The Girls Were All Right

Here's the 10-point update on what B and I were up to while Alex was off gallivanting in Europe. We sure are glad to have him home!

1. Doggies, doggies everywhere
Cee Lo the dog joined us for an overnight shortly after Alex left. Cee Lo belongs to one of my classmates, who was on call. The most remarkable thing about this dog is that even though I had never met him before, he let me waltz into his apartment and take him home with me! The pups had a great time together, but Jasper did spend much of the night humping Cee Lo. Brynna kept running over to me and saying, "Mommy, Jasper's on top of our new friend again!"

Jasper unfortunately celebrated his visitor by having an episode of gastrointestinal distress during the night. On the carpet. (WHY always on the carpet???) And yes, I know it was him. Because the fun continued after Cee Lo left the next day.

2. This is NOT an emergency room!
The day Alex left, I sent two patients from the clinic to the emergency room. In a row. Both via ambulance (which is a little funny since the ER is right on the other side of the hospital campus). It was the same EMT crew both times! And they were from the firehouse right behind our house. As they were wheeling the second patient out, one of them called back, "see you in five minutes, doc!" I still owe them some cookies.

3. Good friends are priceless
Two weekend mornings in a row, P and N from down the street knocked on the door and whisked B away to play with her friend C, allowing me a couple of hours of rest. Well, sort-of-rest...I spent most of that time triaging patient phone calls for the clinic, earning a little extra money.

4. One-trick cooking
Our garden was very busy producing tomatoes and basil, and I was too tired to do much complex cooking, so mostly Brynna and I ate tomatoes and basil and mozzarella on varying carbs: sometimes with noodles, sometimes with rice (she LOVES risotto), sometimes just on bread. Adorably, B refers to mozzarella cheese as "gorilla cheese." I would like to proudly announce that we only ordered out ONCE in the twelve days that Alex was gone.

5. Mini-reunions
My dear friend Sara came to stay for five days. This was awesome in many ways—I got to hang out with her, Brynna got to hang out with her, and the day that Brynna slept until 1 PM (yes, really, 1 PM...I didn't realize she'd suddenly become a teenager!) Sara was able to keep an eye on her at home so that I could see my clinic patients. In the end, we decided that she was super-over-tired rather than actually sick.

Kristin also came up to visit while Sara was in town, and she brought her Great Dane Poe. He walked into the kitchen and immediately swung his head over to the center of the island, sniffing out the stick of butter I'd laid out. Yikes! Great Danes apparently require an entirely new level of dog-proofing. Here's a photo of him drinking from the kitchen sink. Amazing!

Jasper was in awe—though he eventually ventured out for some tentative sniffs.

And finally, our friend Katie came to visit while Sara was in town, too. These fabulous college reunions are going to continue shortly, as we're all headed to a wedding this weekend!

6. Good times on a Saturday morning
Brynna and I had a lovely, chill time doing our regular Saturday morning thing. We biked downtown and left our bike and trailer with the farmers' market bike valet parking (yes, seriously). We went to the coffee store, the bagel store, and did our sweep through the market. Brynna enjoyed one of the first apples of the season:

And then played in the wonderful climbing tree on the State House lawn:

We ended the morning with a library trip, where we found some Madeline and Frances books that we didn't already have at home. Sadly, the copy of Toy Story that we checked out had scratches all over it, so I still haven't seen the movie.

7. Swimming and biking and running, oh my!
Our YMCA puts on a triathlon every year, and though it was a bit lonely to race without Alex, there were a bunch of people there from our tri club. And even more people from the hospital—I was walking over to the sign-in area with one of the ER guys, when we heard someone shout for a doctor. We both ran over, and then a few seconds later I looked over my shoulder to see one of the ER docs joining the crowd, and a couple minutes later another ER provider showed up. I left to sign in for the race at that point!

This has not been a great summer for training, but the race was lots of fun anyway. I left right afterward to take Brynna to her swim lesson (which was awesome!), and while we were in the locker room a nice lady came up to me to tell me that I had finished third in my age group...turns out she was the wife of one of my team members, who had called her from the race and asked her to let me know about the results. Concord really does function like a small town!

8. Doctors have to go to the dentist too
Finally got to the dentist for a checkup. Was told that "it looks like you're one of those people who needs to floss twice a day." Once I stopped laughing, I vowed to try to floss ONCE a day. So far, so good.

9. Ice cream!
There was one night that Brynna and I were having so much fun that I let her stay up late and we ended up going for ice cream around 9:00. Here's a photo I took of Brynna with her ice-cream moustache:

And one that she took of me:

10. Party time

I had forgotten that when you take a toddler to a party, there's very little grown-up time. I also hadn't realized that there was a pool, so Brynna ended up swimming in her underpants, and then running around the yard naked to dry off. The hammock was a particular hit. 

Finally, my favorite Brynna quotes:

"I wish we lived in the ice cream store!" (So do I, kid, so do I.)

"Am I still wearing pants?" (She was wearing a tutu over leggings, and I took the tutu off so she could ride her bike.)