Friday, on the Lighthouse Trail

On Friday we left bridezilla et al to their last minute planning, and took a hike.

Clearly, BittyPrincess doesn't like her Uncle P...



...at ALL.



The view from low on the land-side of the ridge:



The kids managed to make the hike more difficult for themselves than it had to be:



Enthusiastic even in the heat:



A bunch of way-up-high photos:






At the first lookout on the ocean side of the ridge:





It was hot. I present...princess hiking!



First decent view of the lighthouse:



View of the shore from the top:



Goofballs!



Perpetual Motion Bittyprincess:



The whole crew:



More pretty:



Awwwwww, mother and son:



Boyness!



Clearly, BittyPrincess doesn't like her Tutu (grandma) either:



Or her Papa:





And, the picture to put all earlier cliff pictures into perspective...see that little light blue pool down there? There is a person swimming in it. If you blow up the picture real good, that person is identifiable as a couple of lighter colored pixels in the water.



We managed to avoid sunburn and narrowly escape heat exhaustion, before returning to the wedding prep nonsense. No pictures of our manicure/pedicure session (which I'm sure ~L~ will thank me for). I didn't take my camera to the wedding, either...not that I would have been snapping away as matron of honor or anything, but I am looking forward to seeing the photo album. The photographer was everywhere and I'm sure she did an awesome job.

Top of the Makapuu Lighthouse Hike

A video for you :)

Vacation Pictures!

Time for some photo catch up, I think! We've been trying to fit our adventures in with the pre-wedding festivities/complete insanity.

We arrived on Monday and spent the afternoon swimming. BittyPrincess found a hidey-hole and decided it was her bedroom, and then proceeded to fall asleep in it, which meant I had to sleep nearby for my own sanity (and not in the nice real bed they'd set aside for me...)



The next day, we went to (arguably) the tamest beach in Hawaii.



The following day, we did some snorkeling and reef-ing at our favorite tide pools. The girls both got stung by portuguese man-of-war, which really sucked...

Snorkle Boyness:



And a whole bunch of photos of the beach we went to the next day (also where Boyness got his chance to experience the man-of-war up close and personal), before the rehearsal/rehearsal dinner/bachelorette party:

















A day at the beach is only REALLY complete if you get shave ice in there somewhere:

Supervised Primary

Woot!

I wasn't going to claim them, but on my paperwork review my preceptor crossed out "involved" and wrote in "primary" :). I realized why when I couldn't answer "so what did I do that you didn't do more of?" That sure did creep up on me.

Leaving tomorrow. Off call at 8am. I was really hoping to get another birth in there, one I'll be sad to miss, but that is looking less and less likely.

Goodbye, July

In July, I:

Made my way through over 100 hours of clinic time, plus about 30? hours of labor support time.

Didn't take any time off call, at all. That's a first, a month entirely on call.

Made an interesting mistake on a cervical exam, messing up somebody's initial assessment. I thought I felt 7 and she must have been about 4. Later in labor, after her water had broken, I felt again and it was obvious that the ridge I was feeling was not, in fact, her cervix. I could still feel whatever-it-was and it felt like a 9 with a bit of an anterior lip at that point, but the internal os was obviously there and obviously 7, with the exterior os not much further open than that. I may not be comfortable doing another initial labor exam without follow up for a while after that mistake, although the poor client was actually not upset about it at all. As bad as it felt to suddenly realize I'd screwed up (when I did the second exam, that flash of realization was a real "oh SHIT" moment), I think I would have felt way worse if I'd had to tell this woman she wasn't yet to the same point I'd thought she'd been before.

Had a first episode of sticky shoulders.

Saw a bili level so high (25) that our statistics gathering program insists it is impossible.

Did a physical and pelvic exam for a woman who had a fibroid so big, her abdomen had a size mistakable for 32 week gestation at 11 weeks. It was the most interesting exam and pap I've done to date, by far.

Discovered that I actually like the preceptor I was a tad bit apprehensive about.

To and fro. Kids and meals. Go, go, go, go. As insane as this last month seems "on paper," I get 4 days off a week. We get friends in there (sometimes just lengthy phone conversations), and family outings. Laundry and good food. Life goes on. I am busy and happy, and learning learning learning. The kids are thriving on their schedule: three days with me (with someone held in reserve in case I get called), one day on a full-family outing, one day with Fran while I'm in clinic, two days with friends while I'm in clinic, and repeat. We rotate which friends they spend time with, and the kids really love that. No matter who they're going to be with any given week, they're excited about it.

