The Boys' Names

My friend, Kim, was asking about the middle names we picked out for the baby, and the stories behind all of our boys’ names, so I thought I’d share.

We have given all of our boys family names for their middle names. So, Kolby is Kolby Michael – Michael is his dad’s name (obviously) and his grandpa’s middle name. [Michael’s dad’s name is Dick Michael Bradshaw (Dick, not Richard), and I wasn’t going to use Dick, so Michael worked for him). And the name Kolby is just a name I have liked for a long time – a guy from our church stake was named Kolby (although it was probably spelled with a “C”), and although I didn’t really know him at all, I liked his name when I heard it. And I just thought it was nice to spell it with a “K,” although I have since learned that there are lots more Kolbys and Colbys out there, and that the majority of them spell the name with a “C,” so Kolby will have to deal with having his name spelled wrong all his life – but he’s already used to that – he tells people when they spell his name wrong and asks them to fix it.

Eli’s full name is Elijah Carl. We picked Elijah because in the scriptures Elijah was the prophet who would turn the hearts of the children to their fathers, and often it is said that if you are interested in learning about your ancestors you have the spirit of Elijah. And since I have always been very into genealogy, Elijah seemed like a great name. Eli is our only one so far who goes by a nickname, although we do call him both Eli and Elijah, but we probably use Eli more often now. We had decided to call him Eli when we picked the name, and when he was a baby we didn’t call him Elijah very often at all, so it was quite surprising when Kolby started calling him “Jijah” for Elijah, instead of Eli. We thought that was cute and we called him Jijah too for a while, until he got older and Kolby kept telling me that his name was Eli, not Jijah. So, now we call him Eli most of the time, but we also use Elijah. His middle name is Carl, after my mother’s father, Carl John Spohr Jr., who passed away before he ever got to meet Eli, but Kolby and Eli were both able to go with us to Grandpa Carl’s funeral.

Camden’s name is Camden James. As many of you know, we like to have names picked out really early – we usually have had a boy and a girl name picked out for each baby before we had the ultrasound to find out if it was a boy or a girl. Camden has been our only one that we “changed” the name for – although it was only a couple weeks after we had his ultrasound that we decided to change our minds on the name we had picked out. We had chosen Ezekiel, and were planning on calling him Zeke, which I think is really cute. But everyone we told that name to automatically said, “Zeke the geek!” Now, I know kids can think up a way to tease just about anyone about their name, but when I realized that it was the first thing that most people thought when they heard the name, I started to have doubts about using it. It was just too easy for everyone to think that up – I didn’t want him to be teased forever about his name. So I decided to change the name, but Michael thought that it was a fine name, so he wasn’t too motivated to look for an alternative. I spent days searching through lists of baby names on the internet, printing out lists of possibilities, and then Michael would come home and cross most of the names off the list. (The only ones he would leave on the list were names that I thought were nice, but just too common). So, then I came across Camden on one internet list, and I loved it. It’s similar enough to Cameron that it doesn’t sound strange, but different enough that it’s not boring. Michael said that he liked that name, but that he thought it was the “weirdest” name he had ever considered using (I think that by “weird” he meant “uncommon”). So I went onto the US Census website and looked up the data about US children’s names for the most recent year that they had posted. I was pretty surprised too that Camden was more common than Kolby, Eli, and Elijah (although not as common as Colby). That was all it took for Michael – it wasn’t too “weird” of a name, so Camden it was. And his middle name is after Michael’s brother (his brother, Alan, goes by his middle name, and his first name is really James), and for Michael’s mother’s father, James Albert McIntosh.

When we were looking for a name for Isaac, I really wanted a name that fit well with the other boys’ names. I felt like Kolby and Camden were both more modern sounding names, and Elijah was a name from the scriptures. And Kolby and Camden both started with consonants (and the same sound), and Eli was a vowel name. So, I wanted a name that went along with Eli’s name so that he wasn’t the odd one out. We liked Isaac, and that fit the bill: a scriptural name that started with a vowel. Also, I like the story of Abraham and Isaac in the scriptures and what great faith Isaac showed in both God and his father at such a young age. And I was excited to use the middle name, Steven, after my dad. So he is Isaac Steven Bradshaw.

