In December, Peter matched in San Diego for his residency in pediatrics. For the 9 months between February 2010 and October 2010, Peter was gone for 4 of them. He was in Norfolk {twice}, Bethesda, and San Diego doing "audition rotations" at the Naval hospitals. Despite the chaos in our personal lives, Peter did such a great job at these rotations.
In fact, he's going to hate me for posting this, but I have to, he just got an email from his residency mentor, a third year resident. She said, "I just wanted to let you know that you were very well liked when you rotated through here. I got ready to put my bid in for you and give this long spill on why I thought you should come here and as soon as your name was said everyone had glowing praise for you." For a bit of context of what this month was like, Charlotte came home from the NICU and five days later, Peter left for San Diego. The same day Peter left, Charlotte was re-admitted to CHOP for the entire month. She was incredibly sick, and Peter was two thousand miles away. Not only was he on an intense rotation away from home, his own child was in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit with aspiration pneumonia and sepsis, went back on the vent, and had g-tube surgery. Not to mention how crazy I was during all of this. So for him to make such a great impression during such a hectic time, is just, wow. I'm just in awe of him.
Phew. Glad that's over.
Now we just have to figure out how to move our family 2800 miles, which would be awesome in a 'normal' family of four, but is just phenomenal when you add in a special needs child.
Caleb is pretty convinced that Grandma and Grandpa (Knickerbocker) are coming with us and I'm certain that this boy will be devastated when he realizes that both sets of grandparents won't be just a car ride away. I'm hoping that the calming ocean breeze will distract him, and that grandparents come visit often. Very often.
That goes for all of you as well. We move out June 2011. I expect y'all to make plans to visit asap.
Thursday, February 17, 2011
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
Mars Needs Moms
My father (Grandpere) got this book for Caleb about a year ago. We read it all the time, and I'm hoping that the movie will be OK for Caleb to go see. It would be Caleb's first theater experience, minus the times I took him as a baby. I'm crossing my fingers that Disney didn't ruin the book!
What Number Am I?
Caleb asks us all the time what number he is. We'll say, "Umm, I think you are ten," and he'll crack up and say, "Nooo, I'm number three!"
With his birthday (yeah. back in December), came a visit to the pediatrician. We see her a lot, but not usually for Caleb. I promised him that he wouldn't need to have any shots at this appointment, which, of course, turned out to be a lie. He weighed 30 pounds (32nd percentile) and measured 36 inches tall (10th percentile).
He complained about the medicine in his arm (the vaccine for pneumonia which we needed him to have for Charlotte's sake, poor kid) for a few days, but shortly there after our entire family (minus Charlotte, thank goodness) came down with the stomach bug, so we all forgot about the pain inflicted by the vaccine.
At the appointment his pediatrician gave us the green light to start him in a preschool program, despite our concerns about the germs that it would expose Charlotte to. His cognitive scores were much higher than a typical three year old (that sounds like bragging, but believe you me, we have nothing to do with it) and she was concerned that if he wasn't being challenged in different situations, ie socially, academically, etc that he might end up getting bored and/or have attention issues. He has been attending a preschool two days a week now for a week or two and loves it. We've been really blessed to have a situation come up that allowed him to attend.
If you ask him to spell his name, he says "C-L-B" which confirms that he is indeed part of the texting generation. He lives off of peanut butter and honey sandwiches, and if Mommy isn't looking, cookies (like he's eating right this moment). He also loves green beans, corn, and peas. He asks for ham by name, which kinda makes me sick, but oh well. He does not like turkey, but will down a hot dog in 10 seconds flat.
He loves Thomas the Tank Engine and the movie Cars. He also likes the shows Backyardigans, Dora, and Go! Diego! Go! (the punctuation in that title should have warned me against it, but alas, now we are stuck watching it). He is beginning to learn about dinosaurs and loves naming them and telling you if they were plant eaters or not.
He is in Sunbeams now at church and loves his teacher. We're so grateful that he enjoys his class on Sunday. It's pretty funny talking to him on the way home from church, as his explanations about what happened in class are hysterical. One Sunday he told me that they learned about the Holy Ghost and his was in his belly. Awesome.
All in all this kid is a joy. He has his days, believe you me, but mostly he's a great kid who's just trying to figure out where he fits in and how this crazy world works.
We love him so much.
