I Did IT!!!

After a rather grueling 3 years of school (no breaks) I graduated on May 3, 2014!

It was surreal that day and even as I type this now it's still surreal.

On my way to be a graduate selfie.

I hadn't gotten my final grades yet so I was still nervous that I might randomly get an -A (thats how close I was) and not actually graduate Summa Cum Laude.

All the people.

Over the last couple of years I have felt kind of funny/weird when people asked me what I planned on doing with my degree because my answer was basically nothing. As I have had time to ponder that more I realize that just because I earned a degree that I don't immediately plan to use as a source of income doesn't mean it's any less valuable. 

An empty diploma case haha.

My baby!

 I won't lie aside from always liking school and always wanting to set a good example for my children my other big reason (and definitely more selfish) for earning a degree was to prove that I am smart to others. I don't know if I come across giggly or stupid or just plain blonde but over the years I have become more and more irritated when I felt like I was being brushed off or told I was immature. I do feel that I have always valued knowledge and strived to be intelligent and this was a way for me to prove it to myself and others officially.

We did it!

 Also since I didn't have the 4 and a half years it takes to earn an education degree I decided it was extra important that I get as high a GPA as I could. After many long nights, early mornings, and even more tears I can finally say I have a bachelors. 

This is Davie at our celebration dinner wearing the bow tie I made him. Isn't he a cutie.

AND last but definitely not least a man from the Toledo Blade started talking to me and I never imagined he was actually going to put me in the paper but he did! I'm famous!!

http://www.toledoblade.com/Education/2014/05/04/UT-grads-overcome-barriers-ready-to-make-a-difference.html

Matching and Graduation and Moving

Oh, my!

 David's letter

The match results map. After looking at this we immediately knew we hadn't matched in Spokane which was our 3rd choice.

Yes it's true, I can finally say where we are going after medical school. At least for the next five years. David had his match day WAY back in March and we found out that he was accepted to an internship year in Columbus and Orlando, Florida's radiology residency. I was so very excited for David, the ONLY thing that would have made this news better would have been if Florida had an internship year in their program. I'm a little disappointed that we have to move twice in the next year, but I believe David is going to be so happy at Florida hospital. I had a good feeling about Florida all along, only at the time I thought I was crazy because it's farther from family and lets face it super hot and humid. 

After David interviewed in Orlando he called me up to let me know how it had gone and he was so happy (almost giddy). One of the program leaders turned out to be a stake president with 8 (yes 8) kids who had moved there from Arizona but loved it so much their family had decided to stay. That was good to know because that meant that he knew the school systems were good too. He also told David that Florida is one of the top three areas in America where the church is growing right now (I had no idea) and that their ward had had 105% attendance the previous Sunday. Can I just say that ANY reservations about my "crazy" idea to apply to Florida were almost completely solved by this ONE interview.

I had this picture as my screen saver for a while and it's so funny because Davie looks
annoyed but he was just trying to get down and run around.

David had also enjoyed his interviews with the other directors and met a fellow UT medical graduate who finished back in 2011with some of our friends. This is very telling though because David typically hates interviews. David can very easily come across as shy or possibly aloof when he is nervous, but he is neither. The hospital itself is part of the Adventist health system so David enjoyed the beautiful pictures of Christ in the building and the spirit he felt. He also said the hospital itself was beautiful.

The program is private so it is not connected to a college which means the classes are small (4 per class) compared to an average of 8-12 per class in medial college based residencies. The benefits are great, full medical for David and us, free meals at work, free parking as well as fun stuff like free tickets to NBA basketball games once a year. These things may not sound like much but parking alone in Houston Texas was $2,000 a year, it was a higher cost of living AND the salary was already less than Florida's. It adds up FAST.

When it came time to start writing thank you emails to the program directors David was doing it around 10pm one night. He sent one to Florida hospitals program director at like 10:01pm and within 15 minutes she had written him back! David has (and still is) always been a very humble person, probably too humble and this kind of response from a program director had him excited but I knew it meant something a little more.

To put this into perspective when David was applying for medical school the second time around it took his younger brother telling him that he wasn't "bragging" enough on his resumes before David added more about his achievements on the medical school applications. For us and especially for David his experience with the Florida program was positive from beginning to end which made our choice so easy.

