I can hardly believe how big Caroline is getting. She's crawling now! Granted, not your full on hands and knees crawl, more army style using her arms and sorta kicking with her legs. But man, is it ever cute! She's also really starting to develop some badass separation anxiety--just flips out if I leave the room, where before she really didn't pay attention. So things, all in all, are much more challenging now then they were even a week ago. And Daddy has REALLY got to finish the stairs so we have a bannister and baby gate.
Poor Mark--he's been working his arse off lately, finishing up a big project for work before his deadline today. He was in the office pretty much all weekend, with the exception of Saturday night, was there until 1 in the morning yesterday, and still isn't home today. Gross. But at least this means he'll get to spend the 4th of July with us. Sounds like we'll take Caroline to the big parade downtown (in the bike trailer, of course) and then maybe do a family bike ride, and we're invited out to a friends for a small party. Should be fun. Except for the fact that I'm on call, which blows. Here's hoping other families are out having fun and not stressing over diaper rashes.
So I've been out mountain biking a couple times now, and man, am I BEAT UP! I borrowed my partner Sheila's bike for a while, and I'm having a good time with it, although a bit of a painful time at that. Just trying things out to see if I'll actually get use out of a new bike. I think we'll go for it, maybe at the end of the season when all the sales get revved up.
Hmmmm, what else? Getting excited for NYC, and Jos and TK's wedding. We leave next week, should be a fun trip, if a quick one. I think Mark keeps getting all pumped for doing this or that while we're in the city, but then realizes we're doing all of this with a 7 month old. She's pretty great toting around in the Baby Bjorn, but the kid does still need her two naps a day. It'll be interesting.
I'm going on a girls shopping trip to the outlet malls about 90 minutes from here tomorrow. I usually end up buying new clothes about twice a year, and since I can't wear my maternity stuff anymore and I'm still not quite fitting into my old stuff, I could use some new duds. But good lord, I do hate shopping.
Wow. The Kid must've been really tired--I put her down and she hasn't made a peep! There's usually at least a good 15-20 minutes of crying, and if I'm around, I'm usually in there at least one more time. Rock on.
OK, going to play some Jeopardy and then maybe finish off the rest of my thank you's from Princess Caroline's Tea Party. That was 6 weeks ago. I'm too busy.
So we had an absolute blast this past weekend with both sets of grandparents, Lauren, and even Mark's uncle and aunt from Denver. Caroline was fantastic for her baptism--never crying, even gave the priest a big ol' smile at one point when he stuck his face in hers. But most of the time she just yawned through the ceremony like the good Catholic she is. We officially got the debil out of her. Whew.
Mark's parents left today to head back to Chicago, and Lauren is on her way to New Zealand as we speak. Man, we're going to miss that kid. My parents drove back to Denver yesterday afternoon to catch their flight back to Fargo. It was just such a great weekend.
There are a few new pictures up on Picasaweb--I thought I had taken more with our camera, but I guess not. I know there are some awesome ones on our video camera, especially of Caroline and my dad, hopefully we'll get those up soon. I must have been taking a lot of pictures with other peoples' cameras I guess. Feel free to share!
I had such a crazy day today. Started with a 7 am meeting, full day, and had to lifeflight a kid to Denver. I was supposed to have a soccer game tonight, but I was just so drained I couldn't do it. Bidness meeting tomorrow night, super busy Thursday, back on call on Friday. I need to go to bed so bad. Maybe Mark can fill in a few more details. Mama's gots to gets to bed.
Mark makes this same face when he wants more to eat.
So yeah, I'm Single Mom again this weekend, and it totally blows. Mark went back to Chicago for TK's bachelor party, which, although I know is important, had some spectacularly bad timing. I'm on call this weekend, meaning that if I get called in to work in the middle of the night, I have to get Caroline out of her crib, pack her up, take her to a friend's, leave her for however long, wake her back up to take her home, etc. And we had to find people to watch her for a couple hours each morning so I can round on my patients at the hospital. Thankfully, some friends pitched in and I think we're taken care of. If everyone can say a little prayer that I don't get called in to work tonight or tomorrow night, I'd greatly appreciate it (and I'm sure, so would Caroline).
And special thanks to Dave for allowing Mark to count TK's bachelor party as his as well. Seriously, you're helping us out a lot.
I also am trying to get some studying done for this recertification class I'm taking in Fort Collins (about a 3-4 hour drive west) on Monday. It's for PALS, or Pediatric Advanced Life Support, which I need to recert every two years. It's all the protocols for running a pediatric code, or when a kid's heart stops and you need to shock them, give meds, etc. Think ER. It's pretty morbid stuff, to be honest. If a kid goes into cardiac arrest and they are not either in the hospital or happen to do it in an ambulance, even if you give CPR, the outcome is extraordinarily poor. Hence the movement to get defibrillators placed at venues where lotsa people gather. These AED's are so easy to use and really are lifesavers.
Regardless, I still have to memorize a lot of crap in the next couple days. And they usually change things just enough from year to year to make it unable to just breeze through. Oh well.
MMMM. What else? I had fish and peas for dinner. It was fantastic.