And for our last little boy, we felt like we were running out of boy names that we both agreed on. (We had a whole list of possible girl names that never got used). So, we waited until a couple weeks after we had the ultrasound to decide on the final name. I liked Riley (I thought it was a nice name that ended in the same sound as Kolby’s name, and it is also a family name – but Michael doesn’t care for names that can be used for a boy or a girl, and Riley has become more and more popular as a girl’s name lately). We also liked the name Tyce, except I just didn’t feel like it fit well with the other boys’ names – it was only one syllable, and all of our other boys go by two-syllable names (I know, I get way too technical about this whole name-choosing thing, but I’ve got to use the names for the rest of my life, so I might as well pick something I really like). (And no, we didn’t like the idea of naming him Tyson and calling him Tyce). So, then I thought of my great, great grandfather’s name, Courtland. I like that name a lot, and Michael decided that he liked it too – he is planning on calling the baby ‘Court,’ but I think I’ll call him Courtland. (We talked about calling Camden ‘Cam’ too, but that hasn’t happened so far). The thing that I really had to convince Michael about was my idea for the middle names. Yes, I said names, not name. I really wanted to use both my brother’s names, and we are not planning on having another baby. So, I wanted to name the baby Courtland Matthew Aaron Bradshaw. Most people think that is weird, but I don’t really care what people think – we’ve had more than one person say they wouldn’t choose some of the names we picked for our boys, but they don’t have to go through pregnancy, labor, or raising any of our children, so I figure they don’t really get a say in the matter. :) Anyways, I was thinking about how it would be for him to have two middle names, and I was thinking that most of the time it wouldn’t really be a big deal. Lots of documents just ask for your middle initial, so that will be easy: Courtland M. Bradshaw. And for other things, like diplomas, they usually let you choose how your name appears, so that won’t be a problem. But this way he will get to be named after two wonderful uncles. So, even if people think it’s silly of me to want to give him an extra name, I think it will be a very nice name. Courtland Matthew Aaron Bradshaw.

(Oh, and I mentioned that Kolby called Eli ‘Jijah’ before he could pronounce the name correctly. It’s kind of funny to hear all the ways that the boys have pronounced each others’ names when they were little: Kolby called Eli ‘Jijah,’ and Eli called Kolby ‘Bo-bee,’ Eli called Camden ‘Mamen,’ and now Camden pronounces Isaac ‘Igaak.’ So, if you think that we should have chosen some different names for our kids, I guess it could always be worse: we could have had Bo-bee, Jijah, Mamen, and Igaak instead. :) We’ll see how Isaac ends up pronouncing Courtland after he starts talking).

Ultrasound Pictures

The Big News . . .

And now, for the big news:

We are really, really surprised, but . . .

We are having a . . . .

BOY!

The ultrasound tech said that she is not often able to tell people the gender of their baby 100% for sure, but she said that if our baby is not a boy then she should quit her job. So, here are the ultrasound shots we got. They weren’t able to get a good profile shot of the baby’s face, which is usually my favorite shot, but they were able to get several shots of the arms, legs, etc. and she said that the baby looks healthy, that all the measurements show that the due date of February 9th is accurate, and this is definitely a boy. :) Oh, and we got a DVD copy of the ultrasound too, which was cool because none of our other doctors' offices have ever given the parents movies of the ultrasound to take home. So that'll be fun to show 'Baby Boy No. 5' someday. We'll let you know when we finalize our name decision for this one.

(Again, I was all ready to post the ultrasound pictures, but it won't allow me to upload them now, so I'll have to do that later).

Dinosaurs, Swimming in the Lake, and Upcoming Ultrasounds

So, this upcoming week will be an exciting one. Tomorrow is the big day: Kolby and Eli start preschool, and then in the afternoon we are going for the ultrasound. The boys’ first day of school isn’t really a normal day, it’s an orientation day for them to go and meet their teacher and see the classroom. So they will then officially start on Tuesday. Kolby will go 4 days a week (Monday through Thursday) and Eli will go on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Their class is at the perfect time of day: 9am to noon (so they will still be able to keep to their schedule of naptime after lunch). And on the days Eli goes he will be in the same class as Kolby. Their teacher is Mrs. Dora, and she has two aids in the classroom too. We were excited when we went to the parent meeting last week to find out that the aids both speak Spanish, and we asked them if they would try to use Spanish with our boys too, so that will be nice. We went the other day and the boys each picked out a new backpack and a folder to keep papers in, and they were excited about that. (One nice thing about this preschool starting a couple weeks later than most of the other schools around here is being able to get backpacks on sale for 30% off). And after naps I have my ultrasound tomorrow at 3pm, so that will be nice to find out if this baby is a boy or a girl so we can finalize a name and I can get a little more prepared (like getting a baby book started and picking up clothes, if needed). So tomorrow is a big day. We also have Camden’s birthday party next week, so that should be exciting too. And then next week we are going to head for San Diego to visit while Michael starts his busy ICU rotation here. Then we’ll get back here just in time to celebrate Isaac’s and Kolby’s birthdays, go to a pumpkin patch, and celebrate Halloween.

