LDW Dessert Night

We finally got some Philly gals together and we had so much fun! It was so great to finally meet people I'd only known through the blog.

Thanks so much for coming ladies! I can hardly wait for the next one!

Monthly Recap!

How was everyone's month??? Challenging? Relaxing? Exciting? Can't wait to hear!

My month seemed to drag on and on. Tommy was on Peds at St. Francis here in Tulsa and it was a stressful month. We are truly grateful for healthy kiddos! Next month on FM clinic is going to seem like a picnic I think!

Grant our oldest(3yrs) started home school choir this past Thursday and LOVED it. He keeps asking when we get to go back. It was nice for me to hang out with other moms with similar beliefs and get out of the house. I have never really won anything before and this month I won one of Melisa's Signing Time give-aways and I, just today, won a ticket to the True Woman Conference in Fort Worth coming up in October, which is truly God working behind the scenes. I'm so excited!!!

I hope you all had a great month!! Take care!

From the forums

This was posted over on the forum, but I wanted it to receive a little more attention. Anyone have thoughts, ideas, or advice for Janice?

*****
I am glad to read that a lot of posts are coming from the surgical spouse stand point. I am married to a (newly) second year gen surg intern. We have been together throughout medical school. So many people told me that the first year of marriage was the hardest and I always responded that the first year was going to be easy (his 4th yr of med school). It was his intern year that was going to be hard. Well, we made it past intern year with a few bumps and bruises, but for the most part okay. But this are starting to not be awesome and I am hoping to get some advice.

In general our lives have been a whorl-wind... moving multiple times in 4 years (hurricane katrina, moving to texas, back to new orleans , then back to ohio (where we are both originally from). Getting married, having a baby and random family drama. So basically we have never really gotten to take a step back and just relax.

Because surgery tends to not follow the 80 work week and the call schedule can be brutal my husband only thinks about sleep: wanting to sleep longer in the morning, wanting to nap, when's then next time he can get sleep... you get the picture. For the most part I get it, he's tired. Well, I get it as much as I can get it. I do understand that his job is extremely hard and time-consuming, but I need him to understand that my life is not perfect and I am tired too. Whenever we have any disagreement it always goes back to him being tired and me not understanding that. Previously we were able to talk about anything and workout our problems. Now he just shuts down, sometimes because he is too tired to talk or discuss anything, partly because he thinks I will never understand what he goes through.

If anyone can throw any advice my way I would really appreciate it.

Janice

Poll - How do you shave your legs?

New poll is up. It is still summer, right? :o)

Bloggy Tour is Ready!

Happy Friday everyone!

I just wanted to remind you that I'm hosting a blog tour for those of us who have a significant other in the medical field to share about their experiences. I hope you will all participate (medical school, dental school, pharmacy - everyone! :)

This week I thought we could talk about our experience as a wife/girlfriend while our significant other was in school and then next week we can do residency or other post graduate training.

I hope you will participate - I think this will give us a great chance to see your personal blog and hear your story!!

Some things you could talk about are:
-why your significant other chose the school he did
-your favorite part of being his support team during school
-the challenges of school
-your recommendations to others in the same field

Can't wait to see you have to say - click here to link up!

Poll - Do you have pets?

New poll is up!

We are super close to 175, so start thinking about what you'd like to see in our 200 readers giveaway. It would be fun to have lots of things to giveaway!

Bloggy Tour for Medical Wives

I thought it might be fun if I hosted a blog carnival on my blog where medical spouses can share about their journey about both medical school and residency. I love following this blog (and I read many of your personal blogs!) because I think it's really nice to hear how other wives are doing in these two phases :)

So, I wanted to invite you all to participate on your personal blogs! If you can, please put up a post this Friday, August 27th about your medical school journey and then on September 3rd we will talk about the residency journey. You can link back to my personal blog on those days so we can all read what you wrote (I'll put up a McLinky).

I think this will be a great way to put our experiences into one place and also be a great place for us to encourage and connect to one another!

More details here!

Happy Monday!

Movin' on Up!

I just wanted to thank everyone who dished on my "I hate where I live" issue. I appreciated all of your thoughts and comments and weighed it all out in my mind. We are coming up on the end of our year lease so we went shoppin!

The good news is that we found a new place to live! Yay!!! It will cost a bit to move, but since my ghetto crack house neighbor has decided clothing is optional for taking out the trash, we decided it was worth borrowing a little money to move out of here.

I am sooooo happy because our new place is twice as big and is super safe. It's even gated with a security guard!

I am grateful for the support from everyone and may not have had the courage to go out and search out a new home with out your encouragement : )

Our own lovely Melisa just became the Associate Director for Signing Time Academy's Central Atlantic Region!!!!! Congratulations on all your hard work!

To celebrate she is giving away a fun Signing Time Gift pack!!

Go HERE to register!!

Thanks Melisa for all you do!!

Dessert Night

There are a few of us meeting up in Philly for a Dessert Night. I'll be moving this discussion to the forums so we can chat about it, but you can email me for more details. My email is linked to my name under the admins list. I look forward to meeting ya'll!

