I'm back!

I got back from Belize late Saturday night. It was a fantastic trip. We got some relaxation time in, and then got to work. After ome major equipment failure the first day (and despite the HEAT!) we helped a ton of people and got a lot of great experience in. There were only four dental students on the trip and two faculty members, so we got a ton of one-on-one coaching that was really invaluable. I probably tripled my speed at doing restorative dentistry, and learned a new method of doing root canals that's much more efficient and updated than what we use at school.

The trip is something that third year students take every year, but it is usually based solely on doing extractions. This year was the first year that we only did restorative dentistry (fillings and root canals). One of the best parts of that was that we were showing all of these very rural populations that pulling teeth isn't the only treatment option out there-- that saving them can be a viable option too. We did a lot of esthetic work for them as well, which is one of my favorite parts of dentistry. I love giving people back their smiles. :) Four hygiene students and two of their faculty members also went with us, so our group did cleanings too. Having them along was great not just because they were really fun people, but because cleanings are a service that is virtually nonexistent in Belize, and it was great to be able to provide that for the people there.

AND it was great for me to make a couple of real friends in my new class. I've felt pretty alone there since I came back, and it's been getting worse lately because my old class is all graduating in a couple of weeks. So it made me really happy to get to know and make friends with the other three dental students who went. Maybe this last year of dental school won't be so lonely after all.

Enough rambling! Picture tiiiime!

The resort that we stayed at the first night and the last night. It was beautiful and we stayed in these huge villas:

We took a catamaran booze cruise to the barrier reef to go snorkeling. This is the island we stopped at by the reef:

Our equipment table and some of our crew. Our working conditions were a little bit different than we were used to! This is at a primary school where we worked for two days:

We had no shortage of patients!

Me with some of our patients at the school:

Doing some cosmetic dentistry:

Kelly and I jumped into the resort pool in our scrubs after our last, very sweaty day of work :) I don't know that the other vacationers appreciated it, though.

So that's it! It was the trip of a lifetime for sure. I'm so glad I went, even though I missed Caroline more than I thought possible! A week sure is a long time to be away from her... we've done an awful lot of snuggling since my return.

BELIZE!

So I don't think I've mentioned this here, but I'm going on a service trip to Belize. It's a trip that will involve doing lots of fillings but also snorkeling, beach time, and looong happy hours. I'm so excited! It seemed like a long way off, but suddenly it is... hmmm... four days from now. That came up quickly.

Anyway, I am sad to be leaving Caroline for a week. I've never been away from her for longer than a weekend, and that was just once for a wedding that Tyler and I were in. I'll miss her a lot. But it is exciting to be able to travel. I am always jealous of Tyler's trips, and now I get to take one of my own! Plus, I'll get tons of experience doing dental work because there are only four dental students going and we will be less... um... supervised (i.e. watched like hawks) than we are in the school's clinic. It will be a great opportunity. And all the fillings we do will count towards graduation, which is huge.

So, sorry for the short post, but I just wanted to go ahead and make an excuse in advance for the gap in posting that is about to occur! I will return with many pictures, and hopefully a tan!

Thank you notes

Well, Caroline is 14 months old and I'm finally writing her thank you notes for her birthday presents. I kept nagging at her to get them done, but she just hasn't gotten around to it, so I decided I needed to step in. She better not make a habit of this, though! I'm not writing these again next year, Caroline!

Thank you notes are usually one of my most dreaded chores, but I am actually having a little too much fun with this. Writing thank you notes for a baby is a lot more fun then writing them for myself. Example:

"Dear H and E,
Thank you so much for my giant penguin and Puma track suit you got me for my birthday! I really love my giant penguin. I like to crawl over to him and grab his beak and bounce up and down and yell and YELL!!!!
Love, Caroline"

Will they appreciate it? I don't know. But at least it makes writing them less boring for me.

"Dear Grandma and Grandpa,
Thank you so much for my birthday money. I wanted to use it to buy fifty boxes of CHEERIOS!! But my mom made me put it in my college fund because she is boring. Thanks again! I really appreciated it.
Love, Caroline"

I could make it really authentic, if I wanted, and rip a bunch of pieces off each card and cover them in yogurt fingerprints before putting them in the envelope. But I thought that might be taking it a little too far.

Anyway, I'll leave you with a picture from this past weekend of Caroline in her Easter dress with pigtails in her hair (!!)...

