2 years ago....

2 years ago, Lindsay laid our first baby. We called him Seth. Seems like yesterday. We spent the last couple of days celebrating with Seth, despite the fact that he didn't really get what was going on. On Friday night, we went to Target with a gift certificate from his Grandma Shields. We let him pick out a bunch of toys, whatever he wanted until the gift certificate was used up. So, we came home with a bunch of toy animals, and a couple more balls to add to his never-ending collection of spheres of all sizes and colors. His favorite choice of toy was this life-like squishy toy lizard ("wizard"), which he cuddled up with as he went to bed that night.

Good thing it was just toy, because it turned out to be a short-lived pet. It lasted less than a day, when he lost it at the...

Birch Aquarium, which is actually just down the street from us, although this was our first visit. Our friends Pasi and Lisa came with us to witness the unbridled enthusiasm that is Seth in the event that our activities involve any kind of living animal.


This is Seth reading up on the mating patterns of the California State Marine fish, the garibaldi--not to be confused with the state freshwater fish, the golden trout. Who knew we had state fish?

He also enjoyed the tide-pool stuff outside the aquarium, and got to pet a real starfish,

and play with these toy ones.

He loved the shark tank too.

A fun family outing.

Then we came home to open presents,

blow some bubbles,

light the candles,

blow them out,

and eat some cake!


Which, by the way, was delicious. Lindsay is a master. She made a 4 layer, white cake with a layer of dulce de leche, another layer of cocunut and creme, and another layer of macadamia nut daquois, all frosted with dark chocolate ganache. (Plus, a whale stencil design to top it off). It was out of this world.

A Blog about Nothing

I'm glad Aaron's so into photography and posts pretty regularly on our blog. He frequently tells me--"It's your turn to blog, Lindsay". Yeah, I know. It's almost always my turn to blog. I figure, who the freak wants to hear about my daily life? I too often wait around for something major to happen, or something that really cracks me up. Well, Seth cracks me up constantly, but for some reason I hold back on sharing all these funny things because I feel like I shouldn't have to rely on him for all my material. I guess I subconsciously (and vainly) hope I myself am interesting enough to capture some readers. Nonetheless, I realize that the people who follow our blog must be interested in Seth (and now Ada) if they continue to read it, because that's what we post about 90% of the time. Judging from the number of comments on Aaron's recent blog about stuff he learned this quarter (which I thought was quite funny) or my own personal posts, versus the number of comments when we blog about our kids--it appears most of you aren't so interested in me and Aaron minus the children. We're not offended. They're cuter than we'll ever be again. I've got to admit it's kind of gratifying to have a little following of people who find my children endearing. It's kind of that same satisfaction of being around someone who understands you. My kids are pretty much my life right now, so anyone who appreciates them, appreciates what I'm about. As adorable as I find my children, I'm not completely blind to their un-cuteness, even though I'm their mom. I'll have you know that every once in a while, on a bad day, Seth will look like Benjamin Button (in the first hour of the movie). And when Ada scrunches her chin back into her neck she can really look like Jabba the Hut (with baby acne).

So, to keep you baby-lovers satisfied, here's your token picture:

2 peas in a pod

They have similar sleeping styles too.

Bath time

What I learned

I'm on a much needed break this week. The last quarter of school has been particularly rough. Sometimes I just want to open up a camera shop in Hawaii and forget about the whole doctor thing. In any case, this is not a medical blog, but I thought I'd share some of the things I incidentally learned this last quarter amidst the complaining Lindsay was constantly putting up with.

1. Pathologists like food
Pathology (from Greek, pathos, "fate, harm") is the study and diagnosis of disease through examination of organs, tissues, bodily fluids and whole bodies, i.e. autopsy (wiki). It takes a special kind of person to be a pathologist (no offense to any that I know). The funny thing is, it seems that for some reason when pathologists describe human organ pathology they often do it in terms of resemblance to food items. For example, "bread-and-butter pericarditis" is when the heart has a shaggy appearance--I guess like when you pull apart two pieces of bread with butter in between them. I think you have to be a patholoist to make that connection though. My favorite is "caseous necrosis". Käse = cheese (German), caseous = cheesy. I'm not sure if this is where the term 'lung cheese' came from, but when a lung gets trashed by active tuberculosis, it undergoes caseous necrosis, and you get these cheesy patches of dead tissue in the lung. I'd say it looks kinda like chèvre or a yellowish ricotta.

2. I&D (incision and drainage)
I did my first procedure. A kid came into the clinic with a golf-ball sized abscess sticking out from the side of his head (most likely a staph infection). We had to drain it. I anesthetized the area, made an incision about a centimeter long, and squeezed out more pus than you could imagine. I have never smelled anything so foul. Then I packed the inciscion with gauze and sent the poor kid away with some antibiotics.

3. The prostate is a subtle organ
Or at least it should be (if it's not subtle you might have a problem). This I recently learned first hand (haha, no pun intended), for the first time. A few weeks ago I did my first DRE. That is, my first digital rectal exam (digit = finger, rectal = bunghole, exam = put the two together). Although I found it to be a little awkward, it's not difficult; my friend put it well in saying that it was a lot like putting in a key and turning the ignition. (In case you don't know, the purpose of the DRE is to find any prostate abnormalities. A large prostate, say one affected by cancer, can be the size of a fist. A normal prostate, however, is small and dainty, like a large walnut.)

4. Short coats aren't long enough
In case you aren't aware, medical students wear white coats when they are seeing patients. However, these white coats are not the long and luxurious ones that go to the knees that you're used to seeing on your doctor--ours only go to the waist, lest someone mistake us for someone who knows what they're doing. While seeing a patient for a routine exam a couple months ago, I realized that my fly was down (oops). If only that dang coat were longer, I could have easily hid my shame until I could leave the room. Instead I had to try to be shrewd with a zip-shimmy in the corner. Not sure if I was noticed. Damn coat.

Crimescene

Pop Quiz

I swear I haven't indoctrinated the kid--he loves it all on his own. The other day, i was studying/watching baseball on my computer (it's a skill I have worked hard on cultivating), and he comes up to me and sits on my lap to watch with me, without a word. He watched for a few seconds, and after the pitcher delivered, Seth exclaimed "Nice pitch!". Smart kid, because it was a nice pitch (breaking ball on the outside corner). He also enjoys yelling loudly "stuuuuuwwwiiiiiiiiiiike!".

Baby Sister