Finally finals are done!

Finals are finally done for the semester. I only had three but boy, was it hard to find the motivation to study. Now I just have clinics until Thursday and then Christmas break! Not too much planned for break, we have a few Christmases planned, one with Josh's mom and brothers, one with his dad's family, one with my family and possibly one with his step dads family. Otherwise I just want to relax maybe get some scrapbooking done, see a couple of movies, play outside with Coen.

I'm done with all of my Christmas shopping, Josh of course is not. He says he is going tomorrow so we'll see.

What a surprise

So I was changing Coen's dirty diaper on Friday and much to my surprise I found a button in his diaper. It was about the size a penny. We thought we kept a pretty good eye on him... and we never heard him choking on anything, I just couldn't believe that our kid swallowed something that large. It makes me wonder what else might be hanging out in his intestines.

Let it Snow!

Today I took Coen out for his first sledding adventure. At first he was pretty stoic, I couldn't even get a smile for the camera. I think he was just sort of taking it all in. But then, when I went over a snow bank he just started grinning, and kept grinning as I ran pulling his sled all over CSCC. As soon as I would stop to turn around and look at him he would start whining, but once that sled was going full speed again it was all giggles. I think I know how I'll be getting my exercise this winter.

Matt if you thought the bear hat was bad what do you think of the whole monkey snowsuit?

Update

Some pictures from our Thanksgiving weekend spent at the farm for Josh's cousins wedding reception. It was nice to see the whole family and have a picture taken of our family. Unfortunately it was Coen's dinner time and he got kind of crabby towards the end of the pictures.



We got to spend some time at a hotel where Craig was staying, so we hung out in the pool for a few hours, Coen would not let go of Josh but he seemed to be ok in the water otherwise.

We have started celebrating Coen's first Christmas season. I bought a few penguin shirts for him last year when I was pregnant, Josh loves it when he wears them... We got our tree for the year, my first artificial tree ever, it made me kind of sad but I wasn't willing to vacuum every 3 hours if we got a real one. Now that its decorated it really doesn't look that bad. Today we spent the afternoon at my dads union Christmas party, which was Coen's first visit to Santa, we were a little surprised that he didn't cry since he has had some stranger anxiety lately. But I think as long as he can see us he does ok.

Other than that school has been keeping us both pretty busy. Josh has one week left of student teaching and then will be off for a whole month. I am looking forward to that, especially with finals approaching and I'm really feeling pressure in clinic to get as much done with my patients now because next semester I will be busy with rotations, mainly pediatric dentistry. That will be a nice change of pace but will not allow much time to see my other patients and start checking off competencies. Somehow everyone , or just about everyone, manages to graduate on time so even though I worry I am not too concerned about not graduating. But thats about all thats happened in in the last few weeks. So enjoy the pictures.

Coen the traveler

In a few short hours Coen will be adding another state to his list of places he has been. Illinois! I know, Illinois sounds kind of boring but its impossible to make a list of cities that Coen has been to so we have to do states instead and since Chicago is in Illinois he gets the boring sounding state added to his list. Thats right, Coen's first trip to Chicago. Its kind of funny too, since Josh has never been to Chicago, his 7 month old son will beat him there. We're really not going to be there that long, we leave tonight at 10:30 arrive sometime between 6 and 7 am and head back around 1pm tomorrow afternoon, with Maria! We'll be on the mega bus twice as long as we are in Chicago but I am still looking forward to my trip and to seeing Loyola and riding the Mega bus for the first time. Josh and I are thinking of taking it somewhere for spring break. I'm pretty sure it goes to Arizona, and if we can get $1 tickets, well it might just be worth it.

Coen's first Halloween

For Halloween this year we decided to surprise the grandparents by trick or treating to their house with Coen. Well it didn't go so well. First of all, dad wasn't even there yet and second I think we just pissed mom off because we rang the doorbell, they had just sat down to dinner and the candy wasn't out yet...oops.