Davie's celebratory lunch after Daddy's graduation

This whole matching experience is something I could talk a LOT about, but I will leave it at that because I don't want this post to become super long. We are so excited and happy to be going to Florida it is going to be our GREATEST adventure yet. And lastly I just have to add how proud of David I am because he has worked SO hard the last 4 years and for him to get his first choice in residency programs shows his dedication. Life is good. 

Some Math and Reality

I have been putting all this medical school stuff into perspective recently.

Before David and I got married, while I was substituting in an elementary school I overheard a teacher having a conversation with her friend (lets call her Mrs. Smith). Mrs. Smith was telling her friend how her mother was worried about her brother who was currently a resident somewhere, working crazy hours and only making $45,000. Then Mrs. Smith went on to tell her friend that she only made 30 something a year and had been teaching for 9 years. At the time I thought it was unfortunate since she had worked so long and was still making less than her brother.

>>Fast forward. When David and I got married we moved our lives out to Toledo to start medical school. I knew I was in for the long haul. David didn't know what he wanted to specialize in, but I knew that most likely from August 2010 until 2018-ish we would be in some form of school/ training program. I knew medical school costed a LOT. like a whole house.

As I met people here in Toledo other than church (because so many of them either went to medical school or were local so they had seen it) they would comment and almost immediately write me off as being "rich". I can't quite explain it but once people knew my husband was in medical school they treated me differently. Not in a rude or mean way, but differently. What's funny is at first I kind of felt similarly to the way they treated me. I still had a firm grasp on how much debt we would have to pay off first, but I knew we would be coming out the other side better off.

>>Fast forward. I have now almost completed school myself and even with my BEST effort to earn scholarships and search out grants I too now have student debt. Recently David had a required student debt meeting for his class and I decided to attend with him. This was when I finally saw just how much we owed..... it was a lot. This was also when I realized that basically no matter what we do by the time we actually get to a financial situation where we can REALLY truly start paying off our debt it will have ALMOST doubled because of interest. I won't give specific numbers because this is not a private blog but I have about $25,000 in debt and let's just say that is about 10% of what David's debt is.

Now I better understand the mistake that Mrs. Smith, who I talked about at the beginning of all of this, made. She was frustrated that her brother was making more than her as a resident and it's true her brother might have been making more, BUT he had already lost money by attending 4 extra years of school and accruing hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt. I never noticed how much people act or assume all doctors are wealthy until David started medical school.

 With all the Obama care stuff, health care issues and doctor shortages there couldn't be a more tumultuous time to be joining the medical field. To put it bluntly doctors are not usually just rolling in cash unless they are lucky enough to come from a wealthy family, have invested well, or they are a plastic surgeon in Beverly Hills, CA. That might sound like a lot of unless-s but it's not. As for us I sat down recently and plotted out what our lives our going to be like for the next little while the fullness of just how "un-rich" we will be for the foreseeable future hit me. And here is the math.

 2014/ 15- David's internship year in Columbus
2015/ 19- residency in Florida
2019/ 20- Fellowship (David will most likely complete one)
2020- His first real job (assuming the job market is good)

And the last timeline is the big kicker. So during the next 6 years we will probably be making VERY minimal if any payments on David's loans at all. Its kind of difficult to make substantial payments on debt like his with a 50K salary and a growing family. If David's first real job (2020) gave us a net income of $180k, and we only lived on $80k for 6 years, and nothing horrible happened we MIGHT have our loans payed off by the end of 2026. This means our first year of solvency would be 2027. And this does not include cars, houses, business loans, my loans or any other surprises that could come our way. 

2026/ 26- pay off loans 
2027- We are solvent?!

In general though medical school loans typically take about 10 years to pay off. A ten to fifteen year pay off plan is a pretty good goal for most doctors, but having a 25 year loan like a house is not uncommon.

So what does that mean for our family? Well here is the other math. By the time 2027 rolls around It will have been-

21 and 24 years since our high school graduations 

13 and 18 years since we graduated college and 

13 years since David graduated medical school.

We will be 38 and 41 years old, Davie will be 15, and Macy will be 13. 

Plus however many other kids we have and as of right now I'm thinking (at the very least) we will have 2 more.

 So yea, if you are stalking me on this blog because you are trying to get my personal information, to steel my identity and then take all my money, well I got news for you. We don't have any. So the joke's on you, ha!

Looking at timelines and numbers like this definitely make me wonder what our lives would have been like if David had become a chemical engineer. Just for fun let me tell you that his friend (and 6 people total from his graduating class in 2009) was hired in Texas for $88k a year with a promise of three raises spread out over two years that would bring him to a 6 digit salary. That could have been us.