Leaving soon for our trip to Hawaii, to visit family and for my sister's wedding. The level of excitement in this household is pretty incredible. Going off call 14 hours before the flight leaves, and hoping for no inconvenient overlap. Several women are postdates, and I'm now convinced that they're waiting for me to leave before they go into labor, just because the first rule of midwifery is that labor happens whenever it is least convenient. I'm hoping my need to pack spurs a veritable onslaught of women in labor (ok, not really...I'd settle for two of them!). I can pack fast and buy what I miss. Can't replace missing births with these women I've been seeing a lot of and getting to know.

Reading this post back, it doesn't exactly flow and doesn't entirely make sense, which is what I get for posting after 10pm on the last day of the month, after a full "week" of clinic. But ah well, off to bathe and to bed, editting be damned.

Homebody

Well, I'm not really a homebody. I think I'm gone more than I'm here, for the most part. But we haven't left the house a whole lot in a few days. Why would we? In between "do nothing" days (which honestly are anything but), we had friends over on Sunday.

Today, Boyness and I spent several hours harvesting the wild overgrowth around us. A portion of the returns (about 1/4 of what we packed up today), in our uber-high-tech drying bags and ready for placement:



As we started to get ready to go inside, we had some visitors:





They're so nice, it almost makes you forget that they're the buggers that eat everything in your garden.

Almost.

Boyness found the one and only strawberry to escape the deer, so of course he got to eat it. He said it was good.

We followed the deer down the driveway, trying to be quiet on bare feet, but the little one was pretty unsettled by us, so once they'd gone around the bend we let them be.

Monday is Fun-Day

Or something like that. Our schedule now works out where Fran and I are both off work (though I'm not off call) on Mondays, so it is our "do something" day.

Yesterday, we packed the back of the van with bikes and headed off to Point Defiance, a spot that has a lot more going for it than biking (which we didn't really get pictures of).

First the rose gardens. All of the kids love the rose gardens. Even Boyness, who despite the numerous scowls in the pictures, sighed and said "I love this place" just before we left.





We met friends at a playground, and then broke up into groups. I took the girls on a longer bike ride, pulling BittyPrincess behind me. The rest of the group stayed behind and got their bike on near the picnic tables:



And then went into the Fort Nisqually Living History Museum. Boyness proved his usefulness by grinding some coffee beans:



And I hear that they all got off (more than a little) on the trading post stuff:



It was a gorgeous day yesterday.

Hehe

More pictures coming...finally...

Fourth Festivities

Spent the fourth this year with a gaggle of friends, watching fireworks from the beach:





We followed it up by camping in their backyard. And then getting called away in the middle of the night. "Your job SUCKS," says ~L~, as she grabs hold of BittyPrincess. "Only the hours," I say, "only the hours." Which of course is what she meant, but we were too blurry to interact properly at the moment. She went to sleep and I went to a lengthy labor. I'm becoming convinced that if you're 8 or more years since your last baby, you might as well be having your first.

Assorted Picture Fun

In the summer, we play hard. We have several inertia-less months to make up for, after all. Those winter standby activities - blogging, online discussion boards, sitting on our asses, actually getting a chance to watch the movies we rent from Blockbuster before our week is up - ah, they are gone. So in the interest of not overexplaining what amounts to lots of activity, here's a bit of a picture dump:

Friends, Fun

Marie and her crew came over today. I ditched them for a couple hours to go to a home visit, and then M and her hubby ditched me for a few hours while they went to spend some time eating and shopping sans children.

The six kids that were here today flowed in and out of the house, doing assorted kid things, and having a wonderful time.

Boyness was exposed to dairy yesterday, in one of those freaky "aw crap, oops" kinda things. Marie has recently figured out that her kids can have casein but not whey, and she grabbed a product she knows is safe for them (which has always in the past meant it would be ok for Boyness) and he got some swallowed before we got to it. So Boyness had a series of grouchy and slightly out of control episodes.

Despite that, it was a fun day. It feels good to have friends over for once.

The kids ignore the fact that we've got a lot of stuff to explore out there until friends come over, so it is really nice they've been re-inspired that way.