So once dinner was finished and the kids were all in their costumes my dad and Josh and I went out trick or treating with the little kids. Coen went out mainly so Grandpa could show him off to the neighbors. What ended up happening though is Coen would be the last one to "trick or treat" at each house and as we stood there saying hi, this is the grandson, the neighbors would continue to plop more candy into Coen's trick or treat bucket (which was, courtesy of mom and dad a kemps ice cream pail, I suggested a pillowcase but no one would get me one.) So Josh and I made out pretty well. On top of all the neighbors candy we managed to score a pretty good load from mom and dad, full size boxes of nerds!

Toys

Being first time parents we really didn't have too many baby toys so over the past year or so we have spent a good amount of money plus time and energy picking out the best baby toys for Coen, and any future children that may come along. Well we have recently discovered Coen's favorite toy is not really a toy at all but a cheap name badge holder with a pullable string so that one can swipe or scan their card as needed. His attention span is short, normal for a child of his age, but he can play with his favorite "toy" three times as long as any thing else we may place in front of him. He is so funny when he places one end in his mouth pulls the string as far as his little arms with let him and then opens his mouth to let go.

Watch out World....

Here comes Coen! 6 months old and he is on the go! Last week Monday he was stationary but by Wednesday he was army crawling across the living room floor. He is getting faster and smarter, grabbing things and putting them in his mouth before I can catch him. He is a determined little bugger, if he sees something he will not quit trying to reach it until it is in his mouth! It won't be long before he is crawling and then walking. I'm pretty sure he'll bypass walking and go straight to running.

Coen's favorite song

Matt, I think you will be really proud of this kid...

No matter what is going on, if Coen is screaming or just playing he stops everything and turns his head so fast towards the tv everytime The Office opening song comes on. He absolutely loves that music. We've been watching season 3 on dvd for the past few weeks so he has been able to hear it often. I think I need to download it so that when he is really crabby we can just play it and put him in a better mood.

NBDE part 2 sections 1,2

So there are so many portions of the board exam that I don't even know what part I am taking this weekend. I just pay, show up, and pray that I pass. This year our school is the guinea pig school. We are the first set of 3rd year students to take the practical portion. So who knows how it will go. Usually these boards are on a saturday but because the 4th years are taking them saturday we have to take them Sunday. crappy. We had practice boards a couple weekends ago, again, on a Sunday. Basically I failed. But I only failed about one criteria on each tooth, so now that all of those thing have been brought to my attention hopefully I will pass. The third years have more recent experience working on plastic teeth, which are a lot different from real teeth but the fourth years have more experience doing crown preps so they really are at an advantage. Anyone can cut a plastic tooth if they are experienced and skilled, like the fourth years. But we just don't have the clinical experience yet to have proficient skills.

Anyways, its stressful, it ruins my weekend, and if I fail I have to pay another $1000 to retake it. Sometimes dentistry sucks.

I rock!

So today I started my first root canal therapy. I say started because I only cleaned and shaped the canal and next appointment I will fill it. And then I will make a crown for it. But let me tell you, what a high it was to do endo today. It was so just cool and fun. And it was a maxillary tooth so I did it all in the mirror.

Also today we got our album back from our vacation. So awesome. So if anyone wants to visit...

A couple pictures

We took so many pictures during our vacation too many to post them all, but here are a couple to show that we really did make it there. I made an album online which should be here in a week or so for anyone who is interested in seeing all of our beautiful scenic pictures of the park, and all of the wildlife we saw. We even saw some moose!

I have no idea why this is underlined and no idea how to make it not underlined so if anyone can help me with that, that would b nice.

boards

I passed!!!!

And our trip was awesome. Pictures to come soon, hopefully.

NBDE part 1

Well I have to say that at least studying is going a little bit better after a nice long weekend break. That just means that I am feeling more pressure so I am able to sit and stare at my books for more hours of my day, I don't think it means I am being any more productive. I just have to keep telling myself that if I just stay focused for the rest of the week and pass this test then I won't have to study this junk every again. I'm just really worried that I won't pass and then I'll have to retake it, which means paying for it and even worse, studying for it again. So wish me luck and say a lot of prayers for me next week, I think I'm going to need them.

Busy Busy

Well things have been pretty busy in the Andersland household lately. Coen is now 3 months old, we can't believe how big he is. He is amazingly strong and people comment all the time how they think he is much older than 3 months because of his muscle tone. He holds his head up all by himself and is working on mastering sitting on his own. He's only rolled over front to back a few times, none of which I witnessed. When I'm around he acts like he can't do it, and whines because he knows I'll pick him up.

