School pics

We are into the second week of Lily's summer camp at school where she has water play every morning. She has really taken to the water activities and become much more brave with the sprinkler. Oh, to be a kid again...

The meaning of "Match Day" for me

I recently added a "Match Day" countdown to the blog but realized that I did not explain it. (Sorry Ingrid!) For those of you familiar with the world of medicine, and particularly medical school, you can stop reading here. For those fortunate enough to have never personally or vicariously experienced medical school, Match Day is the day that medical students are matched with a hospital for residency. Every medical student in the entire country receives this information on the same day at the same time in a formal ceremony held at their school (...envelope please...and the survey says...). It is a day that we have been anxiously anticipating for six years now, and since the end of the third year of med school is upon us, I figured it deserved an official countdown. The schools (and their affiliated hospitals) that Carl will apply to over the next several months will almost exclusively be limited to the midwest, including Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, and Kansas, with Missouri schools receiving top marks from our end.

This means that a major move will likely happen for us in just under a year. I have sooo many feelings about this. I will likely revisit this topic at a later time, but for now I will just say that this will be an especially strange move for me. In past, I've always moved to a town/state with which I was not familiar. Moving to Lake Forest, Bell Buckle (TN) and Baltimore were all places I had never been, and I just sort of had to feel my way around. But the midwest (including my hometown of St. Louis) is somewhere with which I am both intimately familiar and completely estranged. For all practical purposes, I have not lived in the St. Louis area since I was 18. Of course, I have been back countless times to visit my family, but it's not the same as actually living there. The town that holds ALL of my childhood memories holds very few adult memories. It is strange to think that my elementary school and the church that we attended no longer exist. My grandparents took part in the making of this school, my father and all of his siblings and my siblings attended this school, and now these are buildings used for other purposes. My family also lived in the same house for my entire childhood, but now my parents have a new home more suitable for their retirement years. It truly is so strange. So for me, moving back to the midwest will not be so much of a trip down memory lane but a chance to actually see a place from two completely different perspectives, in two different phases of life.

Wherever we move next, it will mark a new chapter in our ever-evolving life story. And since "every beginning is some other beginning's end" (how lame to quote a pop song?), so this impending move will mean that our time on the east coast (maybe more appropriately - the mid-Atlantic) is coming to an end.

Baltimore is somewhere I will always hold very dear to my heart. This is where my young adulthood lives. It is in this place that Carl and I forged our way in the unfamiliar territory of adulthood. No more college days of room and board (wasn't that nice?)...and aren't paychecks great?...and don't bills stink?...and what happened to all the free time that I used to have? Then we upped the ante with responsibilities like a house, a dog, and of course, our precious baby girl. And things changed. The paychecks seem to shrink...and the bills increase...and free time virtually disappear. But even with these increased restraints and pressures of med school, we are probably happier than we have ever been.

I've had this completely unsubstantiated belief for a while now that everyone has a time that just suits them. Like in Goonies, everyone has "their time". I think the reason that I didn't mind turning 30, and honestly was even happy to, is because I feel like this time is "my time" - the time that fits me and my personality. I really enjoy being the mom of a young child. Since we plan to have more children (at undisclosed...and ultimately unknown...dates) in our thirties, I'm happy to be here, with my ideal time just on the horizon. I will probably (hopefully) have similar feelings before each new decade of life, but for now, I am really excited for the near future. So much so, that I have to continually remind myself to live in the moment. (Can't suppress dreaming in a Pisces girl, I guess.)

New pool!

A rose is a rose...

I think it's funny how we adjust so much to Lily's way of doing things. As most children do, Lily has decided that certain things are called particular names, and so Carl and I have adopted a new language known as "Lily Speak". If you want to be able to follow the conversation in our house, here is a sampling of code words to know...

• "Eyes" are sunglasses
• "Ra Ra" is Terra
• "Pashu" is pacifier
• "Quackas" are crackers
• "Mo" is more
• Book, which she used to say accurately, has now become "boot" for some unknown reason

To Lily's credit, she is saying many, many words correctly and fairly clearly these days including: shoes, socks, mama, dada, bye-bye, see you, thank you, ball, hat, jacket, hot, no, sit, outside, juice, night-night, and many body parts, animal names, and animal sounds, among others. As a side note, my favorite animal sound that she has modified is the sound for rooster, pronounced as "cock doo". Classic.