Poll - What type of vacation do you prefer?

The new poll is up!

We spent a few days, doing the relaxing vacation, then we spent a day doing the busy exploring vacation by going to Niagra Falls. And let me say that they were both wonderful!

Getting closer!

I'm sorry I didn't put up a poll last week. I hope you didn't miss it too much!

We went on some interviews. Oh my lands, it was fun! They paid for plane tickets for us and our 3 kids. They even got us adjoining hotel rooms so our kids wouldn't keep us up all night. There was a beautiful fruit and snack basket waiting for us in our room. They arranged for childcare during fancy meals with the other doctors. Took us on tours of the town. Had realtors to show us around neighborhoods. Arranged a meeting with the school superintendant.

Then we got to talk about salary, signing bonus, loan forgiveness, moving expenses, housing payments, stipends, etc. It just feels so wonderful to be getting spoiled like this. There is a light shining at the end of the tunnel and it is beautiful!

Collins first love you

This morning while playing at the park, I asked Collin to say love you. I have tried so many times to get him to say it, but he never will. So today when I asked him, I just happened to be recording him and he said it! So I caught his first Love you on video! So here it is for you all to enjoy! AHHH, I love this little guy!

Another Medical Student Spouse Posts Insight

I stumbled onto this blog post that I thought was worth sharing:

Married to a Medical School Student

Originally Posted on August 13, 2010 by Adam J. Copeland

That’s me. At one time, my partner Megan worked for Luther Seminary in St. Paul, during which time she began a support blog for the spouses of seminary students in the distance learning program she coordinated. So surely it’s only fair for me now to reflect on being a med school spouse. My advice in a sentence: be flexible, and remember it’s not really about you.

Ten things on being married to a med school student: (read article)

Ooops!

I keep doing that! I try to post to my personal blog and it pops up on here. My attention to detail must be lulling out. Sorry y'all!

The Medical Marriage Chapter 3

Not much discussion over at the forum so I thought I would post the recap here today.

Chapter 3 was very clinical for me. It was harder to read and I found myself skimming a lot of it. There were a few things that I pulled from it that I thought was very helpful and relative.

On the very first page there was a quote that said "Struggling becomes a way of life even when here is no reason to struggle." Sometimes I feel like it is a very mental choice to realize that things are OK right now. My husband is on an OK rotation, the kids are all healthy and happy, money is OK, we are OK. When did it become the norm become "not OK"?

I've never been to therapy but I think the information about "what you bring into the marriage" is a pretty common idea to understand your partner and why they are who they are and understanding yourself. The personality traits they described: being strong, being perfect, trying hard, pleasing others, hurrying, and being careful all made a lot of sense. I could definitely pick out the ones that applied to husband and he could identify with them as well. Surprisingly I found myself identifying with a few and husband pointed out some that I hadn't thought of that way before. Understanding the personality traits helped us both to understand how we cope with stress and what we our underlying hopes are. What are we really striving towards with our coping methods. They say that knowledge is power. Learning where it all stems from helps us understand it better.

Book Club Take 2

So turns out that I posted the first two chapters review on my other blog :) We decided it would be easier to have discussion on the forum so follow the link to the forum and click on Book Club. Can't wait to see what you all thought of the first two chapters. Even if you didn't read the books I am sure that you have lots of experience we can all learn from and benefit from the discussion!

Monthly Recap ~ New Feature!

We thought it would be a great idea to see what everyone has been up to this last month and what has been going on in your lives! Please share with us so we can all get to know each other better!

In hospital news: My husband was on Family Medicine teaching service in July and had a good time. He really liked the resident's he was working with and the attendings were great too! In MI when you were post call, you left in the morning after check out because you were near the hour cut off and it was your day off to enjoy. Here they like to work you for as long as they can, which might mean even sending you to the clinic to do the entire morning clinic schedule after working all the day and night before.....that we didn't like. But we are thrilled for the job and being near to family! We have heard that this month's schedule might be from 5am-9pm so we are waiting to see what happens!

In family news: We finally closed on our house on the 31st and spent the entire weekend painting. I have started taking things over to the house and hopefully if I ever see my hubby again this month, we will move in ASAP! :) Grant & Morgan love the stairs in the house and can't wait to get all the toys unpacked.

What's happening in your neck of the woods?

Chit chat

I confess to being slow, especially when it comes to forums. But the ever-so-talented Matt actually put a little chat thing on the bottom of the forum. You have to scroll down to see it so keep your eyes open! Thanks Matt!

Oh, and go there to look for Book Club discussions too.

The link is one of the pages above. Thanks!

Book Club Chapter One & Two

I don't know what happened. I posted a review of the two first chapters this morning (I know it got up because I had it in my reader too) and this afternoon when I went to check in on the comments/discussion it was gone. Like totally gone and not in the drafts or anything. I don't have time this afternoon to rewrite everything but will try again tomorrow. So bummed..ugh. Sorry!

Poll - How much is your household's yearly income?

New poll is up. Have a great week!