So, this week went pretty well, although it was kind of tiring since Michael hadn’t had a day off for almost 2 weeks until Thursday, so it was nice once he did get that break. On Monday it was my mom’s birthday, so we got to call her and the boys enjoyed singing “Happy Birthday” to her on the phone. On Tuesday and Wednesday we ran several errands and on Wednesday I took Eli and Camden in for a doctor’s visit.

We did get to go do something fun earlier this week. Grandma Faun had a dentist’s appointment up in Ogden (where she used to live), and so we drove her up there and then afterwards we went to the Dinosaur Park there in Ogden. It is a fun park where she took us when we were kids too. We got there, and they started us out in their small indoor museum before going out to the park. The only problem was when we got off the elevator for the museum we came out into a dark room with a scene behind a fence with a triceratops and her little babies and a tyrannosaurus. These were the only robotic dinosaurs in the whole park, but the tyrannosaurus moving it’s head and arms and roaring loudly was enough to thoroughly freak Eli out. He started crying and saying he didn’t want to go that way. I tried to explain to him that the dinosaurs weren’t real – that they were robots made by people and that the noises were just recordings, but he told me then that he didn’t want to go by the robots. We convinced him after a little while to continue through the museum, even though he didn’t want to pass the large dinosaur skeletons. Then we went outside, where there were lots of different dinosaur statues as you walked through trails in the park, and there were recordings of dinosaur noises playing from the bushes and trees. Eli went along, but wasn’t to excited about all of it. Kolby thought it was great, as he walked through very slowly and quietly, pretending to be hiding from the dinosaurs. At last I found one of the dinosaurs that was close enough to the edge of the trail that we could reach it, so I had Eli feel the dinosaur and then feel a rock next to it, and see that they felt like they were made out of the same material. I said, “See, I told you they weren’t real.” And he responded, “Oh, I didn’t know that.” (As if he hadn’t been there for the last 20 minutes while I told him repeatedly that the dinosaurs weren’t real and the noises were just recordings). After that he was pretty much ok, although I’m still not sure that he didn’t think that the dinosaur he touched was the only fake one and all the others (especially those robotic ones) were really real. But we walked through the whole park, and the boys enjoyed it. At the end there was a playground with a giant slide and some little dinosaurs they could climb on, so it was a fun afternoon. They all fell asleep in the car within a few minutes of leaving the park, except for Kolby who stayed awake the whole drive back to Salt Lake. Afterwards we stopped at Costco for a few things Grandma needed, and we ended up having dinner at the food court there, and all I can say about that nice little experience is that I look forward to the day somewhere down the road when I can sit down to eat a meal without having to hurry and eat it all before the kids finish their food and start in on why they are still starving and should be ale to share my meal. Who knows when that will be?

On Thursday Michael fortunately got the day off, so he was able to go with me to the parent’s meeting for the preschool class, and we liked the teacher and are excited for the boys to start this week. Then we decided to take the boys swimming in the afternoon, so we checked the pool schedule on the rec. center’s website, got all the kids into their swim suits, and headed to the pool. We were disappointed when we got there to find that the pool was closed for maintenance for the week. We called several other local rec. centers, and found that they were also all closed too. And we were told that all the outdoor pools in the area closed on Labor Day. So, we walked back out to the car and were trying to think of something else fun to do on Michael’s day off (without having to take everyone back home and change again), and we decided to go to the Great Salt Lake. I had swum there a few times before when I was younger, but Michael never had. We found, after being in the car for quite a while, that the entrance to Antelope Island was a lot further north than we had realized, and we had to drive through bad traffic on the freeway to get there. When we arrived at 4pm, we had to pay $9 to get into the “park” (which I guess wasn’t so bad, since we would have paid about that much for our whole family to swim at the rec. center anyways). We drove across the road, and as soon as we got to the island we saw two big buffalo walking slowly towards us and across the road right behind our van. That was pretty fun for the boys. When we got there, there was nice soft beach sand around the parking lot, so I decided we should leave our sandals in the car rather than end up carrying all of the boys’ sandals for them. That ended up being an unwise decision, because after we got a ways down the beach (too far to run back to the car quickly to get the sandals), the sand became rocky and hurt our feet for the rest of the long walk down to the water (the water was pretty low, and it took us quite a while to walk that far with the boys). We got down to the water, and at least it was pretty warm. Michael was pretty excited that he could float with no effort at all because of the high salt content of the water, especially since he has trouble floating in a pool. He tried to get all the boys to do it with him, but none of them were excited about that idea. Camden did have fun, though, sitting on Michael’s stomach while he was floating on his back, so Michael was like a human inner tube. The boys were not as excited about swimming in the salty water as their daddy was, and we ended up returning to the shore and building castles before too long. We listened to a coyote howl for a while as we sat on the beach. Then we got back to the car and drove around the island for a little bit – the boys got to see several more buffalo and an antelope all pretty close up, so that was fun. Then we had a long drive home before we could eat anything, since we smelled pretty strongly of Salt Lake water, we couldn’t stop at a restaurant to eat and we didn’t want any drive-through food. We got home later than planned, but it was a fun outing. I think that swimming in the Great Salt Lake is something that is good to do once, but probably not a favorite new day trip for each weekend, since the water just smells so strong.