Another wonderful development is that she started saying "love you" within the past week or so. This is still very hard to understand, but the intent is clear. However, the meaning may be lost on her, as she will often say it and then smack me in the face. Lovely.

Happy father's day!

Daddy and his girl, both giving me the same look

Open wide!!!

We enjoyed a relaxing afternoon on the deck today after Carl got home from work. Lily had the same dinner and dessert as we did including sheppard's pie and razzleberry pie. Carl being Carl put a container of water next to her so that she could rinse her hands while eating this potentially messy meal. Lily decided that it was best to keep one hand in the water at all times while eating.

A Perfect Saturday

Spinning

Exploring

An American Classic

Carousel ride

Colors of the season

Food challenge

The latest development in life with Lily is that we have a stand-off at nearly every mealtime. Unfortunately, I have really started to dread these times of the day. Usually it unfolds in the following way:

• Lily indicates that she wants to eat by saying "eat" while doing the sign for "eat".
• We proceed to the kitchen where she either goes to the refrigerator so that I will open it, or points to the cabinet so that I will lift her up and she is able to peruse the goods to pick out what she wants.
• I then get the chosen foods and prepare them for eating (peel the banana, pour the cereal, open the cheese packaging, etc.)
• Once I hand the food to Lily, she screams "no, no, no" and flails her arms about in protestation.

This routine has become frustrating beyond compare, mostly because it results in wasted food. Once the peel is off, you can't exactly put it back on, and so it goes. Truth be told, I have been more frustrated with my lack of solutions more than her behavior. Usually I'm fairly good at evaluating the situation, identifying the problem, and then testing solutions until we come up with a winner. However, our current battle has been underway for the past few weeks without any signs of concession on either side.

But today I had a light bulb moment. To put some of my ECE training into practice, I took a look at what directly precedes the undesired behavior - helping Lily with her food. Of course, it seems so obvious now. Lily is completely headstrong and independent so it is not surprising that she would not want any help with her food. She wants to peel the banana, pour the cereal, take the packaging off of the cheese, etc. While she can't actually do many of the required tasks necessary to prepare her food for eating, I can make it seem like she is doing it while subtly aiding the process. I tried this at dinner tonight, and it seemed to work pretty well. As with most things, only time will tell if my assessment is correct and if the solution actually works. If not, it's back to the drawing board we go. But don't expect any white flags from my side any time soon; I'm too headstrong for that.

My current favorite picture of Lily

Playtime with cousins

Katie and Lily

Mary and Lily

Sisterly love

Playtime with Grandma

Party day

The Kissock family

Birthday girl with mommy

Katie-bug and daddy

Cupcake face

Picturesque: Mary and balloon

Triple trouble: Katie, Mary and Lily

Grandma and the girls

All the ladies

Lily and I were lucky enough to be able to spend a long weekend in St. Joe in order to celebrate Katie's first birthday. The birthday party was great, and we had a great weekend visiting our family and friends in Missouri and Kansas. We miss everyone very much!!!

All partied out

This picture was taken about 5 minutes before Lily started throwing up. As one party guest commented, "It just isn't a kid's birthday party until someone throws up".

Happy birthday Terra!

Ready to go to the dog park

Clearly, Terra has not relinquished her position as the baby of the family even though she is four years old today.

Don't let the cute exterior fool you.

Mischievous at heart

Notice how Lily ever-so-sweetly coerces Terra into the chilly water of the pool.

The funny farm

So every night after Lily goes to sleep, we do the requisite tidying up to prepare for the next day (when she will demolish everything again, usually within 20 minutes after waking up). The books are thrown back in the basket, musical instruments in their bin, dolls on the chair, etc, etc. Part of Lily's ever-expanding toy collection is a farm set. She had so much fun with all the farm animals that we recently extended the collection to include zoo animals. Carl usually starts the cleaning up process by tackling the task of setting up the animals (since they don't really have an official container yet). I thought that it was curious that he would continually claim this project until one night I examined the configuration of the animals more carefully. If you look closely at the picture above, you will notice that Carl is indeed one sick puppy.