern year where that happens. 

So I got home ~9am today and don’t have to be back to the hospital until 7pm on Sunday.  The hard part is that my body is so damn confused about what time of day it is, and I can’t quite convince it to sleep right now.  Instead, I’ve decided to post pictures of the last 2 hikes we did – Burning Bear Creek Trail, which was AMAZING, and a little hike we’ve done before in Roxborough State Park, which I love.  Both were incredible, but Burning Bear is my new favorite to do with kids, especially if it’s warm enough to “swim” in the beautiful mountain creek the trail follows.

These are from Burning Bear Creek hike:

And in case you’re not sick of pictures, here are a couple from Roxy State Park:

Jack starts school this week, which is huge.  He’s VERY excited, but every time the topic comes up, Fin becomes hysterical.  She doesn’t want him to go, and if he does, she wants to go with him.  It’s kind of sad that their little pod of 3 is breaking up.  Jack will only go to school a few hours a day (~3), but since it’s in the am, it’ll mean he doesn’t go on morning outtings with Fin and Shane.  They’ll probably struggle without him for a bit, but I’m guessing Fin and Shane will become closer because of it (not that they aren’t close already, but you get the point).  Sad. 

Travis and I are back to daydreaming about getting to a point after I finish derm training (<4yrs) where we can pay off loans and just whisk our family overseas to travel for a few years while doing different types of international work.  We’d homeschool and hire an international school teacher to join us and help teach the curriculum we design for our kids, with tons of hands-on learning Travis and I can provide along the way while we take our kids to see the world and do humanitarian work along the way.  Then we’ll settle in London for 2 years, where I’ll do the Tropical Medicine fellowship before returning to the developing world to practice medicine / tropical derm / and teach at a med school.  Travis is now doing health IT development work in Africa, but hopefully it’ll expand into Asia as well, so lots of possibilities for his non-clinical role overseas too.  We just need his start-up company to do what people are projecting it will, and I just need to survive internship for now.  In the meantime, it’s nice to dream, ya know?

Anyway, I think I might take a Tylenol PM and attempt sleep – I haven’t taken a single pill during pregnancy, and that’s a safe one anyway so don’t worry (Yiayia;).  I think the baby would appreciate some rest.  I can’t even imagine what kind of little monster is lurking within me, but if it’s anything like the last one, I should be resting every second I can!  Speaking of, check out this tantrum, I call it a Fintrum:

Travis wasn’t in town when this happened and Fin gets very out of sorts without her daddy.  It’s kind of an amusing video at first, and then it’s just sad when her little body just gives up and you realize the meltdown was a combo of exhaustion and missing her dad.  I stopped filming and she just collapsed into my arms:(  Poor little monster.  But it does give you a glimpse into how her head can spin around!!  I posted this so I can look back on this blog someday and see the good, the bad, and the ugly.  And of course the beautiful, wonderful, fun, hilarious stuff that happens in our house everyday too.

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. 

I blew it.  I totally forgot to post yesterday and when I remembered, after several glasses of wine, at 12:02am, I realized I didn’t have internet access anyway.  We were up in the mountains (~1hr from here) at our friends’ condo, which was just awesome.  The kids had a blast and we got to spend really quality time with some very close friends of ours.  I’ve blogged about my friend from college, Kaakpema, and his new wife, Sara, before.  They were the ones who had that INSANELY beautiful wedding in Denver last summer.  Well, Finley fell head over heels IN LOVE with their new puppy, Jack proudly slept in the top bunk, and Shane enjoyed eating snow, staring at the fire, and letting the puppy lick pancake off his tongue (not joking – it made me throw up in my mouth to watch that happen, but he thought it was hilarious). 

Travis and Kaakpema pretended to be old men, with their gin & tonics and their cigars, and Sara and I got to spend time talking.  The 4 of us had some really interesting, really good talks about life, where we see ourselves headed in the long-term, our family goals, career goals, and parenting.  Kaakpema and I met because we were both athletes at Brown, so we had some long talks about kids in sports, what we were thankful for, and what we might do differently with our own kids regarding sports.  We also talked about the complexities of parenting kids who might struggle with racial identity / cultural identity challenges at some point in the future.  It was just really nice to finally get time with our friends in a setting that allowed us to stay up late catching up on life and talking about stuff that really matters to all of us.  I can’t wait until they have kids so we can navigate a lot of these things as parents together!