For now, I'll save the sob stories of how tough internships and residencies can be for when I get to experience it for myself. Below are some interesting links to websites that talk about medical school debt and how it affects the lives of doctors. Its pretty interesting, but also kind of sad depending on which articles you read because the facts are quite sobering. Just writing all these facts down made me feel like I am already ready for this part of our lives to be over with and be able to have a job where David actually makes money. BUT I have to take a step back and remember that a) money won't solve everything and b) we can and will make it work. Darn life and all this waiting. 

The Deceptive Income of Physicians 

We Are Done!

$1 Million Mistake: Becoming a Doctor

How Being a Doctor Became the Most Miserable Profession 

All About Macy's First Month

I feel like I have failed this poor girl on her debut. I have taken LOTS of pictures of her and the one above is her at 4 days old getting her star treatment baby photo shoot. I just have not blogged about her very well. So here is the 411 on this new little gal that lives with us. 

First Bow.

Poor baby has the least amount of hair out of all three of my babies and I have already given her a hair cut. He top hairs have started falling out and whats coming in is SUPER blonde so she is pretty bald. And of course she has great hair in the back, so I buzzed it in hopes of preventing a mullet in the future. There was no way we could have avoided it otherwise haha.

Second meeting with Davie

About to head home. 

She wore all her newborn clothes for almost a month exactly and the same was true for newborn diapers. Basically we used the big box we had and then moved on to size 1. 

Beautiful flowers from her aunt and uncle.

My first at home peaceful mom of two moment. Davie hopped up on the chair with us while watching  one of his shows. (loved it)

Davie thinks she is so great. I am so relived, Truly.  His biggest issue is TOO much love, and the fact that he is a toddler so he is often quite dirty.

 When Davie wakes up in the morning or from nap after he calls out for Daddy the next person he typically wants to see is Macy. The same is true when he comes home from Daycare.

 However, after his initial smothering sessions he pretty much could care less if she's in the room. And I don't mean that in a negative way, but lets face it Davie is on the move and Macy is still in the "blob" stage as her Daddy likes to call it. Overall Davie seems to be adjusting well and I honestly think he enjoys the fact that I love on him smother him (as he sees it) less. 

First Bath

Macy's biggest issue is gas. If it wasn't for all those little bubbles in that poor little girl's tummy she would be the best baby ever. In general I think she is more laid back than Davie was. Even at that she only seems to have fussy times about once or twice a day. Usually late afternoon and right before/ after the last feeding of the night. Our best solutions for this have been some little gas drops in her tummy and Doterra DigestZen on her tummy. Both of these seem to really cut down on her discomfort. 

All dressed up for Daddy's match day

I complained on Facebook about her spitting up a while ago, but I think it too is related to the air in her tummy. The little lady got hiccups almost every time she ate for the first month. She gets them less now, but it can't be easy keeping at all liquid diet down with a new tummy sphincter and hiccups that rock all 9 pounds of your body :)

Another thing I have noticed is I think every now and then she can tell when she might spit up and she manages to hold it down. That may sound silly, but its totally true. At night after I would feed her and lay her back down she would make all these funny spitting up type noises and I would jump up every time because I thought she had spit up, but most of the time she hadn't. I'm not paranoid I just know the noises of spitting up and I want to clean it up so she doesn't go to bed wet. Davie would occasionally spit up everywhere and then be wet all over at night which made him cold. So far Macy has only done that once, but it was amazing. She soaked her whole front and back of the swaddler, I had to change the sheet in the bassinet, her little blanket and of course everything she was wearing.

She is a good sleeper about 80% of the time. When we first brought her home she would sleep 4-5 hours at a time at night. With Davie I was up EVERY 3 hours, but he always went back to sleep really well and he ALWAYS woke up 3 hours at a time so it was very predictable. Macy now sleeps a solid 5-6 hours already! The reason for the B grade as a sleeper overall is her random sleep interruptions.

 The first two days after we brought her home she didn't really sleep at all... unless she was in our bed. Then we decided to pre-heat her bed with a heating pad before we put her down. That worked instantly for about 2 weeks. Then she again stopped settling down. The next trick that worked for another 2 weeks was to put her at a slight incline in her bassinet. Now we don't really have any tricks and she has been doing ok, but she really struggles to settle down at night before her 5-6 hour bedtime stretch. We aren't really sure why because it isn't a hunger issue, as far as we can tell it's just gas. Overall it's been pretty good and there haven't been any major complaints, its just life with a newborn. 