Thursday night was supposed to be my night out with Kolby, but since we took so long getting home from the lake that night we decided to do it Friday instead. I had the idea of taking him to a movie, since we haven’t taken the boys to a movie since Cars was in the dollar theater, which had to have been when Camden was a little baby. I looked online, and there was a kid’s movie playing at the dollar theater nearby that I hadn’t even heard of, but it was rated G and it looked like it would be good. So we went and I didn’t tell Kolby what we were going to do, just that it was a surprise. We got the tickets, went into the theater, and sat down while the previews were playing, and then I asked him if he knew what the surprise was yet, and he said no. (I guess it really has been a long time since we took them to a movie). I told him we were seeing a movie, and he got really excited. I told him that we don’t talk out load during a movie, so he kept asking me throughout the previews when the movie was starting so that he would know when he needed to start whispering. About 5 minutes into the movie Kolby moved to sit on my lap, and we enjoyed the whole thing together. And the movie ended up being pretty good for a kid’s movie that I hadn’t even heard of before – sure, it had it’s corny scenes, but for the most part it was cute and better than I had expected. It was called Kitt Kitteredge, about a little girl and her friends who lived during the depression. Kolby was really excited for our night out, and he is still carrying the stubs of the movie tickets around with him.

Well, yesterday I was sick all afternoon (the morning sickness just randomly comes back every once in a while). I was glad that I was feeling all right by the time Michael got off, because he had had a good day at work and wanted to go out, since he didn’t have to go back into work this morning. We went to the dollar theater and saw Indiana Jones, which I thought was pretty good – it reminded me a lot of the old Indiana Jones movies – until the kid started swinging through the trees with the monkeys and the monkey proceeded to help him attack the evil Russian soldiers – I thought that was pretty unbelievable. And then the whole ending about the aliens just really didn’t fit in with Indiana Jones as an archeologist – they could have come up with a better idea for that part of the movie. Other than that, I thought it was pretty good, having been warned by friends before seeing it that there were some cheesy parts and a few corny jokes.

So, today Michael had another day off, since he hadn’t had a break for a while so he got two days off not very far from each other. He wanted to go back and visit his old ward at the church he grew up going to in South Jordan, so we went down there this morning. We found out, though, that it was their stake conference, which meant we had a longer meeting to sit through with our boys and Michael didn’t get to see as many old friends as he had hoped, but he did get to talk to several families he knew, which he enjoyed. (If only our stake conference wasn’t coming up next Sunday, when Michael doesn’t have the day off – don’t get me wrong, I think stake conference is great, but it’s just too long for babies to sit through for 2 hours of talking without a break. That’s why it’s nice that they always have an adult meeting on the preceding Saturday night, so those of us who have young children can feel like we get something out of at least one of the meetings – but for some reason they don’t have an adult meeting in our ward this year. Who knows why?)

So, we were able to get a hold of Michael’s cousin, Andy, and his wife Michelle, and they are coming up here for dinner tonight. That should be nice to see them. Their daughter is not much younger than Kolby, and our kids have never met each other.

Well, we hope you all have a good week, and we’ll be sure to keep everyone posted on the findings of the ultrasound tomorrow.