I am officially out of brainpower, and this post shall remain disjointed. I am off to get the kids abed at a slightly more reasonable hour tonight, with high hopes for a good sleep for myself.

Senior, BAYBAY

Provided, of course, that I actually pass the rather grueling test I just took. Haven't failed one yet, so the chances are good...still, this is a rough exam and the pass/fail mark is 80%.

There are some major things that need doing before graduation, but I am assured that I am DONE writing learning objectives.

Spent the night before last in a bitty apartment that was very cute and warm and artistic and welcoming. It is so interesting when you get to the home of someone you've seen in clinic and suddenly see a whole new "them." Her home was lovely. We draped ourselves on various surfaces and slept in turns and between contractions as she labored through the night.

Did my first newborn exam yesterday afternoon. It was one of those schizophrenic different-preceptor issues, where my previous preceptor always gave me "mom duty" and the current ones tend to give you "baby duty" first, so my experience-lag was irritatingly large there (I have a level of competence with the mom stuff that would tend to make these particular preceptors think I should know what I'm doing with the baby stuff, when I don't).

I am tired. I look at my schedule and I don't see where I'm going to catch a decent night of sleep in the next three days. I've reintroduced caffeine into my life, just by needing an extra nudge into awareness too many times in the last couple weeks, and I'm pretty sure my dependence is ramped up to the withdrawal-headache level again.

So Close...

I'm so close to the end of quarter I can smell it. One more assignment. One more test. And then I'm done with Junior year.

I still have 2/3 of my practicum requirements ahead of me. Ouch.

Interviewing next week to do some labor assisting (read - extra) work with a midwife that is technically in Lewis County. Contemplating (like calling rental agencies) a move to Gig Harbor. And yes, both my current (in Seattle) and probable future preceptors (Olympia) are ok with that. I'm not sure what the future holds in terms of moving to my next really full-time placement (Olympia), since I've all but set a date for starting but I'm still uneasy about fitting well with the practice. All of this takes mental energy that I don't have right now.

Since this time last week, I discovered that it was indeed possible to put 1000 miles on a car in a week without going on a road trip. I saw someone with her arm in a uterus up past her elbow...we called 911, but by the time the medics arrived the placenta had finally delivered, we'd cleaned up, and the baby was nursing. I saw two amazing women give birth to big hunks of babies in their homes and lay down in their own beds to hurse, happy happy happy.

I am somewhat eager to see a third, for whom I've developed a strange liking almost despite myself. It is odd how you feel more attached to some women than others. And I know that it is true in reverse; there are a few women who have specifically asked for me in labor, and others that couldn't care less whether I was there.

Somewhere in this full time unpaid midwifery student work out of home madness, I need to finish the quarter in the next few days. It will be nice to put away the binders for a few weeks. Almost forever. This was the last quarter of the rather intense Midwifery Care courses, and next year I'll see a far lighter didactic load. So close.

Non-Apocalyptic Day at Clinic

And yes, there was a question about the apocalyptic-or-not nature of my day. I took the kids with me to (a half day of) clinic, you see. They did completely fine. No barging in at inopportune moments (or any moments). No fires. No damaged property. We even got some time in the sun when I took them across the street to the park during a break.

Girliness has been acting downright hormonal today. "Mama," she asked me, "do you ever feel all irritated and frustrated for no reason?" "Yes, hon, sometimes I do. Lots of people do." "Well what do you do about it?" We discussed the merits of long showers, walks, talking to friends on the phone, and books in bed. I think she feels slightly less like snapping her brother's head off at the moment, but damn. She was, quite frankly, a bitch to her brother today whenever he came anywhere near her, although he avoided her nicely for the most part. Clear some space around the crazy 8yo girl, eh? I thought I had some time before this...

On Friends, Friendship, and the Internet

Oh, the random musings. I listened to great music while I folded laundry. If my thoughts were fish, they didn't so much scatter as lay lazily beneath the surface; like those mall-walkway koi that just kind of SIT there, all ornamental like, they moved sluggishly and without purpose. I attempted to reign them in and failed, so there will be no coherent post. What follows is the random post-feeding-frenzy koi-like movement of my thoughts.