You've gotta love the pigtails!!

Here's the problem.

I hardly ever blog anymore. It's sad. I tell myself it's because I don't have time, but really, I am in front of the computer studying most nights after Caroline goes to bed, and let's be honest-- I would much rather play on the internet than study.

I guess I really do have the time, or at least most of the time I do. The problem is, I always want to write about stuff that happened during the day, and most of that involves my patients. There's all kinds of craziness and hilariousness and awkwardness that happens when you are an amateur dentist. And I happen to be a particularly awkward person, which makes for some spectacularly awful moments. But I can't write about them, really. It would be unprofessional. And I wouldn't want to get in trouble with my school and jeopardize everything that I have been working so hard for. Sigh. Being an adult is so boring.

So I mostly try to talk about Caroline. But let's be honest, there's not that much to say. I mean, I could go on and on about all the cute things she does, but to tell you the truth I suspect that would be kind of dull for you. I talk about mommyhood in general, but sadly I am more dental student than mom these days, and the dental part is kind of off-limits, so that puts me right back where I started.

One of my favorite commenters asked me how Tyler is doing (hi MJS!) so I suppose we can talk about him. (Whenever I am blogging, he asks "Are you talking about me? Are you writing about me? What are you saying about me?"- um, self-centered much, my dear? ;) so I will satisfy your curiosity and throw him a bone at the same time.) He is doing great, publishing papers like crazy. He could probably be done with his dissertation this year, if he wanted to be, but he has two more years of funding so he will probably hang out and keep publishing stuff until I am done with residency, and then we will move. We're thinking we'll go temporarily to either Germany or NYC at this point. We'd love for Caroline to have the opportunity to go to preschool in Germany, but I'm not sure what I'd do there since I definitely want to use this degree that I'm busting my butt to get. It's up in the air right now. We're still thinking that Denver will be our permanent home after Tyler is done with postdoc positions, though.

So that's his work life, which is his "other" baby. He often works late, and honestly it's hard for me. He hasn't been traveling since I went back to school, which has made things a little easier, but he's starting up again now. He's gone this week, and will go to South Africa in a few weeks, and then will be in North Dakota for the summer. But when he is home, he is a really great dad. I've got to give him credit there. Sometimes I wish we could spend more time together, and I know we both tend to neglect our relationship a little bit because we are both so incredibly busy. But as a father, he's just amazing. I knew he'd be great. But he's even more dedicated and involved and in love with Caroline than I imagined he would be. I love listening to him read to Caroline or talk to her about dinosaurs.

Anyway, I guess I need to find a way to talk about dental school without having to retitle my blog "HIPAA violations and the occasional baby picture". I'll figure something out :)

One year pics

Wow, I am a huge slacker these days with blogging. I need to get back on track, stat! I haven't quite mastered the whole multitasking thing just yet...

These pics are about a month old at this point, but I still want to share them because I love how they came out. My very talented friend Kari took them-- here is her blog.

I think she just gets more beautiful every day. But of course... I might be a little biased :)

Tomorrow is my 26th birthday and since it's Good Friday, I get the day off. Best birthday present ever! I can't wait to spend it with Caroline. I feel like I don't see her much these days. Especially since one day this week I was at school until 10pm, working on a bridge (which then fell out of my locker in the morning and broke when I went to hand it in. But we aren't going to talk about that. No, we'd better not talk about that.) Then, my mom is coming to watch Caroline while Tyler and I go out for dinner and drinks. I'm pretty excited!

Milestone anxiety

Sometime shortly after Caroline was born, I signed up for about a bajillion baby development emails. You know the ones I mean—your baby week by week, your x-week-old, or whatever. When they showed up in my inbox, I’d read them with a tinge of anxiety, checking up on where Caroline “should be”. I’d watch her during playtime, looking for milestones, or signs that she was about to reach them. Was that roll-over on purpose, or just a lucky accident? Is she lifting herself up enough during tummy time? Oh no… am I giving her enough tummy time? IS SHE GOING TO YALE OR ISN’T SHE?! I’ve got to tell you, I worry way more about this than I ever thought I would.

But it isn’t just me. The moms’ message board I post on is always consumed by posts about development and milestones. And those baby newsletters have to be fueled by some kind of demand, right? We all want to know whether or not our babies are on track, or “normal”.

