Devin Update

I updated a bit at the end of the last post on how Devin was doing this morning, but I thought this update deserved it's own post. Devin has done AWESOME! We ended up going to Great America to get our passes completed and only intended on staying for a short while (since we can go whenever we want with our passes and it is only 10-15 min away). We got there around noon and left around 6! Devin only had a very slight accident because one time when he told us he had to go we were a little far from a bathroom, but really didn't even have to change his underpants (although we did). He had other very successful trips to the bathroom throughout the day. He is completely independent going to the bathroom, with the exception of needing us to pick him up if there isn't a stool for him to stand on. He tells us when he has to go, runs fast to the potty or waits for us to show him where to go, pulls his pants down, does his business and wipes, flushes, closes the lid, pulls his pants back up, and washes his hands. It's great! If we're at home, we don't have to do a thing :) I think I can officially say that he is potty trained!
We'll still wait and see what the overnight brings, but I'm not so concerned about that quite yet. It took Aiden about a month to be consistent with that.

I took a few pictures with my phone at GA...I wasn't full on prepared with anything more than changes of clothes since we didn't anticipate staying the day.

I loved how Devin just kept going around in circles ;)

Patiently waiting for a ride...Devin was putting on the glasses and then tried to put them back on Micah ;)

This boy has had quite the growing up experiences over the past month or so. I took his blanket away last month...I didn't take Aiden's away until his 5th birthday after we moved here. I had his special blankets in the wash and it took me a few days to get to doing the laundry (go figure) and he was doing just fine without them-so I figured I'd just pack them away. He asked about them and I told him I put them away and he was fine with that. Done deal.
On Easter we let Devin go back to Sunday School during church for the first time. The age is supposed to be 3 and up, but we figured he was getting pretty close, and he'd be with his brother. Again-he did great and loves going.
He finally figured out how to pedal his big bike and does pretty good on his scooter too. I was especially proud of him for learning to ride his bike after seeing another boy about 9 months older than him still trying to figure it out. I think this is about the age they do that, and was just happy he got to that milestone.
And now he's a big boy going potty with the best of them :) So proud of this "not so little" guy. What happened to my baby?? He's growing up so fast!

Potty Training Day

Today was Devin's big potty training day! I did this method with Aiden when he was Devin's age and it really worked out great. This book was recommended to me by my dentist's assistant and after reading it knew it was the method for us. The trick is to not attempt to potty train-at all-before doing this. Therefore there are no other preconceived notions on what is entailed and there aren't any negative connotations to using the potty. This book is slightly outdated, and did change a few things, but will explain.

Part of the training the book outlines for you to do with your child is for him to train a doll. By teaching the doll how to go potty will help reinforce the steps it takes, provide positive reinforcement for completion of the steps, and give you the opportunity to reward with snacks and drinks, which allow for ample potty opportunities.

I had to go out and buy a doll for us to use (since we don't have any, and the one we used for Aiden is in storage). The book specifies a potty doll that you can feed drinks and then can get it to "potty"...I'm not sure they make those anymore, and if they do I didn't investigate how to obtain one. This was a bath time baby and it did have a hole down there to eliminate water from the inside, but it just leaked out which would have been a disservice for what we needed. So instead I just brought in a cup of water and poured it into the pot when appropriate. I also had to makeshift the underwear for the doll a bit. I just used one of the smaller pairs we had and pinned it in the back so it stayed on, but was easy for Devin to pull down when he was teaching.
Another deviation was that I trained on the real toilet. Aiden was actually scared of the little "singing" potty and I figured when we're out and about all they'll have are big toilets anyway...so might as well learn now. Because of Aiden's experience, I chose to bypass the little potty all together and only used it as a tool when he trained the doll, and the stool to reach the sink. Aiden also responded better to learning to pee standing up rather than sitting down like the book outlined, so I chose to do that with Devin as well. Each child is a little different, and I think you should adapt to how the child wants to learn to make it a positive experience for both of you.

Because we weren't training on the little portable potty that can be placed in the kitchen like the book said, I chose to lay down a painters tarp and rugs to protect the carpet from accidents and make it an easier for Devin when he had to clean it up.

