After the tornado

I'm sitting here, after a day of sleeping in, reading a book with absolutely no intellectual value, and playing a Lego XBox game with my girls, and wondering if this can really be my life right now.  So much has happened in the last few months, that it feels like a tornado has come and gone, and left me dazed to make sense of it all.

I just finished my last quarter of nursing school.  It was great to discard the much-hated dorky blue vest in favor of regular scrub tops.  I was able to precept in the NICU at a local hospital for 8 weeks.  I took care of some very tiny preemies, and some other sick newborns.  I was able to attend several births, including C-sections, and was able to "catch" the baby from the surgeon delivering it, take it to the warmer, dry and suction, and stimulate it to breathe.  It was exciting watching the babies breathe and get pinker, and see the joy in their parents' eyes.  It was so great to be a part of such a happy day.  It was also great to see very tiny babies grow and develop, and "graduate" to be able to go home with their mommies.  The nurses were awesome to work with, and I had a great experience.

My sister Jenn that has been living with me for the past year and a half got married.  My family all drove in from Utah for the weekend, and it was great spending time with them, despite it being such a short visit.  My sister moved out, and I was able to move the girls into their own rooms again, which has made everyone happier with a little more space.  It was fun painting their rooms to reflect their maturing tastes.  Alisha chose a Kermit green walls with peace signs on the wall, and Megan chose a turquoise blue walls with a beachy theme.  We found flip flop vinyl decals and put them on the wall.  They really love their new rooms and most vitally their own space where they can kick each other out when they want space and quiet.

I finished up with nursing school officially, and had a great time celebrating with the friends I have made there over the last two years.  We all became very close, from very early on.  Our personal space shrank considerably, as we practiced moving each other in bed, transferring each other to chairs, and put each other on bedpans.  We practiced finding sites for injections, looking at each other's veins, and even practiced flu shots on unwitting students on campus.  We bonded over our drill sergeant instructor, waking up in the wee hours of the morning, our fear, our mistakes, and eventually our successes.  We cried together, laughed together, and hugged each other through everything.  So many dropped out along the way, and we mourned together.  I'm going to miss seeing their faces in class and at the hospital.  It was so nice to just make eye contact, and have someone immediately understand exactly what I was feeling.  It was bittersweet ending nursing school, because I know I will probably never see some of them again.  But I have made great memories and great friends that I will always treasure.

Christmas came and went, and it has been so nice not having to study, and being able to spend time with the girls.  I have been able to actually clean and organize things around the house, and catching up on mommy duties.  Chris is a great dad, but not very good at being both dad and mom.  He has been pretty busy with work, too, and a lot has fallen through the cracks.  So I'm trying to pick up the pieces of where I've been slacking, and giving him less to worry about.

Now I am onto taking a Kaplan prep class to prepare for the licensing exam (NCLEX).  I will take the NCLEX sometime in January and move onto finding a job.  The job market is pretty tough for new graduates, so hopefully something will open up soon.  I really want to work in pediatrics, but will take any job I can get.  We'll have to see what pans out.

So now I am back to "real" life, and making a new one in the process.  It's exciting and scary to think I have absolutely no idea how this next year is going to go.  Stay tuned...

Summertime bliss

Ahhhh, summer, how do I love thee, let me count the ways:
Sleeping in
No homework, neither for me nor the girls
No real schedule
It stays light out really late
Warm summer nights

In the last 3 weeks, I have accomplished (AKA stuff I never get to do):
30% more sleep on average every night
Found my bedroom floor
Found my desk
Cleaned my house near spotlessly
Had 40 people over for a BBQ
Drove an hour each way and got 40 lbs. of berries
Stayed up late with my husband and got to talk to him on SEVERAL occasions
Played with my girls
Started new Lego Pirates game on Xbox, and got 100% of game finished
Helped with middle schoolers' late night party
Gone to all of the girls' swim meets
Watched all of my shows on my DVR
Went to Chuck E. Cheese for a birthday party
Took the girls to the mall for some back to school shopping
Watched my friend's kids
Gone to Target, Costco, and grocery shopping several times
Ran on the treadmill a few times
Walked my dog a few times
Napped a few times each week
Watched movies with my husband
Lots of lazy days

I'm LOVING summer!  This may be the last real summer vacation I get for a while, since I will be graduating this December, taking the state board exam in February, and hopefully getting a job shortly thereafter.  I'm going to soak up every single bit I can get.

Sleep = Sanity

I love sleep.  I would marry sleep if I could.  I love sleep more than everyone, no offense to anyone reading this.  So naturally, anything that lets me sleep gets my entire love and devotion.  Right now it's my wonderful husband and girls.  Megan had a swim meet this weekend a couple hours away, so Chris took the girls to a hotel on Friday afternoon, and left me all by my lonesome until Sunday afternoon.  It was so glorious to sleep.  I napped for a couple of hours right after they left, and got 9 hours of sleep that night and the next night.  I may have caught up on sleep, at least for this week anyway, now I just gotta catch up on the last 5 months.  I feel much more sane now with more sleep.  I only have 3 more weeks to hang in there until my summer vacation starts, so my sleep average is going to go down again, but this may have given me enough steam to finish up.

