Fourth Year

Oh what do you during your fourth year of Medical School?

Well, it is not totally responsibility free, but we do have substantially more free time, which I have been really enjoying.

Angela is well on her way to bringing a new son into the family, which we are getting more and more excited about.

Angela has very hard pregnancies with bad nausea followed by early labor.  So it has been a wonderful blessing to have so much time at home to help out.  It has also given me a new appreciation of how hard it is to take care of a 2 year-old full time.  I thought I understood how hard it was, but until you are doing it day in and day out, I don't think you can really understand how taxing it can be.  I have also realized just how wonderful it is as well.  When my patience has been at the breaking point, my little Christine will do something that just melts my heart.  One of those moments came on Valentine's Day.

On Valentine's Day Angela asked her why she loves her Daddy and this is what she said:

I love you Daddy because you pray with me, because you watch Mickey Mouse with me, plays go to Costco with me, when you lay on my Minnie Mouse couch with me, because you sing the rubber ducky song, because you play in the bath tub with me, because you play go-getters with me, because you go to the park with me, because you sing "go walking" to me, because you make waffles for me.  I love you sooo much.

Angela wrote all of these on heart post-it notes for Valentine's day.  I wanted to write them down so I would never forget them.

Other things we have been up to:
We have done some cooking together.  We made Pioneer Women's Blackberry Cobbler for the annual Ward Chili Cook-off, and we won 3rd place! (I can't believe it didn't win first place, but there is no accounting for taste :) ).  We got a whole half-gallon of Cookies and Cream Blue Bell Ice Cream.

Our big project for January was to de-clutter the house.  It appears over the last 4 years we have accumulated quite a bit of junk.  I finally broke down and threw out most of my old BYU notes.  It was hard to part with them.

During February, I had to go to school more often, so Angela was left to do some projects on her own.  She  is having typical nesting urges, but since we are hopefully moving before the baby arrives she's been channeling that energy into boy sewing projects.  I have been amazed by all she has done.  You can check out a few of the items on her blog. We are going to be as ready as we can be when that boy arrives.

We have also been looking through houses online, reading books about buying houses, and doing research on everything from taxes to realtors.  All in all we have been very busy, but with things that are not that interesting to post about.

Friday is the big day when we find out where I have matched to.  So we'll keep everyone posted.

Lastly, during your fourth year of medical school you take a lot of classes in the "soft sciences"- like poetry in medicine.  Now I admit, I was prepared for a nice hour and half snooze when I found out we were having a lecture on the poetry of medicine, but the class actually was quite enjoyable.  Our professor, an old retired doctor, shared with us some of his favorite poems.  He said that Dr. DeBakey (the most famous Baylor Surgeon) one night was having trouble sleeping after losing a patient.  He said he turned to an anthology of poetry book and found solace in its writing.  To really understand why this is such a remarkable story you have to know some of the other awful stories told about Dr. DeBakey.  It seems that even the hardest of surgeons must turn somewhere for peace.  If only he had opened a Book of Mormon, he might have found peace forever.

Poetry, though not as good as scripture, can still be very powerful and make one reflect.  This poem was one they shared in the class that I enjoyed.


She never puts her toys away;
Just leaves them scattered where they lay -
I try to scold her, and I say
"You make me mad!"

But when to bed she has to chase,
The toys she left about the place
Remind me of her shining face,
And make me glad.

When she grows up and gathers poise
I'll miss her harum-scarum noise,
And look in vain for scattered toys -
And I'll be sad.
- Nick Kenny

Christine Memories

I matched!! Now we have to wait until Friday to find out where we are going.  In the mean time I wanted to jot down some of my favorite new memories of Christine.

Singing:
Christine loves to sing and dance.
Her favorite song of all time is "Stars were gleaming".  It's a Christmas song, but she loves it so much.

At bath time she likes to sing Fish and Chips and Vinegar- It's PaBruce's favorite.  Other bath time favorites are "Under the Sea" from The Little Mermaid and Rubber Ducky, except Daddy couldn't remember the real words to Rubber Ducky so I made up my own. (We play with a plastic crocodile and shark as well)
Rubber Ducky you're the one
You make Bath Time Lot's of Fun
Crocodile sometimes eats,
Rubber Duckies for tasty treats.
And Sharky likes to nibble
On Rubber Ducky's tasty middles

She loves to sing the wrong words to Twinkle Twinkle little star and Row Row Row your boat and then correct them.  (In an episode of Dora one of the characters sings the wrong words to these songs and Dora has to correct him, it makes Christine laugh every time).
"Twinkle twinkle little star how I wonder what you are. Up above the world so high. Like a big apple pie! no no no no! like a diamond in the sky" and "Row row row your boat gently down the stream, merrily merrily merrily merrily like is just a bowl of spaghetti! no no no! just a dream! hahahaha" every time.