I have a new friend. It is a curious thing, making a friend in a time when I am so needy. But I suppose we have that in common, this new friend and I, since she has moved - newly single - across the country with her two children and is feeling adrift and rootless. I'm adrift in my own, less tangible way. Gestating my own midwife-self. I've become quite insane of late, not quite grounded to my sense of self in the same way I see so many pregnant women teetering between two selves. All that garble aside, I have this new friend and I've taken her into my inner circle with a rapidity that I found astounding. She's the first of my close friends (the other two being Marie and ~L~) that I've met online. Which is not to say that we had an online-relationship-catalyzed blind date, but that realization struck me the other day as I drove home from her house. The reality is, of course, much more complex than that. I don't exactly troll the internet looking for friends, and neither does she, so a certain kismet (albeit a strange electronic and entirely verbal one) drew us through several groups and into a newer, tighter arrangement that happens to include all of my real-live-in-the-flesh friends.

I repaid her for a grueling day of babysitting - and bonus homecooked dinner - by obliterating her wooden gatepost with the back of my van (also somewhat obliterated). Shit.

I'm feeling like I'm asking a lot of my friends lately, without being able to return much except my thoughts and affection. They are wonderful, wonderful people.

Interesting?

It's been a while. Perhaps my longest blog break since I started this crazy thing, although I am not sure about that and am not about to dig back and figure it out.

It isn't like I've got anything particularly interesting to say. I've been busy. I'm adjusting to the slower pace of clinic days and the less intense personalities in the new placement. Some of the things that sounded really daunting are turning out not to be, and vice versa. The sheer time-volume demand is draining.

The kids stayed the night last night with my mother-in-law. All three of them. BittyPrincess did fine, I'm told, and is up for a semi-planned ("we'll see how the first night goes") second night tonight. Fran and I had an in-house date night last night, and a very late morning this morning.

I couldn't think of anything that I *really* wanted to do without my kids, except fill a gap in my wardrobe (having put a hole in yet another pair of pants, need to stop doing that...I'm almost as bad as the kids with the knees, I swear). Clothing shopping with kids bites large.

I kept my promise not to even look at anything for anyone but myself.

In a melancholy mood on the drive home in the drizzle (where the fuck is summer?), I stopped at the falls. In an odd moment of impulse/whimsy/whatever, I hiked down to the base of the falls, clogs and inappropriate clothing and all.

I arrived in one piece at the bottom of the falls, and stood for quite some time at the lookout (you cannot approach the falls closely this time of year). I was, apparently, the only being fool enough to come down on a day like this.

The waterfall was violent today. I watched the water hasten over the ledge, hitting the pool with vigor and sending blossoming plume-ghosts far into the air, exploding into the mist and roiling into the greater river. Violent, angry, beautiful. The roar of the water and the verbal clatter of my internal monologue rushed in my ears. It was probably the longest chunk of time I've spent unguiltily just-for-me in a year or more.

I passed several small groupings of people on my way back up. I am not sure why the universe thought I deserved that time alone, but obviously it did.

My friends deserve a post of their own, and I'll write it my head while I fold laundry and come back with it later.

Free Obama Stickers

If you are so inclined:

https://pol.moveon.org/obamastickers/?id=12807-9190652-6pNio6&t=6

He's not perfect (and I don't agree with everything at moveon.org), but the idea of a McCain presidency scares me.

Sold Anyone Lately?

As an interesting side note, when I signed the birth center's statement that says (among many other things) that I have never sold a child, I simply had to laugh. Damn good thing they weren't asking me to swear that I'd never been *tempted* to sell a child.

Time Flies When You're Not On Call

I had my first day at a new clinic yesterday. No, I'm not on call yet, but that will soon follow.

This would be so much easier if I was filthy stinkin rich. Or had family nearby. Or both.

I Hate It

When my house gets so messy that I look around and don't know where to start, and do some stupid unnecessary thing instead. Like today I got rid of an old couch and prepped the garden beds, but didn't put away all the crap crowding out the couch, which really, should have been the priority.

Ugh.

Picture Time!

To Marie's on Tuesday for a little vegging:
(not sure why this won't rotate, it is horizontal before I upload it!)