Lately we have been interviewing nannies for the fall and today we hired one! She lives in our complex which we thought was a definite bonus. No traffic to make her late, no slippery roads in the winter, no car trouble. She is from Brazil (maybe Coen will be bilingual!) and although she only had one reference from the mother of a child she babysat this past year, who was from Peru and already moved back so all we had was a very very well written letter, the fact that her husband is in dental school is practically a reference for me. I feel like that shows that they are stable, and intelligent people (he is actually in the graduate program for tempromandibular disorders) and anyone who goes on past a DDS gets 5 stars in my book. She is the only one who picked up Coen which really said a lot to Josh. Josh was at all the interviews which was nice to have someone to talk to about what we thought about each candidate. We interviewed 5 women and honestly, I would have hired on the spot 2 of them, and then 2 others I also felt would have done a great job. So we are pretty pleased with the response to our ad.

Now I feel like we can relax a little knowing Coen will be in good hands. I was a little worried that we wouldn't find someone in time, since we are taking a vacation right before school starts but Karla said that it works out perfectly that we don't need her until september because she is having visitors from Brazil in August so its great! We do need a sitter next week because my sisters are taking a family vacation so we are going to have Karla watch Coen for a few hours on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday kind of as a trial run but I am sure it will go very smoothly. Coen is such an easy going baby.

Coen keeps us pretty busy but I guess there are a few other things that occupy our time. Josh is still busy with school work, but soon it will slow down a lot for him. I am ending the last of my preclinic lab classes next week. I am busier than ever with patients and lab work but once classes end hopefully it will feel like I have more time. I need to start studying for boards, which I take in August and I also need to make some plans for Emily's bachelorette party So far 4 people (outside of the Novak girls) are coming and I've gotten one no RSVP. I think it will be a pretty good turn out! The rest of the summer is looking to be pretty busy, but then we are going to Yellowstone for our family vacation before we have to start our busy fall semester!

Sleep

So I just thought my baby was extra squirmy, and he is during the day. But lately he has been out of control at night. He would sleep for two hours and then kick and wiggle so much he would wake himself right up. Well a couple of nights ago he was squirming real bad and Josh had just gotten home for work so I asked if Josh would try to calm him back down in his crib (which is in the other room with the computers) So I brought him in here and Josh said he didn't move the rest of the night. So last night we put him in the crib right away, at 9:00 and he didn't move until 5am. Normally he squiggles a little, but he didn't even move out of his swaddle! We think our bedroom with the window AC was too cold for him. I hope thats what it is, because moving him to his crib was such an easy solution. 8 hrs of sleep is pretty great for a ten week old.

However, because he ate at 5 am and not 3am like normal his schedule might be off a little today, and its Molly's first day of babysitting. Coen is pretty easy though, as long as he gets fed when he wants too. Otherwise he's all smiles.

The cutest baby ever

What a week it has been

We went back to classes this past Monday and after being in class for 4 days it feels like we have been there for 4 months and are really ready for a vacation. It has been absolutely crazy with classes and trying to figure out things with clinic. We have 4 classes this summer, implant lecture and lab, endo lecture and lab, pediatric dentistry and biomaterials. Both labs are plenty of work to keep me busy all summer but unfortunately they are not all we have. We have around 4 clinic blocks scheduled each week. I probably won't be seeing 4 patients a week, because my patient base isn't big enough to keep me that busy but as of right now I am booked for the next couple of weeks. I had my first patient on Tuesday, it was the craziest day and I left school thinking I would never go back, well I did. Wednesday I had no patient- just 8 hours of class and lab, and today I had a perio patient (basically hygiene but I'm a dental student so its called perio) It was Josh, and it went very well. At least I remember how to do something from all that pre clinic work. Josh even managed to escape with no cavities! But if you ask him how I did I'm sure he'll tell you not to take a shower before you see me- not my fault its the instrument that we have to use. Tomorrow I have another perio patient, she only has 4 teeth so I'm thinking it won't take nearly as long as Josh's appointment, which is good because tomorrow afternoon Coen and I go to the doctors! I can't wait to see what percentile he is falling into. I am grateful to Josh for sort of being my guinea pig, it was nice to do a real run through of a full appointment on someone I felt comfortable with. He is so brave.