Pyloric Stenosis

Since we came to Boise on December 1st Isaac has started spitting up. All of our boys have actually spit up quite a bit when they were babies, but this is different. He has done it about once a day and it is very forceful – kind of a projectile spit up. At first we thought that it was just because he was kind of stuffy, but it has continued for a while now. Michael mentioned once that he was the right age for symptoms to start showing for some medical condition, but honestly I didn’t really think much of that comment because every once in a while Michael learns about medical problems and then wonders if he or one of our family members may have them.

So, after this went on for a while, we were starting to wonder if it might be something more than just his reaction to being really stuffy or something. We were at Cass and Marci Smith’s house for dinner last week (Cass is a pediatric GI doctor), and Michael and Cass talked that night about the condition Michael had mentioned earlier, Pyloric Stenosis. Cass said he thought we should keep an eye on him and keep that in mind. I took Isaac in and had him weighed yesterday morning. He was weighed a couple days before we came out here, and he had lost about 7 ounces since then, and babies his age are generally supposed to gain about an ounce a day, our pediatrician told me. I called our pediatrician in Milwaukee, and he also thought that it was possible that Isaac could be showing signs of Pyloric Stenosis, and that we should have him seen by a doctor here. (I guess this shows me that Michael is really becoming a real doctor and I should pay more attention to his ideas about medical problems).

So, I took him into the emergency room yesterday (our insurance will only cover emergency room visits when we are out of state, so we couldn’t just find a pediatrician here to see him). We were there all day, and Debbie was nice enough to watch the other boys for me while I went (since Michael was on an airplane all day). In the emergency room, they weighed Isaac, took his history, and decided to have an ultrasound done to see if he had this Pyloric Stenosis. I had read a little about the condition on the internet before taking him in. Basically, it is when the muscle of the pylorus (the tube that empties into the stomach) gets too thick, and makes it so that the milk does not enter the stomach like it should. This condition is much more common in boys than in girls, and the symptoms are projectile vomiting, the baby loosing (or at least not gaining) weight, and the baby often appearing otherwise healthy (unless it progresses to where the baby is not keeping anything down, and then the baby can come dehydrated and lethargic). So, they did an ultrasound of his stomach and measured the thickness of the pyloric muscle. They told me that his pylorus looked elongated and was measuring between 2.5 and 3 mm thick, which is thicker than normal. But they said that it would measure 3.5 mm if it were true Pyloric Stenosis, which would require a surgical procedure to fix.

So, the doctor said that we would just watch him and see how he does. Isaac was seen by an ER doctor and a pediatric surgeon, and they told me that this problem will either go away after a few weeks when he may just grow out of it, or that it may develop into true Pyloric Stenosis and require the surgery if the spitting up were to continue and get worse. I talked to the surgeon this morning, and he did say that the majority of babies with this problem will develop true Pyloric Stenosis before they are 2 months old, so hopefully if Isaac doesn’t worsen in the next couple weeks, he will just get over it and we won’t have to worry about it any more. He hasn’t spit up like that for a day now, so I am hoping that it will just go away and we won’t have to do anything more for it. Poor little guy he’s already had enough surgeries for a 7-week old baby, he doesn’t need one more.

Ultrasound Pictures

Last week I participated in an ultrasound workshop at Waukesha Hospital to help teach residents how to do ultrasounds. I went for two days, will get paid $100, and got to keep the ultrasound pictures -- so it was a good experience overall. By the end of the workshop, I felt like I knew quite a bit about how to do an ultrasound, too, so that was kind of fun. The first day I was there, they said that Isaac's head was up (he was breach), and I came home wondering how late in the pregnancy you have to start being concerned that a baby is breach, but the next day I went in and his head was down, so I guess I don't need to be too concerned about that.

Oh, and I'll just mention another cool thing. I was talking to my midwife at my appointment this week, and asked her if this baby comes after the due date, how long she would wait before inducing me. I was pleased when she said that she would only wait a day or two after the due date to induce -- so October 31st or November 1st. So, that was nice to hear, since I have had doctors in the past who said that there was no way they would ever induce before exactly 7 days after the due date. Anyways, if he does come late and we end up inducing, I would definitely choose November 1st, because I don't want to miss out on Halloween with the boys this year (if I can help it), and Kolby's birthday is already October 31st, so I'd rather have them have their own separate birthdays. So, my hope right now is that he either comes a week or two early or comes on November 1st, so I can do the whole Halloween thing with the kids. Keep your fingers crossed for me!

Here are the ultrasound pictures they took of Isaac:

This one shows a good picture of the umbilical chord (the little bubbly-looking thing near the top-right). They seemed pretty excited to get such a good picture of the chord.