For us, it’s turned out to be kind of a mixed bag. Caroline’s gross motor skills have always been a little behind. She was diagnosed with a mild gross motor delay at 9 months, and now that she’s a year and still not really crawling and definitely not pulling up or sitting up, it’s more of a full-fledged gross motor delay. We’re in the process of getting early intervention back out to our apartment for a follow-up evaluation, since she didn’t quite qualify for physical therapy at her 9 month visit.

The girl talks, though, like crazy. I hear that’s usually how it goes… if they have one type of delay, they make up for it in another area. When you have to watch what you say around your 12.5 month-old for fear she might repeat it (need I remind you of “ohshish”?), you know you are in trouble. I admit that I now shut off the radio when I pick her up from daycare for fear that her new favorite word will be “crunk”, or worse.

Anyway. It’s hard, when you go to daycare and you see babies months younger than yours walking around, and yours is still pushing herself around backwards on her belly. It makes me a little sad when I see or hear about other babies playing in ways that she can’t, and won’t be able to for a long time. It makes you wonder what you’re doing wrong. And I feel like even if she hadn’t turned out to have a delay, I’d still have been just as anxious about it.

It doesn’t help that when I saw one of Caroline’s pediatricians for a sick visit and mentioned my worries about her lack of sitting and pulling up, he asked, “were you and your husband also slow?” Uhhh… thanks for your sensitivity there, doc. I learned tact in med school. Why didn’t you?

But what I’ve come to terms with is this: that other baby in daycare isn’t better than my baby because he walks and mine doesn’t. His mom isn’t a better mother than me because my baby has a delay and hers doesn’t. It doesn’t mean anything, really. She’ll walk when she’s ready to. And if she doesn’t walk, for whatever reason, that’s okay too. She is who she is, and I love her regardless.

So now when those baby development emails show up in my inbox, I just delete them without reading them. (Someday I will get up the motivation to unsubscribe.) As long as we are taking appropriate steps to monitor her development and help her with her delays, that’s all I need to know.

28 hours

I calculated this while I was sitting in class yesterday. Ideally, that's how many hours I think I need in a day. 24 is just not cutting it.

I need 24 hours to do the things I usually do... commute, classes, clinic, commute, pick up Caroline at daycare, make dinner, feed both of us and the pets, clean up around the house, wash diapers, give her a bath, put her to bed, study. (Most nights, Tyler doesn't get home until she's already in bed.) Then another hour so that I could spread out my day and not be constantly on the run, or maybe even use my lunch hour to actually *gasp* eat lunch. Another hour to spend with Caroline. Another hour to have some time to myself. And the last hour to SLEEP!

I love my life. I'm glad I went back to school, and the reason I'm constantly racing around is because I'm being productive, and I like that. But I have to admit I'm feeling a little run down these days. I came down with pneumonia last week, and spent the week in bed. Once I stopped feeling like I was literally going to die, it was kind of nice to just lay there and play on the internet and sleep whenever I wanted. Of course I had to pay for it when I finally went back to school on Monday, since a whole week off has caused my schedule to explode in my face, but it was still nice while it lasted. I am pretty sure I went back before I was fully rested and healed, but I couldn't really justify taking any more time off.

Have I mentioned how awesomely productive I am these days? It is pretty satisfying how quickly things have come back to me after being gone for so long, so quickly after starting clinic. I guess a year isn't really that much time after all. We get letters evaluating our performance every couple of months, and my latest letter congratulated me on my progress. Which made me very, very happy. I have to admit that it's not really me being successful, though... it's been a huge advantage to be good friends with people in my old class, because when they need to give something away to an underclassman (like a denture patient), they think of me first.

Whatever. I am still patting myself on the back. :)

In other news, today is the anniversary of Caroline's coming-home day! We got to take her home from the NICU exactly one year ago. The nightmare was over, exactly one year ago. I smile whenever I think about that day. We were so nervous to have her away from the nurses and the monitors, but so happy and excited to finally have her home with us. I never really allowed myself to believe that she was coming home until we actually had her in her carseat, and we were walking through the hospital lobby, grinning at each other. It was the first day I really felt like she was mine.

We didn't do anything to "celebrate", since her coming-home day is relatively close to her birthday (even though it seemed like years at the time), but I did give her extra squeezes and love today. Even though I'm sure it will be just another day to her, I know I'll always remember February 18 as the first real day of our life as a family of three.