Coen has been just amazing this week. Not only does he "talk" to us all the time, but the past three nights he has "slept" through the night. I say slept in quotations because around 3 or 4 he gets a little restless and I end up holding him and sleeping with him until he wakes up at 6 or so. But hey, no night feedings is a BIG step and I am grateful!

This weekend we are going up north to spend some time with Josh's family. Anthony and Heather and their boys will be there and Andrew even took the whole weekend off. On the way up we are stopping in Foley to visit Patric and pick up Josh's Wii! That's right, we're getting a Wii. Sometime soon we'll have to have a wii party. Hopefully Josh won't spend all weekend playing it with his brothers. Josh and I haven't seen much of each other this week, the three hours we spent in the dental office was the most I've seen of him all week. So I'm really looking forward to a long weekend to spend with my husband and baby.

4 weeks

Well Coen is now 4 weeks old and guess what? I fit into my prepregnancy jeans! This is a very monumental day for me. I still haven't tried on my bridesmaid dress, but I'm sure it will fit, how good I will look in it is another problem, but at least I know I will be able to be in Emily and Eric's wedding.

More about life with Coen, and dentistry

Since tending to Coen is pretty much the only thing Josh and I do these days, its about the only thing I can blog about- so if you're tired of hearing about him, I'm sorry.

Yesterday Josh and I went on a date, without Coen. We dropped him off at Grandma and Grandpas and we went out to dinner. Having our choice of any restaurant and being able to take as long as we wanted we still chose OCB. It was good though, their dessert station is amazing, and it was so fun to watch all the kids load their ice cream with gummie bears and nerds.

After dinner we went grocery shopping. Most people would follow dinner with a movie, but when you only have 2 hours to yourself for the entire week I guess its more important to make sure there is food in the house.

The end of my semester is very near. Only finals week left, then I have a two week break- to spend with Coen! Its amazing how in an instant my whole life changed to revolving around a tiny baby. Then after my two week break we start our summer session where we have a few more labs- endo and implants, a few more anesthesia practices, and then on May 22 I see my first patient! And on May 24th I see my second patient- Josh! Don't worry- he'll be fine, I'm basically only doing a hygiene appointment- no needles and no drills.

So if anyone needs dental work done, I am now available for patients. If you come to the U just know that it will take about 2 appointments (one for x rays and one for a treatment plan and general exam) before any work will be done. But the bigger patient base I have the better I'll be able to meet my requirements and graduate on time. The U is about 1/2 as expensive as a regular practicing dentist and they accept all insurances. So please, think of me if you need/want some dental work.

One week

I cannot believe that tomorrow will have been one week since I had Coen, it went so fast, especially compared to the weeks before his birth which went so slow. Tomorrow is also my first day back at classes. I have a denture patient in the afternoon that I really can't cancel or I'd get behind and as long as I'm going to see my patient I figured I'd go to the lecture before hand that tells us what we are doing with our patient this week. So I'll be gone for about 5 hours, big step. Josh will be here, as will his mom so I know Coen is in good hands but it will still be hard to leave him.

It has been so hard for Josh to go back to work this week, and classes and leave Coen. That's right, Josh has actually moved from his spot on the chair and has given Coen to me. Next week Josh is on vacation from work and I know he is so excited to stay home with his son. He is such an amazing dad.

Request for pictures

Life will never be the same

It is so good to be home with little Coen. We've had a few visitors and have even taken Coen out and about a few times. Josh has been quite the baby hog, holding him all day and sleeping with him on our chair. He has definetly gotten more sleep than me. Our little guy is just so quiet I keep waking up to check on him.

Tomorrow will be his first Easter! He dyed his first name egg on Friday night after mass at Grandma and Grandpa's house. It was pretty crazy there, like usual, and he slept through it all. Of course when we got home where it was nice and quiet he was wide awake!

I am off to bed while Josh watches our little guy. Hopefully I can get in a few hours of sleep before he wakes up.

Place your bet

Ok we'll do this price is right style. If you want to make a bet on when the baby is coming pick a date and time. The person closest without going over wins. My actual due date is April 3.

