PGY3 Life

If med school felt fast, residency has been a blur.

Steve has been in post-school training for over two years now, and in less than 9 months he will be officially finished. He'll graduate from residency and we'll be off for entirely new adventures.

It has been fantastic watching him grow and change. His confidence and sense of purpose have solidified in such beautiful ways in these past few years, and his knowledge of medicine, his intention and focus in his job have become engrained. He probably can't see that (it's different when you look at yourself, isn't it?) but I can. I'm so proud of him and the man he chooses to be.

So now we're officially PGY3 (Post Grad Year 3), and in Emergency Medicine, that means this is the finale of residency, and though sometimes we still have challenging weeks or months, for the most part I'd say we're pretty well accustomed to resident life.

There are times when our bed is being slept in 16 or 18 hours a day--I'll get up with the kids in the morning, and just a few hours later Steve will be getting home from a night shift, finishing his notes at the computer by the kitchen table, and then crawling in to bed until dinnertime. So it never gets made:

Or it gets made for just a minute, because I want him to be able to snuggle right in like this:

We've finally gotten the hang of doing a regular family night (it only took us 6.5 years!), usually on Mondays--but we're flexible so Dad can join in a different night if need be. The trick for us was to keep it really simple. We do a REALLY, REALLY, REALLY short little lesson (this week it was an object lesson involving toothpaste, about how we can't undo the hurt of saying mean things). And then we do something fun together, like watch an episode of this clean and cheesy sketch comedy show, playing Dance Central on the Kinect, or just playing a short board game or card game that Juliette tries to step on.

When Steve isn't home for dinner, we talk about him and miss him, work on our Q&A a Day for Kids book, and sometimes send him text messages of us making weird faces.

If the ED isn't too busy, or when he's at conference or waiting somewhere, he sends us pictures back.

Every evening we read scriptures as a family on the floor of the hallway outside the kids' rooms. We lay on our bellies or sit "criss-cross-applesauce" and read part of a chapter from the Book of Mormon, and talk to the kids about the lessons in the scriptures. Gracie is a great reader and likes to pitch in on the reading, and Charlie asks me to whisper words of a verse to him so he can repeat them. It's a sweet little tradition and I'm so grateful that Steve took the initiative to get it started this summer. The great thing about starting good traditions with kiddos is that they hold you to it. So once we got started, it just became expected.

After that is prayer, all kneeling in a circle (someone always puts up a fight about kneeling, of course, and flops on the floor, or stays sitting, or wanders away, depending on who it is that night) followed by one of my favorite parts of the day: As soon as we say "Amen" Juliette stands up and shouts "Huuuugs and kissessssssss!!!!" and then we all take turns giving each other hugs and kisses before the kiddos go to bed.

It's so happy.

And Friday night is still pizza + movie night. I buy a ball of dough from Harris Teeter and make us a pineapple pizza. We push the big ottoman up agains the sectional to create "Megacouch" so everyone has room to flop on there together. Steve lays his head in my lap and I tickle his hair, or the kids pile on top of one or both of us and get cuddled, and we watch a movie. This summer was the summer of Star Wars--we watched the originals a bunch of times--and now we're watching the prequels. Tonight is Episode II, Attack of the Clones.

So far the kids are die-hard fans of episodes IV-VI, which we appreciate. Juliette can sing some of the themes, and we didn't teach them to her. She's just seen the movies that many times.


Jules Sings Star Wars from J Walton on Vimeo.

She also took a C3PO bath toy to all our errands this morning. :)

When Steve has a day shift, he usually gets home between 4 and 5--hungry but not yet ready for dinner. Juliette likes to join him for a bowl of cereal, and he calls her his "mooch," so now she calls herself that, too, and smiles really big.

She also likes to sit on his face for some reason. She does it a lot.

In the evenings when he's home, we snuggle up on the couch in our pajamas and binge watch something on Netflix. Over the summer we worked on Gran Hotel (Spanish subtitles but really fun and totally worth it) and watched the entirety of LOST. Now we're working our way through Person of Interest. It is simple and relaxing and perfect, and I look forward to it every single day.

He's my bestie, and we have a good life, and a lovely family, and yeah, a lot of times we are tired or overwhelmed, and sometimes my depression kicks up pretty badly or somebody is sick, or we're dealing with some new parenting thing or job or calling or something that makes us feel out of our depth. But for the most part, everything is awesome, and everything is cool 'cause we're part of a team.

I couldn't resist. We watched a lot of The Lego Movie this summer, too. ;)