This is a picture of his heart. (It looks a lot cooler on the ultrasound machine monitor because you can see it beating, and they were excited because they got such good views where they could make out each chamber of the heart).

This one confirms that Isaac is a boy.

And this is my favorite picture. It is a profile view of his face (he is laying on his back, looking up at the sky) and you can see one of his eyes, his nose, lips, and chin. It is kind of fun to have ultrasounds taken so late in the picture, because he looks more like a person than like a little skeleton -- I love that you can see his big lips so clearly!

Sub-Internship Makes My Life Seem Like A Blur

This week has seemed a blur as I have started into my medicine sub-internship. I say that because I am realizing just how busy it is going to be when I am an intern full time next year. I had to ask Steph to look at the calendar to remind me what actually happened this week outside the hospital.

I was on call Monday and Friday this week. Being on-call entails being at the hospital from 6:00 am one morning until 1:00pm the next day – about 30 hours total. During an on-call day, our team can get up to 10 new admissions, usually starting in the afternoon. There is a senior resident, three interns (including me) and two junior medical students, so we take turns going to meet the new patients, usually in the emergency room. On Monday I got two new patients – an older gentleman that had fallen in his home and been stuck on the floor for two days before being found by his neighbor, and a lady with multiple sclerosis (MS) with a bladder infection. As an “intern” I am in charge of meeting the patient, conducting a full history and physical, writing all the admission orders, and then taking care of the patient while they are in the hospital. I still have the senior resident who looks over all my orders before they go out to make sure they are ok, but it is a new experience to be in charge of making so many decisions. I am at a new location that uses a computer system that I am not familiar with, so it has been an uphill learning experience on that end as well.

That first call night I got about six hours of sleep, which was great – I didn’t have to go home and sleep the next day. But I did miss the Labor Day ward BBQ that Steph went to with the boys. She said some of our friends helped her with the three boys and that the boys loved playing on the playground.

My other call night, Friday, I got about 3 hours of sleep. I got two admissions again, this time a man with a cellulitis (skin infection) in his left leg, and a really complicated patient that has a 3rd clot in his left leg and shingles all over his body because he had a lung transplant a few years ago and is on medicine to suppress his immune system. Things were a little busier overall for our team, so I was up more of the night and pretty tired the next day. It is nice to have that post call afternoon to recuperate before having to go back in the next day.

Then, on top of normal call coming every 4th night, we have “short call” that occurs the day after our post call day (so call day, post-call day, short-call day, and pre-call day). On short call we start taking admissions in the morning and can get up to 4 as a team. Most mornings we are already busy with seeing how the patients did overnight, writing progress notes, filling orders, calling consults, and rounding as a team to talk about our patients, so to add admissions on top of that makes those days pretty busy as well. I guess I never realized how much paperwork goes on in the background behind patient care.

Wednesday night I had my first Alpha Omega Alpha (AOA) meeting. AOA is the medical school honor society – only 32 of the 200 people in our class were invited to join. Dr. Kolesari shared with us how he ended up as a family practice doctor and the director of the anatomy program at the medical school. Then we were introduced to the different programs that AOA members typically take part in, including helping to prepare the 2nd years for the Step 1 test; helping with testing the 2nd years for their physical exam test; helping with the Make a Wish foundation; serving at free clinics; and more. It looks like one of the goals of AOA is to find ways to serve the medical college community and our community at large.

I had Thursday off, which was such a nice break after the busy week. I helped Steph to take the boys to their last art class. They made tropical trees, “grass” (plastic) skirts, and other decorations for a luau that we had Saturday night at the Nielsen’s house. The luau was really fun, except for the mosquitoes that bit all of us in about 20 places each. Camden looks the worst with pink spots all over his face. There was a fishing pond and a treasure hunt for the kids, and dinner and desserts. Then we came back to our place for games last night.

Thursday afternoon and Friday all day Steph participated in getting several ultrasounds of Isaac, to help with training residents and some nurses on how to conduct ultrasounds. She got to keep several of the ultrasound pictures, got food, and even will get paid $100 for participating. I also made about $70 this week from selling old text books. Oh, speaking of money, we got our residency interviewing and relocation loan this week, so we now will have money to help pay for applications, interviews, and then moving next summer.