You must be prepared with lots of tasty snacks and drinks.

Here's the big boy enjoying some of his treats after successfully going potty like a big boy-and keeping his pants dry! That's another key thing, to reward that he has dry pants, not just that he can go on the potty.

Another must have is a "pee-pee" stool if you are training on the big potty...made lovingly by Papa when Aiden trained.

I'm a Big Boy now!!
In more ways in one...he's bypassed the first set of underpants I got for Aiden, and is already in size 4T that Aiden was wearing only a month ago...
Devin had a very successful day of training and has the procedures down. He does everything on his own, but still needs a bit of prompting when he's in the middle of doing something and makes "the face". I'm glad Aiden doesn't have school tomorrow so we can continue to stay home and reinforce the training he learned today. The important thing to remember is that once you take the diapers/pull-ups away, they stay away. For better or worse.
The book states that it's ok to wear them to bed or when their sick, but I've chosen not to. The mattress is encased in plastic and I just lay a large towel down, so if he wets the bed (which I'm sure he will) it's the only thing I have to change until he gets it.
I'll keep you posted on how he does in the next few days. But right now, I'm the proud mommy of a very Big Boy!!

**Please note that this post is in no way a complete source to use if you are choosing to train your child this way. You must read the book and follow all the procedures and use the language indicated. This is an all day venture and helps if it is only you and the child in the house for the day of training. I had to choose a day that Micah was available to take Aiden out (which is difficult because of his crazy schedule), so that's why today was the day. Micah and Aiden left for church a little after 8am and didn't come back home until after 6:30pm. It's crucial not to have any distractions during training and to have a complete understanding of the book's procedures and advice-so read the book! ;)
~Update~ we woke Devin up to go potty before we went to bed, and he was dry. He was really tired but finally did go potty. We anticipated he'd be wet this morning, but he came into our room around 6:30 saying he had to go potty-so we hurried fast to the potty where he went successfully and showed us how he had kept his pants dry all night! Woohoo!! Part of me thinks he would have stayed dry even if we hadn't woken him up since he only went a little bit. He's continued to stay dry all morning and going on his own. We're so proud of him :) Even planning a short outing to see how he does. Crossing our fingers he continues this trend and is officially "trained"!

Century Ride

Micah pledged to do a century ride when we moved out here, and when Stanford's annual Canary Century bike ride came along, he knew this was what he wanted to do. Not only would he finally get to do his century, but it was for an amazing cause. The Canary Century benefits the Stanford Cancer Center. Since Micah's dad was diagnosed with MDS, he knew this was what he wanted to ride for. Micah has been raising money and training for weeks, and the big day finally arrived. He started riding around 7:20 and the boys and I left a few hours later to meet him at the first rest stop.

We had a little cheer for Daddy ready to go. The kids have been watching Chicken Little lately, so that's why Devin says "Go Acorns!" at the end ;)


Here comes Micah coming into the first rest stop.

Devin stretched with him at every stop.

Saying goodbye and good luck. The boys always have a hard time right after he leaves. They always say "I really miss my daddy...snif snif"

Micah rode with a picture of our family on his back to show who he was riding for, especially his father.

After Micah left the rest stop the boys and I headed down the highway a bit to where there was a lighthouse. We spent a few minutes admiring the views and taking pictures before heading off to the next stop.

I don't know if you can see the sea lions on the rocks in the middle of the picture, just past the bricks in the darker shaded cliff.

They're pretty dang cute when they want to be!

This is a picture of Micah with a few of his colleagues.
We left the lighthouse to meet up at the second stop, and actually ended up pulling into it following Micah on the bike the last few hundred feet. I didn't snap any pictures there, but it was about 65 miles into the ride with the largest climb yet to come for the next 15 miles. There was another rest stop at the top of the climb that we didn't meet him at, and instead let the boys run off some more steam at a beach.

Here is a picture Micah took with his phone of one of the hills he went up. I drove some of what they rode and in my opinion, all those riders are just insane-some of those hills are crazy!

That water was COLD!