Spring Break

Well my spring break is coming to an end. As much as I hoped the baby would come this week I guess I always realized that the chance of that happening was very low. So once I realized that, I decided to spend my break doing a whole lot of nothing, because this could be the last week of my life that I have without a kid. Monday night was poker night, Wednesday I went shopping, at the Mall of America. We (Emily and I) didn't do much shopping, but just had fun taking JJ and Caine around. I bought four new books and am almost finished with the second one. I haven't done fun reading in so long, and I'm sure after the baby it will be a long time before I get to do it again. Tonight I am going to watch Kendrick play baseball, tomorrow night Josh and I are going to a game night at a friends house and Sunday we have dinner plans with his old lab mates. So even though I am dissapointed that the baby didn't come this week, it really hasn't been too bad of a break.

Boring, not boring, and back to boring

So far my pregnancy has been very uneventful, boring even. Well today I had a doctors appointment and things almost got interesting. Well my pregnancy actually got eventful for about 3 hours. The doctor checked my cervix, no change blah blah blah boring boring boring. But then she was checking to make sure he was head down and she said it didn't quite feel right, so I needed to go have an ultrasound. Since the rest of my week is crazy we tried to get an appointment for today, well that was harder than it sounds because the phone and fax lines were down at the office so they couldn't fax surburban imagining my referral. Finally I told them I had a copy of my referral, I can bring it with, please get me in today. So they did. Our appointment was at 6:30, check in at 6:15. Of course we were early so we just waited, more boringness. We finally got called back, she slimed up my stomach, and the first thing we saw was that his head was indead down. Sigh of relief. For a few hours I thought I went through 8 months of boring pregnancy to then have the most unboring of all events happen, a breech baby, which means a C section. So back to the boringness. Which after today's little scare is fine with me.

Since we were there looking at our baby we got to see a lot of stuff again. His face doesn't look like a skeleton anymore and we confirmed that he is in fact a he. No doubts there. So now its just a waiting game. Our doctor doesn't let her patients go more than a week overdue, which I think is wrong, so if I am overdue I will try to push for two weeks past my due date- not that I want to go long, but I really don't want to be induced. But hopefully I won't go overdue anyways. Either way there will be a baby in 5 weeks! (or 6 if my debating skills are up to par)

The last month

Well I am approaching my last month of this pregnancy. It has gone pretty quickly so far but now I am just getting so anxious and excited to have this baby. I'm not super excited about the whole labor part but am getting very excited for everything that comes after that. I'm still getting bigger and more uncomfortable every day. I wish there wasn't so much snow on the ground so I could wear slip on shoes or flip flops without getting my shoes full of snow and soaking wet. Oh well, at least I am not overly warm. And as long as Josh is around I have a personal shoe helper.

I would really like to have this baby over spring break, which is week 38 of pregnancy so we'll see if that happens. I've gotten lots of advice for inducing labor but they only seem to work if you're already overdue so I doubt I will have any control of when I have this baby.

Here's another picture of my growing belly. The little guy still moves around quite a bit so I think he has plenty of room. I'm guessing that will be changing very soon as he puts on an ounce a day. I've already started feeling elbows and knees sticking out of my stomach. Its kind of weird but also kind of nice to feel the baby moving around. I can't wait until I can hold him in my arms!

pharm, phat phots, and phantastic anniversarys

Well today is our two year anniversary. And I'm stuck studying for a majorly huge pharmacology test. I have never felt so unprepared and completely stupid before a test. O well, if I fail I guess I can always go for the five year plan. I think we are going to celebrate tomorrow (our anniversary not the five year plan) after the test with a nice dinner. We bought ourselves a laser printer for our anniversary gift- the toner was more expensive than the printer!

There was a request for a picture of my growing belly. This was at week 30. I'll be 32 weeks tomorrow and I don't think I've gotten much bigger since week 30. In another couple of weeks I will post another picture. As you can see though no stretch marks. However, there are still two long months where anything can happen.


Well loading the picture took so incredibly long that it is now time to get back to the studying. Only a couple more hours and then I can finally go to bed.