On Tuesday I looked over my application for residency programs one last time and then hit the submit button. I ended up applying to 100 dermatology programs and 6 transitional year programs. The ball is now out of our court and we will wait to hear for interview invitations. Keep us in your prayers so that we can get in somewhere. :)

Today I had to go into the hospital to round on my patients, so I finally got over to the church about 1:00pm for the last 20 minutes of choir practice. Mainly I went to help Steph with getting the boys back home. The Kearls invited us for dinner tonight, so that should be pretty fun. And I have tomorrow off, so that will be very relaxing. I am looking forward to when this month is over so that I can have my weekends back and more time to spend with the family.

Yearbook Page

The other day Michael's parents got the new Harry Potter book for him, so on Saturday he spent much of the morning and afternoon reading it. He finished the book yesterday and said that he really liked it.

So, while he was reading on Saturday, I worked on making a yearbook page for him. For the medical school yearbook each student can design their own personal yearbook page. So, to start out I didn't really have any good ideas of how to design the page. This was the first idea I came up with, but I thought it was kind of boring:

But after adjusting the page all day, I finally ended up with this:

(you can click on the pages to zoom in)

I think it turned out pretty good, if I do say so myself. (The grey box is where his professional portrait will go – we are going to have that taken tomorrow). Michael still needs to sit down and make sure these are the photos he wants to use for sure, but I think it will look pretty much like this in the yearbook.

Summer is Almost Here

This weekend has been wonderful. The weather has been nice (70s-80s), and this is my “golden weekend” for this month, which means I got the weekend off from work.

Tuesday we had the ultrasound that confirmed we are having our 4th boy!! It also showed that the baby looks healthy and well. That night we dropped the boys off at the Taylor’s house and then went to a meeting where they talked about strategies for eliminating debt and preparing for retirement. They had some good ideas of things that we can do once we start into a job so that retirement can be the “golden years.” One of Steph’s visiting teachers invited us to the meeting, and we are going to meet with another sister in the ward to prepare a financial needs assessment that they do for free. Basically it is a way to show how much you need to save each year to retire with a certain amount of money. We have heard from others in the ward that it is nice to do just to see what sort of things we will need to think about once we have a real job.

I was on call Thursday night, and I got two hours of sleep, which is a lot for this rotation. We see so many motorcycle and automobile accidents, and then gun shot wounds and knife wounds – those are probably the main things that come through the trauma bay. After this month I don’t think I’ll ever be able to get on a motorcycle again – I have seen too many people’s lives completely changed for the worse from these accidents.

Kolby had his last day of preschool on Friday for this semester. He gets a summer break now (and Steph gets a summer break as well), and then he will start back up in the fall. We will continue with the swimming lessons so that they don’t forget how to swim over the summer. We are going to try Kolby again in the class without parents in the water to see if he is now ready. Their new classes start up this next week.

So Friday I pretty much was asleep on and off for most of the day – Steph says I wasn’t much use that day because I was so tired. We did get the car dropped off to have the odometer/speedometer fixed and picked that up on Saturday. We have had to fix the brakes, flush the brake fluid, get an oil change, rotate the tires, and now fix the speedometer and odometer this month. Now hopefully the cars are all fixed up for the next several months. That night we watched Peter and Cynthia’s kids so they could go to a movie.

Saturday morning I went to a class meeting to help us get ready for the 4th year of medical school, mainly focusing on applying for residency and how to prepare our applications and then how to prepare for the interviews that will take place November through January. They gave some good ideas of things to do to show why we should be picked for interviews and residency programs. I can’t believe that we are already here. It is both scary and exciting. We’ll keep you updated.

Steph has put together chore charts for Kolby and Eli, and they get to fill in squares for helping with dishes, putting their toys away, setting the table, and doing jobs for mommy & daddy. If they fill in all their squares for the week, then they get a special prize. Their prize this week was to go to a playground Saturday afternoon and play on the slides. It was such a nice day and we had fun chasing each other around on the playground. Then we dropped the boys off at Peter and Cynthia’s so that Steph and I could go on a date to celebrate Mother’s Day and Father’s Day. We splurged and went to dinner at Outback Steakhouse (mmmmm!!!!!) and then we saw Spider Man 3. We had watched Spider Man 2 earlier in the week so we could remember the story. Three was pretty good, but we both decided that two was our favorite of the series. It was nice to spend time together with just the two of us.

