Random Unrelated Topics

So, I’m wondering if I started to feel Braxton Hicks contractions yesterday. You would think that by the fourth kid I would know for sure, but each one is different. It felt like the pain of contractions, and they were spaced out like Braxton Hicks, but instead of being a pain down low like with cramps, it was painful all over my belly. And they happened every once in a while all day yesterday. So, we’ll see. It’s interesting that I haven’t felt anything up until now – except with my first pregnancy, I felt the Braxton Hicks contractions much earlier on in the other pregnancies.

On a different subject, I think there is something seriously wrong with our VCR. We have a nice VCR-DVD player combination machine that we got when we were married, and we have really liked having the ability to play both types of movies. The DVD part of the machine is working fine, but the VCR has started having problems the last couple of days. A couple days ago I taped a show from tv and when I went back to watch it, every time I tried to fast forward through a commercial, the tape paused and wouldn’t let me hit play. If I stopped the tape it would let me rewind or fast forward, but even if I only hit the button for a couple of seconds it would quickly jump through most of the tape all at once. I figured that the tape was done for – we must have just taped shows on it over and over so many times that we needed to use a fresh tape. We tried that last night, but found that the machine had the same problem with a different tape. After messing around with it for a while, we finally found that the tape would only play correctly if Michael sat on the floor a foot in front of the VCR – if he would get up or even shift his weight a little, the tape paused. So, he sat on the hard wood floor last night for an hour while we watched our show that we had taped. It was actually rather comical to watch, although I’m sure it was less than comfortable for him. We have never heard of a problem like this before – any suggestions?

And on an entirely different topic, I had to mention something that happened to me yesterday. The other day I wrote a lengthy post about always getting negative comments from strangers about having all boys. So, I was getting all the boys out of the van yesterday morning to take Kolby into his preschool class at the YMCA, and a middle-aged man walked by and very jovially announced, “Three boys – you are so lucky! And probably another boy on the way. That is great!” I smiled and he just kept on walking by, and I felt like that nice comment from a stranger maybe (in some small way) redeemed all the other strangers who have said such thoughtless things when they saw how many boys we have.

Oh, and I just wanted to mention a cute thing Eli said last night. We went out to dinner at a Mexican restaurant last night to celebrate Michael finishing one of his Step 2 Board exams, (Pedros is quickly becoming one of our ‘favorite’ restaurants. Not so much because of the amazing cuisine – we like the food fine – but more because they keep sending us buy-one-get-one-free dinner coupons. They serve tortillas and chips and salsa and we usually take sandwiches and some snacks for the boys, and then Michael and I each order a meal and one of them is free with the coupon, so it ends up being a pretty cheep dinner for our family. No, we have no shame, we are not to proud to take sandwiches to a restaurant for our kids – but kids can be picky sometimes and not eat the restaurant food anyway, so why waste the money? We are just wondering how old our kids will get before they start demanding ‘real food,’ I guess when it gets to that point, we will just have to stop eating out altogether). :)

Well, I was going to tell about the funny thing that Eli said. We were at the restaurant and at one point in the meal the boys noticed a painting of a rooster hanging on the wall behind them. I said something about the rooster, and Eli said, “No, it’s not a rooster.” (I just assumed that he thought it was a chicken, and that maybe he wasn’t familiar with the word ‘rooster.’) Kolby told him that it was a rooster, and he said, “No, a moose.” I smiled and Kolby corrected him and told him it was a rooster again, and Eli said, “No, a mooster.” I thought that was pretty cute.

Ok, last thing. While I was writing this, Michael just called and said that he got another interview for a transition year program here in Milwaukee. It is at St. Luke’s Hospital, which is supposed to have a nice transition year. He set it up for November 16th. It has been nice to get a few invitations already. We’re just waiting until next month to start hearing back about dermatology residency interviews. Hey, here’s a question for any of our fellow medical students, residents, or fellows that may happen to be reading this: As you may know, most of the interview invitations are done by e-mail, and with many of the programs it seems that if you don’t respond to the e-mail invitation immediately, all the interview dates may already be full by the time you call. We heard of another student setting it up so that she receives a message on her pager when she gets a new e-mail (so she doesn’t have to worry about checking her e-mail every 20 minutes each day). Does anyone know how to do this? Is this something you do through your e-mail settings, or something extra that you have to pay for through your pager service (or both?) If anyone knows about how to set that up, that would be great, thanks!