Night and day

I am realizing how different my childhood was from my kids'.  Megan is almost 11.  By the time I was her age, I had already been to 10 different elementary schools and moved at least a dozen times.  She has moved 6 times in her life (only once that she sort of remembers), and has been at the same elementary school for grades K-5.  Alisha doesn't ever remember moving, went to one preschool and one elementary school.  We have been in the same ward for the past 7 years, so it's the only one Alisha has gone to.  I grew up with 3 brothers and 3 sisters, and it was quite noisy and chaotic all the time. We just have our 2 girls, and although they like to wrestle and tackle each other and scream, for the most part, things stay relatively quiet around here.

Maybe all the chaos made me more adaptable to changes.  We just got used to it, because that is just what happened all the time.  We even got bored if something wasn't new or changing.  When we stayed in a house for more than 6 months, we'd get trunky and switch rooms with each other or rearrange our furniture.  I was always the new kid, always struggling to make new friends, and always moving on.  So it just baffles me when my girls struggle so much with anything new.  When the school was being built on to make new classrooms for their school, Megan worried about going to the "new" school the next year, even though it was still the same school and 10 steps from the "old" part.  Anytime a new class or activity is starting, both girls are really nervous about not knowing what to expect.  Megan is getting better as she gets older, but they don't realize how lucky they are for the stability they have had. 

Another difference is I never flew on an airplane until I was 15.  I've lost count of how many times the girls have been on planes as we have flown back and forth to Utah for various weddings and trips to see our families.  I had never been East of Utah (aside from being born in Italy and living there for a year after that) before I got married at 19.  The next year, we moved to DC, was there for 3 years, and where Megan was born, and then in New York City for 4 years where Alisha was born.  They both want to take a trip to the East Coast and see where they were born.  I really want to start traveling a lot with them, especially now that they are older and are more interested in other places.

Another difference is their activities.  I never took swim lessons as a kid, so I never learned how to swim.   I took a couple of classes as an adult, and I can proudly say that I can now tread water and do the backstroke.  But even Alisha is going to pass me up, probably this summer.  She graciously offered to show me side breathing so I don't try to breathe in so much pool, but it's a little embarrassing to be shown up by my 7-year old.  They are both in a swim club for the summer, and Megan also does a year-round swim club.  There are swim meets every Saturday for the summer, and once or twice a month for the year-round club.  Over the years they have done ballet, soccer, Girl Scouts, band, and now swimming.  They've also expressed an interest in Tae Kwon Do, but I can't take on any more activities until I am done with nursing school.

Probably the biggest difference is I grew up around a lot of cousins and other extended family too, and we always had family functions together of some sort.  We don't have any family around now, so my kids don't really know their cousins very well.  It's getting better as they get older, and they can remember visiting our families and the fun they have had together.  I am sad that they don't know our families like Chris and I do.  I'm sad they don't get to grow up around their extended family.  I'm sad our families don't love and adore our kids more because they don't know them.  But I'm grateful for adopted families who are there for me and my girls and bring back memories of the chaos when the kids are running around crazy together and making up games in the backyard.  My girls have it pretty good, I have to say.

I need Alice

I really need Alice.  Not a Cullen or of the Wonderland variety, but of the Brady Bunch.

Yes, that cheerful woman who is always around, always helpful to cook and clean, and always give support and understanding to the lucky Brady household.  I need her.  Bad.  Since I am either at school, at the hospital, studying, running children around to various after school activities, sneaking in a quick nap, ironing my uniform, doing laundry to have clothes to wear to said previous activities, letting the dog out, finding papers buried on my desk that should have received some attention, letting the dog in, cleaning so I can find my kitchen because my picky children apparently need to eat on a daily basis, and constantly and profusely apologizing to people around me for my lameness and delay in doing things I should have much earlier, I AM TIRED!  I need help!  Yes, psychiatric intervention would probably help, too, but I meant someone who could do all the stuff I apparently can't get around to right now, like grocery shopping, cooking, cleaning, and laundry, and paying attention to my children.  I run around putting out fires and do stuff that HAS to be done RIGHT NOW, or more accurately, should have been done two weeks ago.  Chris works more than I do, and sleeps much less, and still he helps out when he can.  But it's not enough.  The girls are still young enough to believe in magical beings who come in while we are sleeping and leave them gifts.  So of course they believe that leaving dirty clothes on their bedroom floor will magically turn them into clean clothes which are neatly put away while they are sleeping.  DON'T I WISH.  They don't realize that now that they are in bed and asleep, then I can REALLY get to work on studying and cleaning in between chapters. 

I wish I could be supermom and do it all and have time to spare to spend with my amazing wonderful husband and my wonderful girls.  That would be awesome.  Instead I am running to and fro, sometimes without my head, and certainly without my brain, feeling more like a zombie.

 

Alice help me!