Yeah, they got pretty wet and sandy, especially after falling into the sand a few times. Lucky I was prepared with another set of clothes in the van.

Waiting at the finish line for Micah to arrive!


The Big Finish!!

Yay Micah! You did it!!
Final time was 6 hours and 49 minutes with about an hour and a half of high grade climbing. Again, I think he's insane. But I'm insanely proud of you! :)

In all actuality the course was laid out to be only 97.9 miles...and I had already given him a hard time when he said he did 84 miles last week but his gps only showed 83.9. So after he crossed the finish line he went back out to do a few more miles to show he did a true century ride. Job Well Done!

Congratulations to all who participated in today's ride and all the money that was raised for Cancer research. Hopefully many lives will be changed because of the awareness and funds that were produced because of your efforts.

Learning to Ride a Bike

Do you remember when you first learned to ride a bike? I don't remember when I first learned to ride a regular bike, but I do remember the day when my mom took my training wheels off. I'm not sure how old I was, but I remember her taking me down to the dead end near our house and making me learn. I crashed into a prickly bush and had all these little cuts all over the palms of my hands and it hurt like heck. I wanted to go home and was crying but she persisted and made me get back up and figure it out. And I did, that very day. I remember going home and riding up and down our horseshoe driveway that connected to our next door neighbors (who were awesome), for hours and singing songs from The Little Mermaid.
It took Aiden a bit to figure out how to pedal his big bike, and likewise has taken Devin just as long. He could do his tricycle but always wanted to go forward a bit and then go backwards. You can't pedal backwards on a big bike and that was frustrating to him I think. I felt it was high time he figured it out, and it was a good time for Aiden to try and learn a two wheeler. And what a more memorable place to learn to ride your bike then at Stanford? So we loaded up the bikes and headed on out.

Note that the videos in this post aren't very long, and hope you check them all out :)

DAY 1

Micah taking off the training wheels with the assistance from Devin. Aiden was actually really really excited to ride...
(Notice all the padding and gloves?? No scratches on the hands for this kid!)

We warned him that it was going to be hard and that he was going to fall, but that we would be right there and were going to help him. I didn't expect him to think he had to fall all the time, even just standing up! Goober.

I'm glad that we found a nice wide, long, and quiet path for him to start on.

Sorry this one is sideways, but it shows basically how the day went. Hold on, let go, fall down. He kept leaning over, not peddling, and wouldn't watch where he was going. It was a lot for him to take in I think.

I tried working with Devin and getting him to pedal but it really wasn't going very well for him. He wanted to be by Daddy and Aiden and was pretty disinterested in actually riding himself.

After falling, again, Aiden got really really upset. I mean he was yelling at his bike, punching the seat, kicking the wheels, the whole fit and tantrum. He stomped off a bit and was really mad. I got the tail end of it when we called him back. My heart went out to the poor guy but it was all that Micah and I could do to stop from laughing. And honestly we didn't do a very good job holding it all in...lol But he was so mad he wasn't paying attention to us ;)

Words of encouragement.

Devin deciding he was "done". Which was fine because we had some threatening weather heading our way and we had a bit of a walk to get back to the car. Micah put the training wheels back on and called it a day.

The next day we kept everything packed up in the car and decided to try again after church. Micah had to go to the hospital and get some things printed off, so we decided to stay there and try again. Technically we're still at "Stanford" and already at the hospital in case anything bad happened-haha.

DAY 2

Micah thought Aiden would do ok with just one training wheel on, but it still wasn't going that great, and I thought it might get confusing, so he took the other off and started again.

Devin, on the other hand, finally had a break through! While Micah was inside I was trying again to get him to pedal. I had let the boys pick out a horn or bell for their bikes and promised it to them when they learned to ride. I was using Devin's horn as inspiration for him to pedal to it, and he was soooo close! Finally when Micah came out he showed off for Daddy and really rode, and earned his horn :) We put it on his bike, and he rode the whole rest of the day.

He started using his horn to call "Help Help!" when he got a little stuck and needed a tiny shove. You might hear him in some of the videos yelling for Daddy or Help because his pedals are at that point where he can't really get going again and wants help.