With his birthday (yeah. back in December), came a visit to the pediatrician. We see her a lot, but not usually for Caleb. I promised him that he wouldn't need to have any shots at this appointment, which, of course, turned out to be a lie. He weighed 30 pounds (32nd percentile) and measured 36 inches tall (10th percentile).
He complained about the medicine in his arm (the vaccine for pneumonia which we needed him to have for Charlotte's sake, poor kid) for a few days, but shortly there after our entire family (minus Charlotte, thank goodness) came down with the stomach bug, so we all forgot about the pain inflicted by the vaccine.
At the appointment his pediatrician gave us the green light to start him in a preschool program, despite our concerns about the germs that it would expose Charlotte to. His cognitive scores were much higher than a typical three year old (that sounds like bragging, but believe you me, we have nothing to do with it) and she was concerned that if he wasn't being challenged in different situations, ie socially, academically, etc that he might end up getting bored and/or have attention issues. He has been attending a preschool two days a week now for a week or two and loves it. We've been really blessed to have a situation come up that allowed him to attend.
If you ask him to spell his name, he says "C-L-B" which confirms that he is indeed part of the texting generation. He lives off of peanut butter and honey sandwiches, and if Mommy isn't looking, cookies (like he's eating right this moment). He also loves green beans, corn, and peas. He asks for ham by name, which kinda makes me sick, but oh well. He does not like turkey, but will down a hot dog in 10 seconds flat.
He loves Thomas the Tank Engine and the movie Cars. He also likes the shows Backyardigans, Dora, and Go! Diego! Go! (the punctuation in that title should have warned me against it, but alas, now we are stuck watching it). He is beginning to learn about dinosaurs and loves naming them and telling you if they were plant eaters or not.
He is in Sunbeams now at church and loves his teacher. We're so grateful that he enjoys his class on Sunday. It's pretty funny talking to him on the way home from church, as his explanations about what happened in class are hysterical. One Sunday he told me that they learned about the Holy Ghost and his was in his belly. Awesome.
All in all this kid is a joy. He has his days, believe you me, but mostly he's a great kid who's just trying to figure out where he fits in and how this crazy world works.
We love him so much.
Monday, February 14, 2011
Saturday, January 8, 2011
NYE 2010/2011
My brother and his wife, Hanna were able to come down and celebrate New Year's Eve with Peter and I this year. Tracy and Hanna just moved to Connecticut this summer and it's been great having them close by. My parents graciously watched Caleb and Tracy and Hanna's daughter Sophie (Charlotte had a nurse) so that we could go out like real adults. We're pretty crazy, huh?
We went to Morimotos for dinner, a really fun restaurant in downtown Philly. They handed out party hats and offered us some champagne for a midnight toast. The champagne we declined but we partied hard with those hats!
We were only a few blocks away from the fireworks, so at midnight we stepped out to watch them over the river. They weren't very long (darn city budget cut backs) but we had a fun evening and really enjoyed being able to go "out on the town."
Monday, January 3, 2011
Sunday, January 2, 2011
Snow Tubing 12/30/2010
Last Wednesday, Peter and I both saw a commercial for snow tubing and being the easily influenced people that we are, we decided to go for it. So Thursday we woke up, spent a ton of money getting passports (Peter's mother is Canadian and Caleb and I both needed passports), and headed to Blue Mountain for the day.
By the end of the day, Caleb's little legs were tired of taking three times as many steps.
New goal: Take a picture of the two of us each place we go.
So far: 1 for 1
It was really, really, really crowed so Caleb was an absolute champ for waiting in line as much as he did.
I'm a crazy mom and I made Caleb wear a helmet. He called it his "pirate hat."
By the end of the day, Caleb's little legs were tired of taking three times as many steps.
New goal: Take a picture of the two of us each place we go. So far: 1 for 1
It was really, really, really crowed so Caleb was an absolute champ for waiting in line as much as he did.
I'm a crazy mom and I made Caleb wear a helmet. He called it his "pirate hat."It was really crowded, but we had a blast! We'd like to go back again sometime this season when it's not a holiday, to give us a little more time snow tubing and a little less time waiting in line. Definitely a fun day. We missed Charlotte, but we're hoping that by Christmas of 2013, she'll be able to join the crazy crowds (she has to stay away from germs for another winter, and then we're hoping she'll be able to have a grand entrance into society!)
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