Tuesday, October 29, 2013

______ happens

You know what's a bummer? When you have the cutest little baby outfit...


And then this happens:


I've come to the conclusion that the only way to remove baby poop stains is to wash the item of clothing AS SOON AS POSSIBLE.  No amount of spraying with Folex, swabbing with Tide, or soaking in a borax-washing-soda-water bath until your next load of laundry will do the trick. If you want to save that onesie, your next load of laundry better be NOW, baby.

I've learned this through trial and error. Mostly error, unfortunately. And I have the romper stains to prove it.


Saturday, October 26, 2013

seven quick takes friday - ed. 7

Whoops.  Written on Friday, posted on Saturday.  Days-Of-The-Week Fail.

1.  Finished with my board exam, thank goodness!  Jack and I spent the 2 hours afterward going back and forth with "Did you have the question about..." and "What did you put for..." like big nerds.  Also: can anyone explain to me why a computerized exam, which everyone nationwide takes over a single 3-day period, should take 3 months to grade?  Alas.  Anyway, now that I don't have to study every spare minute, I have time to waste on the internet!  Thus the rest of the quick takes are all fun internet-y things I've checked out this week.

My house and I are the opposite of this.  Clearly.

2. "My Parents Brainwashed Me" - a teenaged boy at a "poetry slam" competition talks about how he responded when a classmate told him he was brainwashed by his parents.

3. #overlyhonestmethods is apparently a hashtag used for Twitter confessions about how scientific papers and research projects are not always as science-y as they seem.  Here's a collection of some of the more hilarious ones.  I'm not a bench scientist, but I've had enough experience to know how true these are!


4. Look!  If you give your Starbucks barista these instructions, he or she can make you a Butterbeer Frappuccino!  How yummy does that look?  Too bad there's no Starbucks on Guam.  Sad face.


5. My sweet husband has not only forgiven me my Twice obsession, but he sent me a link to this site on Facebook.  It looks pretty fun -- you give them your size, proportions, price range, and style preferences, and they send you a package of clothes and accessories to try.  You only keep (and thus only pay for) what you like, and send the rest back.  I'll have to try it and report back with the results!

6. Here's a cute video showing the reaction of a bunch of kids after attending an orchestra performance.  This is why kids are great.  They just take things as they see them, without any pretentiousness or trying to impress others.


7. This is a great informative blog about the Catholic teachings on sex, marriage, and contraception which Simcha Fisher linked to a few weeks back, but which I've only just gotten around to checking it out.

That's it! Go to Conversion Diary Clan Donaldson to see more quick takes!



Wednesday, October 23, 2013

pediatric board woes, in verse

'Twas the night before Boards Day,
And all through the nation.
Newly minted pediatricians
Are howling in frustration.

We're all studied out!
We can't take one more day
Of PREP, or Zitelli,

What might be making
A child too thin?
Burning too many calories
Or not taking enough in?

Heart failure? Or cystic
Fibrosis?  Or Crohn's?
Or cancer that started
In the marrow of his bones?

(He's probably simply 
Not eating enough.
But you have to rule out
All the scarier stuff.)

What hormones - and when -
Cause the pubertal stages?
And what problems could make them
Happen at the wrong ages?

What vitamin deficiencies
Might present with bleeding?
And what are the foods
That she hasn't been eating?

If a kid has fatigue and
Submandibular bumps,
If the question says "unvaccinated,"
He might have the mumps.

Or it could be TB, cat scratch,
Mono, or strep.
The question wants to know,
"What's your next step?"

There are a thousand kinds
Reviewing them sends us
Spiraling into depression.

Metabolic diseases?
Don't even go there.
Is it Hunter's? Or Tay-Sach's?

This toddler's gotten into the meds
For grandma's ills --
Her aspirin, Zoloft, or 
Metoprolol pills!

In real life, the main step
In achieving my goal
Would be:  pick up the phone
And dial Poison Control.

If a child's intubated,
What would you do
If he had too little oxygen
Or too much CO2?

Blood in the urine--
What's the reason why?
Or just a UTI?

And developmental milestones?
Don't even start.
Does it matter what age child
Can draw a person with five parts?

At least it'll soon be over.
The day is almost here.
(Unless of course you fail.
Then there's always next year!)

Saturday, October 19, 2013

seven quick takes friday - ed. 6

1. I've been going crazy with posting educational health/safety flyers in my exam rooms at work.  I've found them all with my fave Google Image Search... it's kind of addicting, finding good ones.

Some of my favorites:






Any patient in my office will at least have plenty of reading material while they wait for me!

2. I am semi-obsessed with Twice.  The only way I can control myself is just to avoid going to the site at all.  I should tell my husband to blame Dwija.

3.  You guys, studying for the boards is making me crazy.  And I'm not even doing as much studying as I should! You know when you have a big thing that you're preparing for, that you've known about for months and months and months, and you know intellectually that it's coming up (in ONE WEEK!!), but you just can't make yourself be, like, emotionally worried?  I know that point is coming, but it hasn't hit me yet.  I'm all like, "Wow, two weeks... I should get busy," but I'm not at the point where I FEEL the NEED to really crack down on myself.  Of course, it's been so long since I was actually in a school-type setting, that I don't know if I even remember how.  