Wednesdays

So Wednesday nights are really boring because Josh has class all evening. Basically I get home from class around the time that he has to leave. Well most Wednesdays we'll have about an hour for dinner but tonight he had to go to class early so I really didn't get to see him. Then I have to pick him up from school and when he is teaching the classroom at work (which is 99% of the time, it just happens to be the other 1% tonight) he comes home, changes, and leaves. So On Wednesdays I barely get to see my husband. Its kind of lonely around here without him.

Which is why I have time to post these beautiful pictures of Jephtha's fungus that he grew in his very own oral cavity. My oral pathology professor culutured out the fungus and basically we saw both straight ones and circle ones. The circle ones (or spores) basically mean that it is a VERY active form. So everyone be proud of Jeph, he's a great host for growing fungus.

But actually he was only great at growing it because he was soooo very sick and was on some pretty strong antibiotics that killed all of the normal flora in his mouth allowing the fungus to take over. O the wonderful things we have lectures about in dental school....

So enjoy the pictures!

Jeph meets the Twins

Today Jeph got to meet a couple of Twins players. He almost missed them though because of a stupid CT scan. Anyways here's some pictures but I'm sure Jeph would love to tell his brothers and sisters about it so call him in the hospital to hear more!

Radiograph Thursday and Injection Friday

On Thursday I took my first full mouth set of radiographs. We did it on a skull not a real person but it was still pretty fun. It was actually very difficult and it will only get more difficult since a skull doesn't have lips or a tongue and you can see through the back of the head to make sure everything is lined up. But I'll get a few more practice runs before I have to take any on a real person. However, we had one day to practice local anesthesia and now the next time we perform an injection will be a real patient. Which in my case is quite unfortunate...

So we had to partner up with a classmate, well since I'm pregnant I can't recieve local anesthesia (lucky me!) however I still had to practice the technique on someone. My inferior alveolar nerve block (numbing half of the lower jaw) went very well. My infiltrative injection (numbing one tooth at a time) also went very well. I then had the instructor come show me how to do a posterior superior alveolar nerve block (numbing half of the upper jaw). With all the other ones he just pointed to where to stick the needle and I went from there. For some reason with the PSA he actually gave the injection, distributing some anesthesia and then had me do it. Well I did it and it went fine, until we started cleaning up our cubicle. All of the sudden my partner said hmmm my face feels a little funny and our instructor was noticing some swelling. Well very quickly after that my partner got this huge bump on his cheek. My instructor said it was a hematoma (basically a bruise) and since the blood has no where to go it pushes the cheek out. Well supposedly these things last 2-3 weeks! Oops... It really wasn't my fault, and it happens to dentists all the time. What happens is that the place where you need to inject is a crazy network of arteries and veins and if you happen to tear through a couple or puncture one it might just bleed enough to cause a hematoma. So I did it (maybe, since my instructor gave the injection first its a 50/50 chance that it was me) but it wasn't my fault exactly, these things just happen.

So if you ever need work done on your upper teeth make sure that you don't have a wedding or other major event in the next couple of weeks, just in case.

School AND a Baby?!?! Gasp!

Well my final semester of classes has started. After this semester I will mainly be in clinic working on real patients! A little scary, I know. Next week I get to give my first local anesthetic injected on a fellow classmate. But because I'm pregnant I don't have to be anyone's patient! I picked the best semester to be pregnant. Or not... Yesterday at my doctors appointment my doctor basically told Josh and me that we were so foolish for thinking we could have this baby and be in school. She absolutely could not believe that I wasn't going to take more than a week off from classes. I told her that I had to finish the semester. I know it will be hard but I can do it and now I am even more motivated just to prove her wrong. Maybe she was remember medical school and her residency and how she worked 80 hour weeks, or maybe she was just having a bad day and it her concern came out as criticism- I don't know. Josh and I will do just fine we have such supportive family and friends and we both want this baby so much that we are willing to work very hard to make that happen (besides we can't really give it back now can we?) And now we just have more motivation- to prove our doctor and anyone else who doesn't think we can do this wrong.

This last semester is going to go by so fast, it seems like every week there is something going on with family or friends, tests, or doctors appointments, I won't have time to sit around and think about how "foolish" we were for wanting a baby now. And before we know it there will be a baby and everything will be just fine.