Micah needed a break and I took over for a bit.
Aiden was doing pretty good too. There were times we were barely holding him up and often let him go and he would go great until he stopped peddling.

The Devinator thought it was fun to try and run into Aiden. he was always chasing him down and trying to "get him".

We were at it for a few hours and were so proud of the progress he made that day. It was much much better than the first day, but he's still not quite there yet. I was so happy his spirits were up almost the whole time. He badly wants his bell and kept asking for it. I'd let him ring it a few times for good luck, but he doesn't get it until he's mastered riding without his training wheels. But they both did earn some ice cream that day :)
When I gave the boys a bath that night I noticed all the bruises on Aiden's shins...poor guy! But he's such a trooper and never complained too much.

And the bike isn't without it's own casualties. The pedals have taken quite a beating and there are some scratches on the seat etc. But in the end, it's a boys bike and bound to get beat up!
We'll keep you posted on how he does...he's pretty motivated and I hope it doesn't take him too much longer to figure it out. Until then...Go Aiden!!

Fellowship

I have a lot of friends and family who get a little confused as to what stage we're at in our lives, and so I wanted to provide a little background on what the journey is like to become a doctor-more specifically an Orthapedic Surgeon.

The breakdown goes something like this: K-8th grade, then your four years of high school, then your four years of undergrad education, usually majoring in the sciences. This is when you take your MCAT, apply and interview for medical school. After you are accepted (hopefully) you complete your four years of medical school and when you start taking your first set of Boards. During medical school you decide exactly what kind of Doctor you wish to become and begin looking into Residency. Residency is years of training in your particular area of interest, ie Family Practice, Emergency Medicine, Radiology, General Surgery, etc. And in our case, Orthopedic Surgery.

During your fourth year of Medical School you apply to Residency programs across the country and hope for interviews. After all the interviewing is done there is the Match. You rank the places you interviewed at in order of preference and likewise the programs rank the interviewees in order of preference. Some computer program then takes the information and matches everyone accordingly. In March of that fourth year you find out via email if you did indeed match, and if not, then you need to scramble and call programs that also didn't match and find yourself a spot. Then a few days later it is Match Day when every 4th year Medical Student across the nation finds out exactly where they matched (if you had to scramble, then you essentially already know). Then in May you graduate and receive your Medical Degree and have that "Doctor" title.

So you've graduated from medical school and now will be forever known as "Dr. Whatshisname", but in the eyes of many you aren't a "real" doctor yet. You take another set of Boards (usually before graduation) and set to move on to Residency, which starts that June/July following your graduation in May. For many this is somewhere else from where you did your formal schooling. Now it depends on your particular specialty how long a Residency program is. For instance, I believe Peds or Family Practice Residencies are only 3 years, where as most surgical ones are 5-6. Ortho is 5 years.

In our case, we matched at a great Orthopedic Residency program where we were for our first 3 years. Unfortunately for us, the program was shut down by the ACGME and we had to find another program that would take us in for our final two years. Micah had to again call programs, apply, and interview again for this. That is why we relocated here to CA and are finishing up Residency at Stanford. (Click here if you want to revisit the post where I explained a little of what was going on when we found out we were closing). (And here is when I posted about our decision to move to CA).

Now in Orthopedics you could finish out your 5 year training and find a job doing General Orthopedics, meaning you would see just about everything from joints, to hand, to foot and ankle etc. Or you could do another year of training called Fellowship which is focusing on just one area of ortho, and in Micah's case, spine. When you are in your fourth year of Residency you apply and interview for your Fellowship position. The thought process is that they don't want you to take time out of your Chief year of Residency to find a place to go for Fellowship, and instead do it the year before. This way there aren't any distractions during your final year and your not worried about what your immediate future looks like. So after all the interviews for you specialty are over with, you again rank your possibilities and the programs do the same, and we go through another match.

Well today was D-Day when we found out where we were going to match. Micah interviewed at 10 different programs across the country (literally, from CA to MA). The top two programs that Micah really felt were going to be a good fit for him were Utah and Houston. We felt fairly confident that we would end up at either of those places. We both have reasons for wanting or favoring one over the other, but in the end they were pretty evenly split. In the end Utah was ranked #1 and Houston was ranked #2. And we ended up in.....

