This will be a first... blog entries two days in a row.

So this morning I didn't have to come in to Palmer til 10:15. Wednesday and Friday I don't have my morning class, Rad III. It's nice to have a slow morning. Not that I could possibly sleep in with such a busy house in the morning. Delaney is usually the first one up in the morning. She's so cute about it when she wakes up on her own. She shyly peaks her head out her bedroom door and quitely says over and over again "I up" or "I wakey wake" waiting for approval to leave her room. Then when she finally hears us respond to her, it's as if she's gotten the green light to charge out of her room and run up to our bed with a big smile on her face. This is on a good morning, and it sets the mood for the day. This morning, however...

Well lets just say she's like her mother. If she's not gotten enough slee, everbody pays. If we have to wake her, it's usually because she stayed up to late, which last night was certainly the case. On mornings like this she's a bear. Everything's an argument. What clothes she's going to wear. Wether or not she wears a ponytail. She wants to do everything herself. "My pony!!!" she yeslls when you try to do her hair. She can't do it herself yet; she just rubs the pony tail holder back and forth over her head. Then she gets frustrated and wants help. Then she changes her mind when you're only half done. Repeat with brushing teeth, and putting on shoes. And getting her buckled into the carseat... Makes you feel like you've had a full day's work, and it's only 7am. It's a good thing she's so darn cute, but I think she knows it, and that's not good. There's nothing like having a toddler to make you question everything that comes out of your own mouth, every action you take. She's a sponge, and everything counts right now. What seems like a great idea one day comes back to bite you the next.

For example...

Because of her independence, getting her to do something can be a challenge. She might not want to eat at dinner time, or go to bed at bedtime, and so on. But we've also noticed that she doesn't ever want to miss anything. So for a while when she was saying "I don't want to" I'de respond, "That's OK, I'll do it" like at dinner I'de say "Well I'll eat it then." She'd then change her tune and say "I eat it" or at bedtime "I go to bed" Well it worked fine for a while, then instead of "I eat it" or I go to bed" in a pleasant demeanor, she'd start screaming "No! My food! or No! My bed!" in a defensive, selfish tone. So all that time I was using reverse psychology on her I was basically feeding her innate toddler selfishness, creating a monster! I'm constantly amazed and humbled at the responsibility of parenthood. I try to not be too hard on myself, and remind myself that I'm learning as I go, but at the same time these are her developmental years, and I want to make the most of them. I certainly don't want to blow it. There's no choice in this, no option to procrastinate. It's game time, all the time, and every day, every moment counts.

Kind of like attending Palmer...

In that I mean that you get what you put in. Some students can sort of coast through, putting in the bare moticum of effort, and pass everything. But I question how much they're really preparing themselves to be accountable for their patients health. We're preparing to take care of people here. To be their trusted doctors. We're going to be a lot of these people's only, or at least primary, healthcare provider. If we were dozing off or not even present in class the day that some random insideous disease or disorder was discussed, we might totally miss it. Don't we owe it to our patients to be the expert they assume us to be?

It's easy to get in the mindset of memorizing new material to do well on a test, to pass a test, to pass a class, to move on to the next one. Then you do a brain-dump of most the material you just went over to make room for the new stuff. I don't want to do this, and I get mad when I realize that it's happened. Fro example, Kristi is about a tri or two behind me, and is taking classes that I took last tri or the tri before. As she's studying she'll ask me for clarification on something. When I don't remember the answer, or worse yet, don't remember even the topic, it worries me. Last tri one of my teachers put it very sucinctly when she said, "When you get out in practice, every day, every patient, is a test. And it's not multiple choice. They don't sit on your table and say "Patient presents with throbbing pain over left side of face and over the top of the head, gets worse with rest. Do you suspect (A)cervicogenic headache (B)migraine or (C)stroke?" And meanwhile, I'm thinking, do I adjust, do I even examine, or do I call an ambulance? Once we're out of here, there's no A,B, or C. We'll be the experts, and we'll be responsible to do right for our patients. Period.

So basically I'm in no hurry to get through the classes. I'm trying to retain all that I can, and make the most sense of everything.

Speaking of which it's time to go to class, got P.T.