In the car:  Ever since I got Taylor Swift's CD Red, she always wants to listen to Taylor Swift in the car.  She also loves the One Direction song "That's what makes you Beautiful".  She also loves "The crazy song" which is "Call me Maybe" by Carle Rae Jepson.  haha I know, what are we letting our two year old listen to.

We have been going through the church Gospel Art Book and reading the scriptures that go along with pictures for our family scripture study.  As we have been going through the Old Testament prophets we have learned Follow the Prophet.  She loves the song and makes us sing all and I mean all of the verses.  We have learned to leave out the chorus, and say the lines really quickly.

When we learned about Moses, we watched Prince of Egypt.  The Miracles song from the movie has some Hebrew in it which Angela knows but I certainly do not.  I usually make up syllables that sound right to me.  One night Christine asked to sing the "Mochilla song".  I was not sure what she meant, but she started singing the Hebrew part of the miracles song by saying Mochilla, Mochilla!!  It actually fits the rhythm well.  She picked up the Spanish from Dora.  Hey, Spanish, Hebrew, what's the difference.

At night we sing, "I often go walking."  She started to request that we sing to Mommy and Christine.  Recently she has added our new baby to the list.  We also sing, "We are a happy family".  For this song we have to sing with the names of all the stuffed animals inserted.  She thinks that is so funny.

T.V. Shows:

 We use T.V. as a strategic reward for potty training and most recently sleeping without a binky.  She used to love Dora, but we got tired of Dora's rather annoying voice.  She seems to yell through the whole episode.  When we were at my sister-in-law Jessica's house she showed us that The Mickey Mouse Club House comes on the internet.  The songs and episodes are much calmer than Dora, so we have been transitioning to watching that.  She loves the Mickey Mouse Club House especially the episodes with the Go-Getters.  She likes to dress up like agent Mickey, which means putting on a pair of sunglasses and carrying around her calculator (her cell phone).

Three of her stuffed animals also act out the roles of the Go-Getters.  The amazing thing about this pretend play is, is that she was the one who independently assigned her stuffed animals to their roles.  Suddenly Tangy Bear was Daisy, Clifford was Pluto, and Doodle Bear was Clara Bell.  It was quite confusing trying to find "Clara Bell" only to discover that Doodle Bear was Clara Bell... obviously.

At First she used her Dora car as the Go-Getter car, but it was not purple like the one on the show.  So then she found this diaper box, which she removed the diapers from and claimed as her own.  Much better!

Mickey Mouse Clubhouse does have the flaw that the show loads really slowly on our internet and only has one free episode at a time.  So we have started watching Blue's Clues to supplement.  Blue's Clues was an instant success.  Christine now carries around her "Handy-dandy notebook" and crayon searching for "plues".

She likes to tell us that PaBruce's favorite show is Finding Nemo because it has a Shark named Bruce.

Excuses:
Today Angela asked Christine if she wanted to give her a hug.  She responded, "No, I'm swimming to Daddy." And proceeded to run down the hall moving her arms like she was swimming.

We have been working with Christine on saying please when she asks for things.  Well she quickly turned this back on us.  We were getting ready for family prayer and Angela said, "Christine, come over here right now."  Christine looked at Angela, shook her head no and said, "No, Mommy say please."  It was impossible to keep a straight face.

We took away the Binky this week.  It has been a rather difficult transition.  The first night we explained to her why we needed to stop using the binky because it was hurting our teeth.  She actually understood very well and went to bed with the hopes of a new Mickey Mouse Clubhouse Episode reward in the morning.  A few minutes later we hear from her bedroom this pathetic whine, "I'm missing something in my mouth... I need something in my mouth."  The next night the complaint changed to, "I need something to hold my mouth closed."

Other Favorite Phrases:
She has started adding the phrase "best ever" to things.  My favorite usage was when she got a "nana split" for "sert" after lunch.  She exclaimed, "This is the best nana split ever!!"

Little Excuses

Christine is now to the age that she can make up excuses.  Some of them are quite sophisticated.  Enjoy!

When she does not want to eat any more food: "I need to go pee on the potty." (If you buy into this excuse and usher her towards the bathroom, she will tell you, "Oh, I'm just fine." and then go try to play.)

Another tactic to avoid eating food is to claim it is too hot.  Then if you cool it off, "No I not want it. It's too cold."