Her  first social smile

Macy has already started to smile! I LOVE this. I still can't believe I caught it either. I don't remember how long exactly it took before Davie smiled on purpose, but I do know that when we went out to bless him he was 8 weeks old and he still hadn't mastered the social smile. Macy was a month old exactly when she started smiling. She seems much more tuned in with my face and my voice when she gets fussy.

 Its nothing specific just yet, because she doesn't always smile, but I can tell she perks up like a little animal when she hears me talking to her. One fun thing about her smile is we have been enjoying it ever since we brought her home. She is CONSTANTLY smiling in her sleep and it is soooo cute! When she gets really grin-y while she is sleeping we tickle her chin right below her lip and she will usually smile. Now that trick has been working to coax those social smiles out of her. 

Developmentally though she is SUPER strong and gaining really well. Davie did pretty good until about 3-ish months and then his spitting up went nuts. We tease that Davie is 70- 30% Christiansen to Warden and that Macy is 30- 70% Christiansen to Warden. I just hope that as they grow that switches ;) I'm sure Davie and Macy do too they are just too young realize it yet. One of the ways we realized Macy was struggling with gas was because she would stretch her legs straight and she was SO strong! That was also a reason why we decided she was more Warden is because the Wardens have BIG strong legs. She can already stand on her own, its a good thing we have tried to make sure she gets her vitamin D. And lastly she is just like her Dad, when she gets hot she gets really agitated REALLY fast, but she is also a warm body, much more than Davie was as a newborn. 

Her cry is very unique and is actually lower than Davie's was, some is because it's a little more quiet than Davie's. She is much more into eating. She was a good eater from the VERY start and learned to get down to business sooner than Davie too. When they talk about development they mention that after your baby learns to nurse they will eat faster and she is already there, which is great especially at night. The only downside is she will not take a bottle or a binky. We are still trying, but she knows what she wants and substitutes are out of the question. Also she HATES her vitamin D drops. They smell like a cherry type candy so they can't be too bad, but she chokes on them every time and spits them back up afterwards fairly often. Davie didn't like his either (which were actually worse because they smelled like a mineral vitamin and were not flavored) but he would just suck them down while making a disgusted face.

And for now that is Macy. She is doing great and we have loved having her here. So much in fact that I have greatly procrastinated writing my thesis. Aren't babies great?!

Family of Four

He has always been such a pretty baby and now he is turning into such a handsome boy! David hates it when I call him pretty, but it is totally true. Plus I'm his mom so I can say whatever I want.

Family of four!

David doesn't like these, or any picture with him in it, but I love to see my little babies in his arms. It's super cute.

Usually I make sure all the pictures are in order. Not this time! I decided to splice and mix them all up. It's nice not to have 5 of our family and then 5 of just Macy. I might reorder them like this more often. 

One of my favorites

We had to bring Davie back into the room for this and I was a little worried he wouldn't pose/ behave but he did so great! He was all happy, smiley and downright adorable. 

David insisted on doing one where he held Macy with one arm/ hand. We tried to do a nice one like this with Davie, but it didn't really work out.

So sweet.

I LOVE this picture, it captures Davie so well. Basically he got away from David while our photographer was trying to take family pictures. Davie loves people so he was going to go talk to her, but also escape off the bed.

Macy has the longest skinniest little fingers.

Davie has started to give BIG hugs, or as we call them squeezy hugs.

This is the blanket my aunt made for me almost 5 years ago! Haha I knew I would have a girl eventually :)

These pictures were tough for Davie.

I love my little boy.

This blanket is from my other aunt, very pretty.

Best BUDS!

Blanket from Nana.

I love having pictures right after I have a baby so I can remember, but I seriously HATE my face. There I said it. I just really dislike how chubby and fluffy looking my face gets and there is no way around it. It stems from the fact that normally I have a round babyface that I kind of dislike so after a baby it's worse.

Baby toes

I love the colors in this one they are so soft and pretty. 

Both of my babies! Together!

I do like this picture a LOT though.

*tiny lips*

I was not sure if any of these pictures were going to work out. The look on Davie's face cracks me up. It's like "ok I laid down, I'm done now". 

I love how she looks like a doll, but it's also a little crazy because she almost doesn't look like a living breathing baby! She really just looks like a plastic baby doll.

BIG yawn.

Another good picture, that I don't love my face in.