February Update

February has been fairly busy for us so far...

The first weekend, we had the Pediatric Resident Appreciation Dinner to attend on February 7. Steve and Austin came with me and had lot of fun. We got to sit with Lesley and David Jones as well as Mike and Molly Johnson and their 3 adorable kids. We, unfortunately chose the table that was slotted very last to get food from the yummy buffet...which is not a good plan when you have a table with 4 children under the age of 5. Luckily, Dr. Suess books and Cheerios kept the kids busy until it was time to get food. After dinner, they got the dancing going with fun songs for the kids to dance to. Austin loved it for the first few minutes, then burst into tears and sobbed for no apparent reason. It took a few minutes to get him acclimated to the idea again, but after that, he was a little dancing machine! He LOVED it and danced until it was waaaaay past his bedtime. He was especially fond of Molly and followed her around while she was dancing with her kids. Unfortunately, I forgot to bring my camera to capture the cuteness of the kids dancing. At the beginning of the evening, however, one of the Mayo photographers was there and took a picture of Austin (not smiling, but still showing off his dimples).

Now that tax season has begun in full, Steve has been going in to work on Saturdays, so Austin and mommy have some mommy and son time together on the weekends. For that very reason, I scheduled to be on elective this month. I'm on an infectious disease elective rotation and it is very interesting and I'm learning a lot. The only problem with being on a elective month is that you're on the list for "jeopardy" or back-up call in case one of the people that is supposed to be on call is sick. Well, I have horrible luck with jeopardy. So, once again, I was called in to cover someone else's 30 hour on call shift, this time in the pediatric ICU. It wouldn't have been so bad, but it was my birthday! Happy Birthday to me! Oh well, I whined about it a little, then moved on to accepting the bad luck and trying to make the best of it.

Austin and I had lots of fun making cupcakes on our next day home together on Valentine's Day (as I posted in the last post), and the next day, we made an impromptu trip to the Twin Cities to celebrate birthdays with my family, since my birthday is February 10 and my dad's birthday is February 11. It was a quick trip up and back, but we had lots of fun.

Austin got laundry basket rides from Uncle Kevin.

And we got to show everybody how Mommy makes Austin fly.

Check out that smiling face!

Grandpa got a table hockey game for his birthday and everyone had lots of fun playing with it.

Grandpa got his favorite chocolate cake and Austin got to help us blow out the candles.

Then it was time for a naked baby...bath time!

There was much splashing and laughing and fun involved. Then time for jammies, bye bye kisses, and the ride home.

Since then, we've had another busy week. I've had plenty of interesting patients at work, Steve has been squeezing in hours of work at home whenever he can, and we had a fun but late night at peds journal club at Dr. Homme's last night. Austin had his first dentist appointment today. He did pretty well, but was scared of the dental chair. He brushed the dragon stuffed animal's teeth and did pretty well settling down until it was time to examine his teeth. He fussed, but even then, he wasn't to bad. He has some staining on his teeth from when he had periorbital cellulitis twice last April and took Augmentin for it. The dentist will have to scrape off the stained plaque with a sharp instrument, so she recommended waiting until he was a little older and less squirmy before trying that, since he would otherwise risk getting cut by the sharp instruments. We'll see them back in August for his next checkup.

That's another couple weeks in the life of the Cronk family. I'm looking forward to another fun Saturday with my little man. By the end of the next week, I finish on my current rotation and change over to doing shifts in the Emergency Department.

I hope February is treating you all well. At this point, it feels like winter is dragging on forever, but the spring can't be toooo far away!