Doctor Hilary

Or Doctor Mommy, if you prefer.

Waving Goodbye to Med School

So, today was my last day in the clinic, and it feels great to be done!

Tomorrow I have a committee meeting in the AM and then taking the afternoon to turn in my pager and other tidying-up details.

Graduation is Saturday! About 36 hours from now, I will be a doctor.

Brynna decided to celebrate the occasion by waving for the first time. We were walking down the hallway in the clinic at lunchtime, I was holding her in my arms, and suddenly she started waving at her grandparents, who were clustered around us. She's done it a bunch of times since, so we know she means it. How fun!

I'll try to post some video soon.

The Terminator

I logged on to my Clinic email the other day to find a notice from HR stating that my "upcoming termination date is May 15, 2009."

Yikes! They couldn't find a slightly nicer way to put that, one that perhaps doesn't bring to mind images of firing squads?

My computer and building access end that day. Which is no problem at all...except that it includes access to the stupendous gym, where Alex and I were hoping to get in another training swim or two before leaving Minnesota next Tuesday.

Anyway, we're winding down here, which means lots of packing and not much blogging.

Three more days of clinic (done on Thursday)—and I am suffering from a rip-roaring case of senioritis!

Mother's Day

Happy Mother's Day! And an especial Mother's Day well-wishing to Hilary, who gets to celebrate it for her first time this year. Brynna felt like honoring the occasion by waking up about 15 times overnight demanding to be fed. Because, really, what can make you feel more like a mother than breastfeeding your child to get them to be quiet?

On The Go

By stroller, backpack, laundry basket, or PapaAir, Brynna is a busy little B!






She objects quite strenuously to being still these days! She won't sit in a lap for more than a few seconds unless she is being entertained with the Itsy Bitsy Spider or some other hand game or a little toy. Mostly we just turn her loose in our room upstairs, where she can prowl around. There are board books and toys strewn all over the floor, plus her push-toy and an upside-down laundry basket, which she also walks around the room with.

Brynna can now pull herself up to stand on pretty much anything. She can cruise along furniture, especially around the edges of our bed, and will drive her push-toy or laundry basket over to the bed or a shelf and transfer over to that new handhold. She understands the concept of something being hidden—when I put a toy inside my bedside table, she will crawl over at top speed and pull open the door to find it. She claps now (adorable!) and we think maybe she is starting to wave. It is so much fun to watch her learn all these things!

The only downside to this tremendous activity burst is that it is very hard for Brynna to turn herself off at the end of the day. She has been getting better about going down for her daytime naps, but at night it is still quite a long struggle for her to settle down. Or perhaps Dad is just more soporific than Alex and I are? As she is getting quite heavy, we are looking forward to having the glider again (it is still in New Hampshire) for slumber-inducing movement. We have tried putting her in her crib awake, but then she just crawls around and around and ends up standing there, hanging onto the bars and screaming, some time later. Reaching into the crib to gently hold her still is an option, but a contortionist one since we economized on a crib without drop sides.

(Yes, we have considered Ferberizing but don't think it is a good fit for us. That doesn't stop me from being envious of perfectly-sleeping babies, however...)

Try a Tri!

Brynna isn't the only one around here who has been busy—Alex and I are training for a triathlon! Two triathlons, in fact—one near North Conway on May 31, and the other in Grantham on June 20. Both are sprint-distance triathlons, with 1/3-mile swims, 12-mile bikes, and 3.1-3.8 mile runs.

I have been thinking about doing a triathlon for awhile—I was a pretty serious runner in high school, and we've taken up road biking here in Minnesota. The big thing holding me back was not being a very good swimmer. Alex, however, swam in high school—but hates running—so we have been able to jolly each other along.

The main reason that we have taken up training now is that I am tired of being out of shape post-pregnancy, and it is much easier to fix that now than after my internship year begins!

So, for the last 8 weeks or so, we've been training about 5 days a week, including a couple days a week of "bricks," or two-event workouts. Jasper and Brynna do the running with us. We've been able to shift our biking outdoors over the last few weeks, thank goodness. And there's a wonderful salt-water pool at our gym.

The swimming has been the real struggle for me. I swim for 30 minutes, twice a week. At the beginning, my only goal was to keep moving for that time, which mostly meant alternating a length of crawl (25 yards) with a length of breaststroke. 25 yards of crawl was about all I could manage as I worked on my breathing. I also took swim lessons weekly in April, which wretchedly involved getting up at 5:30 AM, but helped my stroke. I've been slowly extending my crawl intervals, and tonight I was able to swim a total of 1200 yards (twice the distance I will have to do on race day!), alternating 100 yards of crawl with 25 of breaststroke. So, big improvements. I don't dread going to the pool anymore, since I feel like I am actually swimming and not just trying not to drown!

I run very slowly, still, and Alex keeps blowing by me on the hills when we are out biking. But, as I keep reminding myself, the only way to get fitter is to just get out there and keep doing it!

9 Months Old!

We went out to dinner on Friday night to celebrate Brynna's 9 month birthday. She really enjoys going to new places, and now she can even nibble at some of our food. We gave her some pieces of tortilla and some soft, small pieces of veggies from my grilled veggie fajita.

But the big hit was my pina colada, which she was smart enough to covet:



Wow, Mom, that's really good!



(Just kidding. She didn't actually get any alcohol, of course.)

But she did practice drinking water out of a straw with Daddy:



And here she is with her birthday board. It's pretty typical of 9 months old that we couldn't get her to stay still and look at the camera at the same time. It's action shots only from now on!

Inelegant Solutions

What do you do when your house needs improvements but you are moving in a few short weeks?

Improvise!

As I was laying in bed one morning last week, well before the alarm was set to go off, with Brynna crawling around, sitting on my head, clawing Alex's nose, standing up against the headboard to squeak out the window, and otherwise making it very clear that it was Time To Get Up and Play NOW, I realized that we had seen this sort of behavior before, with the fuzzy member of the Moose Family.

Light. Light was the problem. Light was the thing standing between me and those precious last minutes of sleep before starting the day.

Therefore, blackout curtains were the answer.

But, we were not going to buy blackout curtains for three weeks of Minnesota window coverage, as the New Hampshire windows are entirely differently shaped.

A hammer and a few little nails later, and voila:




Ugly? You bet. But the results? Priceless. No more early-morning squeaking, clawing, or body-slamming. Hurray! Harried parents catch a break. Brynna is happier during the day, and even goes down more easily for her naps.

We'll probably have to disassemble my engineering marvel before the buyer does the final walk through, though...