We had our second and final baptism class this week. Again, a monumental waste of time; I believe even more so than the first class. I can understand the church wanting people to understand more about the symbolism and history behind baptizing, but seriously, can't I just read a pamphlet or something? The 30 year old video they made us watch was boring at best, creepy at worst. Word to the Catholic Church--you're not helping yourself any.
BUT--what I think the best part of the whole baptism--a great excuse to have family come in to Steamboat. My dad hasn't been to where I live in over 3 years, and he has never been to Steamboat, even though we are coming up on finishing our second year here. I'm super excited to have my parents and Mark's parents, as well as Mark's sister (Caroline's godmother) here on Thursday. Gonna be way good times. My dad told me tonight that the hotel they are staying at threw in a couple free passes up the gondola with their reservation. My dad thought that sounded great, even though he had NO IDEA what the gondola is. I think we've found our activity for Friday.
Did I mention I miss Mark?
If you haven't seen it yet, check out Karen's post from this week. Long, but one of the best ever. Effing Jamie Lee.
Caroline just let out a bloodcurdling yell from her room. And then fell right back to sleep. She must have been dreaming about having to watch that lame baptism video again.
Caroline is doing awesome, as always. Seriously, she is just the best little baby. I feel really spoiled, and am alternating between being super pumped that maybe our other kids will be this good, and dreading that our next is going to be quite the challenge. She's still not crawling, but we have moved on to the baby food meats, and she's way into chicken and turkey. She makes the most fantastic gagging/choking faces with beef, though. But to be honest, the baby food beef in a jar really doesn't taste that good. Bring on the apples and chicken!
Don't give me crap about not making my own baby food. I'm busy, people.
Big changes at the office these days, although since a lot of it is still in prelim stages, I can't really share too much. Business is booming, though, so all is well. I was reading a friend's blog the other day, and she is just finishing up her residency back in Chicago. For those of you who don't know, residency is the training period after medical school where you spend many, many nights working and maybe even getting a couple hours of sleep at the hospital, getting paid less per hour than minimum wage, and often doing 24-30 hours (or more) of working straight. Every fourth night. Sometimes without any sleep. Seriously, would you want a doctor who hasn't slept in 24 hours caring for your seriously sick/injured kid? This system is effed up.
Anyway, reading this blog brought back some fabulous crappy memories of my days at Rush, when I made less per hour than I did busing tables at Chi Chi's Mexican Restaurant in high school. Residency is like this horribly bad dream that I kinda still remember, but details are getting fuzzy now, as they rightly should. I don't know if I would ever want Caroline to be a doctor. You have to put up with so much crap when all you want to do is help people. And don't even get me started on the people who don't "want" or "need" help. (Or my personal favorites, the ones who ask for my scientific, well-researched advice, and then choose to ignore it completely, based on some crap they read on the Internets).
I'd almost rather have her get her MBA and find a nice creative way to help people, making more money, with less debt, and much less BS. I don't know. Then again, if she was way passionate about going to med school, I can't discourage that. But the med school/residency/fellowship process beats damn near all of the idealism and pretty much most of the humanism out of a person, so you really need to want it bad to do it. I'd have to make sure she did. It's pretty hard to be human when you haven't slept for 30 hours (or more--I once did a 36 hour stretch of work on no sleep and could barely talk by the end). Mark picked up the pieces more than once during that stretch.
OK, enough of the soapbox, so I should probably go to bed.
Did I mention I miss my husband? Take care of him, Boys....at the last bachelor party he just wanted to have a pleasant chat with the nice stripper lady, whose day job was working in porn movies. And he even had this chat while not partaking in her proffered services as a lap dancer (or so I'm told). I married a good one!
Seriously. That girl can rock a dress.
So I just wanted to let everyone know we have new pics of Caroline up on Picasa. Enjoy.
I'm just procrastinating a little bit more before getting back to work. I have today off, but with Mark leaving for Chicago tomorrow, and then as soon as he gets back Sunday I have to drive to Fort Collins for a work thing Monday, it's all craziness. We're so excited for family coming in next week, but I have no idea when I'm going to be able to get the house ready. At least I did get the chance to call some guys to take away all the random debris/crap in our driveway from Mark's projects around the house. As soon as everyone leaves, we'll just start up the new pile!
We're also meeting with a guy from the bank about a loan so we can go more into debt (but for a no-brainer investment opportunity, so I guess that's OK, right?) this afternoon, followed by our second and final baptism class for Caroline. I hope we get to watch more of the AWESOME video we watched last week. Now if they would only have this class at a bar, it might actually be worth my time.
I did take Caroline to church last week in that pretty white dress from the pictures. She, of course, made friends with everyone around us in no time, and then fell completely asleep on me at the start of the Liturgy of the Eucharist. And then stayed completely out of it as I walked up for communion and everything. Even when she's asleep she's the most popular kid around.
OK, I need to get some studying done for this class in Fort Collins next week.
I can hardly believe how big Caroline is getting. She's crawling now! Granted, not your full on hands and knees crawl, more army style using her arms and sorta kicking with her legs. But man, is it ever cute! She's also really starting to develop some badass separation anxiety--just flips out if I leave the room, where before she really didn't pay attention. So things, all in all, are much more challenging now then they were even a week ago. And Daddy has REALLY got to finish the stairs so we have a bannister and baby gate.
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