UTAH!

I'm going to admit, I'm sad we're not going to Houston because we have family there and would have loved to be close to them. But it was not meant to be. We are excited for Utah as our best friends are from there, and they will find out next week where they match for Fellowship in Hand. We're praying they end up in Utah with us, but we don't want to get our hopes up. At any rate, we at least know they will have some great advice for us and we'll have their family's friendly faces to greet us when we arrive.

So this means that we have one more year here in CA to complete his final year of Residency (and take another set of Boards), and then we will move in July of 2012 to Utah for his year of Fellowship in Spine. After that year is over we will make our final move to wherever we decide to practice and finally set down some roots.
There you have it. It's a long haul, and we can finally say were near the tail end of it all. The light is at the end of the tunnel! Sorry this post was so long, but so is our journey. Those of you who have been with us through it all, we love you and thank you for all your support. It certainly isn't always easy, but it's worth it in the end when you love the job you do. I love my husband and am very proud of all his accomplishments. He is an amazing doctor, an incredible father, and the absolute best partner in life. I'm so lucky to be married to such a wonderful man.

Another Tragedy

I am so saddened to find myself writing this post. Our family has been hit with another tragedy. Early this morning Micah's mom called us to let us know that his Uncle Terry died in an accident involving his tour bus. As of right now, we are not informed on any of the specifics of the accident other than luckily no one else was on the bus at the time. This is on the heels of Micah's Uncle Jerry passing away this past August in a traffic accident, and Larry receiving his Myelodysplastic Syndrome (MDS) diagnosis just a few months ago.

I really don't know quite what to say right now. I think we're still in a bit of a state of shock. How much grief can one family take? We are so worried about Micah's grandparents. How do you lose two sons in less than a year and have the other one get sick? We're so thankful that Micah's parents were able to get on a plane and arrive safely to tell them in person and help try and give some comfort in this terrible time. And we were so grateful that we were attending the Christian Medical and Dental Associations convention at the time we got the call. The outpouring of love, support, and prayers that community embraced us with gave us such comfort this morning. After a weekend of having our hearts and minds fed with God's words, I feel it truly helped prepare the two of us for that phone call this morning.

The only thing I can think to do, especially in times like this is lean on the Lord.
No testing has overtaken you that is not common to everyone. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tested beyond your strength, but with the testing he will also provide the way out so that you may be able to endure it. 1 Corinthians 10:13
We need to ask God for strength and pray for understanding and peace.
We are so thankful that we had the chance to meet up with Uncle Terry and see his new tour bus in our first months after our move. He was so proud to show us around and delighted in seeing our boys. We enjoyed a lovely dinner with him and I treasure that I snapped a few photos. It was the last time we got to see him.
Uncle Terry had a good heart, and knew how to leave a lasting impression. Those of you who knew him well I hope have a smile on your face as you read that last line. For me, I will never forget my first conversation with him.
Micah and I had been dating for some time and I was working in the office of his parent's company for the summer. I was instructed by their full time secretary to carefully screen any calls going through to Larry. The phone rang and I answered. The man on the other end asked to speak with Larry. I asked who was calling and he replied "His Brother". I politely prompted, "His brother..." waiting for them to tell me their name. He replied "His BRO--THER". I asked again if he could please tell me his name, and he kept responding with only "His Brother!" I tried to tell him as professionally and politely as I could, that I was unable to put him through unless he told me his name, and we were at a stand still. I ended up hanging up as gracefully as I could. I quickly told Rachele about the conversation and in the midst of my explanation the phone rings again. She picked it up that time and quickly figured out that it was Uncle Terry. Naturally I was mortified that I had essentially hung up on my future Uncle. And he was sure to introduce himself as "HIS BRO--THER" when we met face to face a few weeks later. :)
Uncle Terry was a good man who loved and cared for his family deeply. He was a hard worker and I know will be forever missed.
Please pray for our family and cherish the moments you have with those you love. Because you truly don't know how much time you have left with them before they are called to Heaven.