Today has been another beautiful day. It was also nice to be able to go to church with the family. With the way my rotations have gone recently, I have had to be at the hospital a few Sundays each month. I think Steph is also very happy when I am here Sundays to help with the boys at church. They did really well today. They were in underwear the whole three hours without having an accident. The talks in sacrament meeting today were about the sacrament prayers, focusing on the promise we make to keep the commandment. One of the speakers read several quotes from the four most recent prophets about things they have commanded us to do. It was neat to hear revelation that we have received from these modern day prophets. In Sunday school we talked about Matthew 21-23, where Jesus teaches about hypocrisy and how we need to be careful that we don’t fall into the trap of saying or teaching one thing and then doing the opposite. And then in the last hour we talked about provident living and things we can do to prepare temporally, socially, emotionally, and spiritually for the future. Tonight we are having the Kearls over for dinner so that should be fun.

We hope all of your lives are as fun and exciting as ours. Keep us posted.

It’s A Boy – For Sure

So, we went in for our ultrasound on Tuesday, and everything looks great. They said that it is definitely a boy – so their guess from the earlier ultrasound was correct. And he currently weighs 12 ounces – the ultrasound technician compared his size to a can of soda. He was cooperative and she got all the pictures and measurements they needed pretty easily. But they have two screens to view the ultrasound in this office – one for the tech to see and one for the patient to see – and that still threw Kolby off. He was sure that if there were two screens, then there must be two babies, but we assured him that there was only one. Kolby is very excited that, along with cake, ice cream, and presents, Isaac will be ‘coming out of Mommy’s tummy’ for his 4th birthday. So, we just wanted to show you these latest ‘pictures’ of Isaac.

June Already

This week Michael started his trauma surgery rotation, and it has been kind of a long week for us with his call schedule. With this rotation, they have 30-hour shifts at the hospital when they are on call, and little or no sleep for that entire time. Michael was on call Wednesday through Thursday morning, and then again Saturday until around noon today. So it has been a little tiring, but luckily it seems like we can get through any rough schedule for a month, and then we get to try out something new the next month.

We had a playgroup planning session at Brittney Winkler’s house where the kids got to play with a baby pool in the back yard while we made a schedule of weekly visits to playgrounds and splash pools throughout the summer. We had the boys’ toddler art class on Thursday, which they both enjoy. This week the theme was fish, and they made a fun picture that they got to glue sand and fishes cut out of different colored and textured papers. And that afternoon I went and helped my friend Sandra cut her son, Simon’s, hair. Simon is extremely afraid of having his hair cut, and it is somewhat of a battle to get it done, but it looks nice after we get it all cut.

Kolby and Eli each had their swim lessons this week too. Kolby is looking forward to two weeks from now when he will be starting a new swim class where he will be in the water with his class and we will watch him from the side. And I am looking forward to Eli’s new swim class in a couple of weeks that will be in the evening, as opposed to his Friday morning class we have been attending, so that Michael and I can switch off swimming with him sometimes.

And on Friday evening Michael took the boys for a few hours to the Fathers and Sons Campout, which I posted photos for in a post below. They enjoyed that, and then Michael was on call the next morning and he got home just before we got home from church. He tells me about the trauma surgeries – lots of motorcycle accidents, some car accidents, some gun-shot wounds, some drunken fights, and a few other things – and it sounds a lot like the tv show, ER.

So, my friends and I were going to have a garage sale this summer, but it never happened, so I’ve started trying to sell my garage sale items on craigslist. So, I had a toy kitchen that I bought at a garage sale a year ago for $1 – and the boys have really enjoyed playing with it, but lately they continually tip it over or use it to climb up onto the top bunk or to reach the lock on their closet door – so I sold it yesterday for $20. That’s a pretty good profit.

Well, after church today we went over to Tyce and Faith Kearl’s house to celebrate the blessing of their daughter, Katie, in church today. Michael was sad that he was on call today and couldn’t be part of the blessing, but it was nice to go over and visit with them afterwards, even though Michael was exhausted from getting 0 hours of sleep on his shift, and eventually fell asleep on their couch. Now we are home and Michael is trying to recuperate and rest while the boys are all napping. And this upcoming week we have several things to look forward to: our ultrasound will be on Tuesday, this will be Kolby’s last week of preschool until next Fall, and on Wednesday I will officially be 19 weeks along with this pregnancy.

We learned several interesting things this week: 1. Sidewalk chalk makes a loud fizzing noise if you dump it into a baby pool, 2. Michael has confirmed the fact that he is not interested in a career as a surgeon, 3. Kolby decided that he doesn’t like the taste of coffee (he took a sip of someone else’s drink when we were in the McDonald’s play area), 4. Michael has seen enough bad trauma surgeries lately to make him commit to never riding a motorcycle, and 5. When you live somewhere that the winter lasts at least seven months long, the summer sure does go by quickly – I can’t believe June is already here!