This boy should SO be on the cover of Baby Gap!  Oh well, their loss…

Anyway, I have a TON of stuff to get done this week for the Derm Dept., so I need to get cracking.  I tried to take a Christmas card pic of my kids while we were in Keystone, so let me know what you think.  I could NOT get the “I’m-taking-a-dump-here-people” look off Shane’s face.  This was his best effort when I asked him to smile:)  He tried so hard it actually looked painful!  And yes, that is a bow in Jack’s hair.  I tired to put it towards the top of his head, but it still showed up in the pictures.  At any rate, this year’s picture is one to remember!  Here are a few:

YAY!  My camera is back!!!

**Thanks for all the sweet comments on my post about Shane talking!  It is just amazing to hear his sweet little voice actually saying words.  After lots of worrying, testing, and 5 months of speech therapy, we are so relieved and so hopeful that he will catch up before the funding for his therapy services dry up!  He will be 2 in 3 weeks and had 0 words until last Friday.  You always hear about the kids that say nothing and then have those language explosions, and while we’d hoped that would be our kid’s story too, I have to admit we worried a LOT.  It is more than fine with us that he’s on his own timeline and just likes to do things his own way, we just weren’t sure that was all that was going on.  We are still learning who Shanie is, and we are so thankful that his delays seem to be due to his own little attitude of “I’ll do it when I’m good and ready, so get off my a$$ until then!”  LOL!  It’s been our hope all along, but he’s very hard to read and deciphering what was stubbornness versus a lack of comprehension / inability has been difficult.  Thank you all for your sweet words and all the prayers for our boy.  I am very grateful for all the support, and we are proud of and happy for Shane.  Hopefully he’ll continue to blossom!*** 

Also – please don’t forget to enter The Pretty Peacock giveaway before tomorrow night!

We have a super busy weekend coming up that we’ve been looking forward to for awhile, so I wanted to post a few random pictures before they get lost in the shuffle.    

I LOVE this picture of Finley:

Belly buttons are all the rage at our house right now!

Shanie’s “button:”

Love these lashes:

If you weren’t in attendance last night, you missed a REALLY fun twitter party.  We’ve decided to make it a weekly thing.  Our little hash tag thingy is #jk8 and we’ll be tuning in together to tweet while we watch Jon & Kate Plus 8 on Mondays at 9pm EST.  So join twitter already because I’m going to harass you again next week and pretty soon you’re going to be really lost on all our inside jokes;) 

I also wanted to ask that you all think good thoughts for Travis.  He takes his boards tomorrow and has worked really hard for this.  The kids seem to have come down with something, or are starting to, so pray he stays healthy through today and the 9 hours of testing tomorrow!

Also, my little brother and his joker friends are in Vietnam right now, in case anyone is interested in reminiscing about a gorgeous country, the most delicious cuisine, and lots of friendly people rich in culture who are always offering a “special price” for us Americans;)  Here’s their travel blog and here’s my disclaimer: although I may be related to 1 of these travelers (the one referred to as “Apple Butt,” to be specific), the opinions, commentary, and perspectives expressed on their blog is not necessarily a reflection of my own.  Oh, and they twitter too…see, now you have 2 good reasons to join.  1) #jk8 twitter parties, and 2) ridiculous, pee-in-your-pants updates from The Goof Troop blundering around SE Asia.

Now onto photos!  I think a few of these are amongst my all-time favorites of my kids.  This one of the boys walking through the wildflower field with that gorgeous Colorado blue sky in the background and the sun shining on their faces just makes me happy to look at.  And Jack’s Star Wars shirt makes Travis smile;)  I think I might frame this one.

Sniffing flowers:

We ♥ dirt:

Finley has a bit of an obsession with sippy cups.  I think her greatest fear is getting stuck somewhere without a drink, or something like that.  She’s crying in this next picture because Shane took her sippy cup for his magic trick…

Here’s his magic trick:

Shanie always looks like he’s deep in thought.  I hope he talks one day soon so we can get a glimpse into what he’s thinking about.

I swear, the camera just LOOOOOVES this boy, and I think this boy loves the camera too:

I ACTUALLY caught him looking at the camera;)

I know my love for Colorado must be irritating to all those who don’t live in Colorado (or Idaho, Oregon, Washington, Montana, New Mexico, Arizona, or Utah…because those places rank pretty highly on my “cool spots to live in the US” list too, so you all shouldn’t be too jealous;), but seriously, I freakin LOVE Colorado.  I always worried we’d start taking it for granted if we actually LIVED in the place we dreamt of vacationing…but nope, hasn’t happened yet.  Every time we go outside, I am reminded how lucky we are to actually live here.