And a little playing:



BittyPrincess rockin' her new trike:



Fran was off yesterday, so after a leisurely breakfast (completed at noon...VERY leisurely), we packed up the kids and the bikes and headed off to Lake Sammamish State Park. The whole crew:



The big two and I took our bikes and some snacks and headed off on the trails. Mud, water, sand; it was fun. It would have been cool to get pictures of that, but it was also a very messy ride and I'm not sure I would have thought to take photos anyway. We were TIRED by the time we loaded back up at 7:30pm. It was good fun and we'll be doing it again.

Test Those Homeschoolers!

In the state of Washington, there is a requirement that all school aged children (meaning grade 3 and above, the way the law is written) undergo some sort of evaluation. The law, as far as it goes, is pretty easy to comply with. This year, we chose to take the test that our virtual academy "sold" us. My children took the same tests that ~L~ talks about here: http://mama-hobbit.blogspot.com/.

I sent a somewhat angry letter to the virtual academy. My children were not as distressed as hers were over the test, and for them it was just an oddity. But it was a really shitty test, honestly.

That said, their results came in today and both of the children are in the 99th percentile for their grades on both segments of their exams. What that MEANS I don't know. Here's what I sent to the academy:

I am writing to express my dissapointment re: the MAP test. My daughter's reading/language test never once tested her reading abilities, instead focussing on syllables; this is a testing focus which I find bizarre and unlikely to yield accurate results concerning my daughter's actual english/language arts comprehension or capabilities. Both of my children encountered a question regarding school vacations, which is something entirely foreign to them and an unfair question, particularly considering that it was one of only a couple of its type. My son's mathematics test, supposedly at kindergarden level, skipped quickly from "click three elephants" to a division problem without manipulatives or illustrations.

This test at first struck me as simply bizarre. The more I think about it, however, the more unhappy I am with it. There is little positive to be said for this test and how it played out for my children. It seemed to have little to do with what they know or what they are capable of, and "adaptive" it is most certainly not. I cannot see how this test would in any way tell us anything concrete about my children and their academic progress, having covered extensively such oddities as "which has three syllables" but never testing any reading ability whatsoever.

We are through this hurdle and then some, but I'm pissed that this test was sold to us as being a decent option. It isn't. It took my son just over 30 minutes to complete, and my daughter just over an hour. Convenient, yes. Easy to take, not so much. A valid measure of my childrens' progress? Even if I take off my "tests are almost universally flawed because they test only a few of the many dimensions of learning" hat, I can't see how this would be a valid measure of my childrens' progress. A valid comparison with other children, perhaps. But it doesn't tell me anything useful; I still don't know what my kids' strengths and weaknesses are, or where they have gaps in their learning/understanding. I just know they spanked other kids their age on the same question set. But...so? What do I do with that knowledge?

My kids, for what it's worth, were underwhelmed by their 99th percentile scores and the "super job!" post-it note attached to their score sheets.

This is entirely cool

http://stemcells.alphamedpress.org/cgi/content/abstract/2007-0826v1

In this study, volunteers collected their own menstrual blood, which was then put in culture with rat heart cells, and spontaneously began to beat and form heart tissue sheets. While only 20% of the collected cells successfully made this conversion, this is 10-20 times the success rate seen with human embryonic stem cells.

Why do I think this is cool? Because someday, your menstrual blood may be "recycled" into new heart tissue that is entirely your own genetically. Such a tidy (genetically, medically, immunologically, ethically) solution!

(My apologies if this has been all over the news the last week...I don't do TV anymore...)

Spring, Spring, SPRING!!!

I think spring is finally actually here. There are baby birds in the bluebird nest, the tomato plants may just be safe to put outside now, and I can leave a window open without freezing to death. We haven't turned the heater on in a week! YAY spring!

Yesterday I took the two big kids out biking and we had a BLAST. And, um, today we bought padded bike shorts. Ouch.

It is also obvious now that Boyness needs a new bike as well *sigh* because he just can't keep up with those little tires, and really he had about outgrown the bike anyway. I feel like we're bleeding money over this venture.

In other news, neither of the kids has brought up the whole sex talk thing again, and neither of them is showing any evidence any stress-out or of it being anything other than just some strange new information. Phew.

Bikes Accomplished!

I did finally manage to pick up our new bikes (mine and Becca's). "Fully assembled," they said. I kind of expected that this would mean they'd check the brakes, at least. I guess not. And my bike has some strange allen key thing that I don't have a tool for. So this is not quite over yet. I was able to get Becca's brakes reassembled and properly adjusted, and she is thrilled.