Yes, I've been studying.  I think I'll be fine.  I just should be studying more.  

The inner nerdy perfectionist grade-grubber in me is always good about making me feel guilty like that.  Basically, I am Hermione Granger.

4. Josie has also been making us KERAAAAZY 'round here with her lack of desire to go to sleep.  Twice in the past week she has been up until past midnight until I finally give in and nurse her to sleep -- which we're ideally trying to avoid, since our goal is to get her to realize that she doesn't, in fact, physically need to be nursing in order to bring about the onset of sleep.  I know we're part of the problem, because she's 4 months old and we're still letting her nap like a newborn -- whenever, wherever -- and we haven't even attempted to institute a bedtime routine.  We're working on that.

5. I've just about finished this book, and I liked it a lot.  It's an easy-to-read nonfiction book about the assumptions we have about child-rearing and how evidence suggests that maybe those assumptions are not so accurate. 

Various topics it addresses include:
-  how constantly praising our kids might have the opposite effect from what we intend
- how to talk to kids about race
- why some siblings get along and others don't
- how to tell (or not) which kids are "gifted" and when
- AND MUCH MORE!!!

Super interesting.  I recommend it!

6. Anyone here any kind of music nerd?  This is pretty cute.

7. Typhoon Francisco meant that my office was closed yesterday (Friday) so I'm working for half a day today (Saturday), so I consider it legit to post Seven Quick Takes this morning.

Go see more at Conversion Diary!


Thursday, October 17, 2013

theme thursday: orange

I did it again and neglected the blog.  Whoops.  Let's blame studying for the boards, shall we?

Faith has been very into these colorful, rubbery ABC blocks she received as a gift when she was a baby. She stacks them, she knocks them down, she sorts them by shape, she sorts them by color.

And just as I was looking around for something orange, what should I spy but this little vignette?


What a convenient Theme Thursday situation for me! What an excellent developmental-skills-building situation for her! We're all winners. I love it when that happens.

Go see more orange stuff at Clan Donaldson.


Thursday, October 10, 2013

theme thursday: double

This was an easy one for me, with two kids. If only they were twins!

Hahahaha... not!

(I have nothing against twins. I think identical twins especially are fascinating to see. But one 2-1/2-year-old at a time is plenty for me, thank you.)

Do you remember those old commercials? "Double the pleasure, double the fun! Double mint, double mint, double mint DOUBLE mint, double mint, double mint... gum."

That jingle is stuck in my head now.

(Why did they need to say "double mint" so many times?)

Anyway, without further ado, my double-the-pleasure, double-the-fun duo:


Josie age 3-1/2 months, Faith age 2-1/2 years.

Head over to Clan Donaldson for more Double posts!


Tuesday, October 8, 2013

plans

So, for the first time in my life, I'm trying to be good about Meal Planning.

Yes, folks, I'm a 29-year-old mother of two, married for nigh-on 5 years, and I have yet to Plan Meals ahead of time with any regularity.  (Bad little hausfrau!)  I don't know why.  I normally like planning things.  It just seemed annoying and intimidating and, like, requiring forethought and stuff.  And in residency I was so busy and exhausted all the time that the idea of coming up with One More Thing to do would have made me cry, even if it was a Thing that would ultimately have made my life easier.  Exhaustion, it's not logical.

But lately I've been on a recipe-collecting kick, and I decided to Plan Meals so that I would, you know, have the right ingredients on hand when I needed them.  So, like the INTJ that I am, I researched recipes that looked good - planning easier or pre-made ones for the evenings I get home late-ish from work, and including one built in Leftovers day - I told you I'm a planner at heart! - and like a nerd I typed up a list of meals for each day, printed it out, and stuck it on the fridge.

And you know what?  It's awesome.  It makes me less stressed throughout the day knowing that I have the ingredients and recipe I need.  Dinner isn't LOOMING over me all day like.... like.... I don't know.  I can't think of a good comparison.  But you know what I mean.

I also totally stole the "Recipes To Try" and "Recipes We Love" idea from Jen of Conversion Diary fame.  (Link goes to her Meal Planning post.)  Because, like her, I love organizing things - or at least the idea of organizing things - and also I Adore Evernote.  Adore with a capital A.  Except, because I'm apparently way more anal than she is, I have to subdivide my recipes further, so that in each of the two main folders ("Recipes To Try" and "Recipes We Love"), there are *cough* 44 sub-folders *cough*.

FOURTY-FOUR SUB-FOLDERS.

Hi, my name is Emily and I have an Evernote problem.

Anyway.  Meal planning.  It's good stuff.

And also, in order to share good things and to give credit where credit is due, I get the majority of my recipes from:
Smitten Kitchen (her desserts are all TO DIE FOR - her main dishes and sides are generally delicious too, though some are a little fussy for me to attempt)
Pioneer Woman (my go-to for reasonably simple and totally yummy main dishes, among other things)
A Year of Slow Cooking (the best place I've found for a ton of reliable crock-pot recipes that don't all have Cream-Of-Whatever Soup as a main ingredient)
And of course AllRecipes.com.  Because if 600 reviewers say a recipe is delicious, it probably is.  Also, a lot of the reviews give helpful or interesting tips or slight alterations to the recipes.

Probably everyone already knows about and loves those websites.  But I just thought I'd share.