When she does not want to pick up her toys: "They're too heavy. Daddy want to do it." Or if it is a specific toy under other toys, she says, "It's stuck."  When we send her to look for something, she often comes back after the shortest possible attempt to look for it and say, "It's lost. I not find it."  We have turned this excuse into a great game where we call the Go-Getters to go and look for the item (On Mickey Mouse Club House they have a team of characters called the Go-Getters who search for things.)  To start the game we have to look for clues or as Christine calls them "plues".  She quickly realized the best way to get clues was to call the item on her fake cell phone and then item would tell her where they were.  Since we don't have the real Go-Getter action figures we use substitutes.  Piglet is Daisy, Little-people Cow is Clara bell, and Princess Bell is Minnie.  It can be quite confusing later when we are trying to find "Daisy" and trying to remember who she actually is.

Another tactic when avoiding picking up her toys:  She'll stand still with her outstretched arm toward the object and then say, "Can't reach it.  Mommy want to do it."  Last week she stood over a toy, locked her knees made a pitiful attempt to reach the toy and then with fake frustration, "I can't reach it!"

As you can tell a common excuse with any situation is to say that either Mommy or Daddy wants to do it.  However, since Mommy and Daddy can refute this assertion, a newer tactic is to say that one of her stuffed animals wants to do it.  In fact in our family Lamb Chops, Tangy Bear, and Doodle Bear are quite opinionated.  If she doesn't like an outfit then "No Lamb chops wear that."  On one occasion, we found her toys spilt all over the floor and said, "Christine what happened to your toys?" She responded, "Made a mess. Doodle Bear do it."

Christine likes to change her outfits a lot.  Usually we get the excuse, "They not match." or "They are dirty". We have had to set a family rule that we can only have one outfit per day.  Several times we have caught her buck-naked pulling out all the clothes from the bottom drawer of her dresser.  We say, "Christine, what did we say about changing your outfits?" She responds "No, it's itchy."  

She has picked up a few excuses from Mommy and Daddy.  One day we asked her to come help make the bed.  She responded, "No, I'm busy."  Yesterday, I went to her room and asked her if she wanted to color a picture with Daddy.  She responded, "No, I have a project." What was her project? She pilled her stuffed animals in her box and climbed in on top, and then smiled and said, "It's comfy!"

She has one excuse that we have yet to figure out how she came up with it. When getting ready for family prayer, we say, "O.k. now we fold our arms."  She responds, "Oh no they're sticky!" and then tenses her arms like their stuck and can't be folded.

She also loves procrastinating assignments.  Now in response to almost any task especially peeing on the potty and coming to the dinner table to eat, she'll say, "No. Set timer. Three minutes."

I can only imagine what she is going to be like in a few years as her excuses become even more elaborate!

Christmas Morning

On Christmas Eve we read Critter's Christmas and acted out the Nativity with all of the little people (we love our Little People Nativity Set).

 Santa came.

We all got to wear our new Christmas pajamas. Angela made Christine's pajamas.

The big hit presents were Christine's Minnie Mouse couch, her new plastic food, and a new baby doll.  When the plastic food was unwrapped, we immediately had to get Lamb Chops and feed her.

The other big present was Christine's Dora's backpack and map that Angela made her. I think they are outstanding. The map of course led to Gigi's house. She led the way as we went up to Gigi's house after Christmas morning.

(Jeff wrote the above, now this is Angela) Even though this was Christine's third Christmas, it felt like her first real Christmas. She got Christmas and the idea of Santa Claus and opening presents. Christmas morning really was magical with Christine. I loved getting to shop for Christine and maybe went a little over budget. A few days before Christmas, we took Christine to see Santa Claus at the Galleria where she was able to ask Santa for a baby doll. Christmas Eve we made homemade Chimichangas (that turned out sooooo good, almost as good as my mom's) Then Christmas morning was so much fun. We had orange rolls while we opened our stockings- Christine loved her snowman stocking and was sooooo excited to find a plastic candy cane filled with jelly beans in it. Opened presents- which Christine was ecstatic about, it was hard for her to wait her turn while mommy and daddy opened some presents. Then when all the fun was unwrapped we had eggnog pancakes with cranberry sauce with our "yummy Christmas drink" as Christine called it (really it was frothy smoothies). The pancakes were good, but not Christmas-morning-good, so we will have to try something else next year. This year I loved beginning our traditions, and I am so grateful that I had a little break from the pregnancy miseries during my second trimester to enjoy Christmas.

Christmas Eve Dinner

I know, we're just now posting about Christmas Eve!  Better late than never. Here's Christine helping cook the peppermint brownies.

We put Christine in charge of the main course.  So what did we have?

Some delicious plastic produce! Notice her great posture and table manners.

After we ate the plastic food, we decided that we needed something a little more substantial.  We made beef chimichangas with spanish rice, refried beans, guacomole, topped with sour cream, tomatoes and lettuce.

Deep frying the chimichangas proved to be more difficult than it appeared. It took most of the batch for me to finally get some that looked pretty.  But even the less pretty ones were still delicious!!