Modern day pen pals

Nine years ago, when I was pregnant with Amelia I met a bunch of other soon-to-be mom's on an online Babycenter parenting board. Eventually, when our babies were about 6 months old, a small group of us formed our own sub-group of "workout mamas" as we started focusing on getting back into shape and wanted some support and accountability.

I have "talked" almost daily with those 8-10 women for the last eight years. They comforted me through lay-offs and moves, they encouraged me through nursing school and training for half-marathons, they've made me laugh like crazy, given me some of my favorite recipes, and kept me eating healthy and working out all this time.

And this summer we decided it was time to meet in real life. I had already met one of these women--my friend Jennifer lives in Chelan, Washington and grew up with my good Porltand-now-Seattle friend Nancy. When we discovered this connection, we met up for the first time about six years ago in Portland and have hung out several times including our lovely visit last summer to stay with Jen at her lake house.

Due to scheduling and finances, only five of us were able to meet up, and we decided Seattle was the place to meet. It was a little bizarre to go to the airport to pick up women I've never met to come stay at my house for the weekend, but I had Jennifer there with me in case Heidi turned out to be "Heidi." (Please, for your sake, do not google "cross-dresser." I thought I'd find some innocent Halloween-ish photos to plug in here. Not so. You can't unsee what came up.)

On the drive home from the airport we were all pretty nervous. Kolby said when we got home that night he was a little worried about us. But we stayed up until 2am talking and laughing...oh my gosh the laughing...and when he came out the next morning we were all sitting around in our pajamas drinking coffee--and still laughing--and he stopped worrying. (He took our girls to Portland for the weekend. To escape the laughing.)

I think the nervousness we all felt at the beginning was reconciling the voices, accents, and mannerisms with the personalities we'd gotten to know in writing over the years. It took a little time for those pieces to fit together, but within a couple of hours, it was like I'd known these girls for years. Which I have.

We did a lot of exploring Seattle: Capitol Hill, Pike's Place, Belltown, Fremont.

I think our favorite afternoon was kayaking on Lake Union. We bought cheese, salmon, mussels, and bread from Pike's Place and I made a Pacific Northwest dinner for them at home one night.

But by far the best time we had was just sitting around and talking.

We decided this weekend was a retreat. It was so relaxing and therapeutic. I can't remember the last time I've laughed that much. And I always love cooking for people and showing off this city that I love. It went by much too quickly, but we won't let another eight years go by before we do it again. And next time it'll be the whole crew. Hopefully Annette doesn't turn out to be "Annette." (Seriously. Don't google it.)

Cognitive Dissonance

So over the last few weeks I've been to Target more than usual trying to track down school supplies, socks, underwear, etc. for the kids for back to school. Unfortunately, someone decided this was a great time to remodel both of the Targets I usually go to, and nothing has been where it belongs. Kids' clothes are intermingled with women's clothes one day, and with groceries the next time I go. (I swear.)

I am not used to frustrating Target trips. Target is my happy place. This is not the Target I know and love! Each of these trips left me with increasing levels of anxiety, especially because I was trying to navigate these unfamiliar cluttered aisles with two energetic girls. Girls with lists in their hands. Lists that were not getting checked off because nothing was where it should be and Mama had to leave because the chaos was giving her hives.

So last Tuesday, the first day of school, after running an errand on the other side of town we stopped at a different Target for a couple more items for school. You have no idea the peace and tranquility that filled my soul when I walked in to see this:

I first had to get a Starbucks latte just to celebrate, and then had to walk around the beautifully arranged store touching everything and purring.

I'm not going back to my Target until they get themselves sorted out. Life's too short for crappy Target trips.

Brilliant Ideas Pinned

So did I mention the kids are back in school?

Ideas

Source: thetidynest.com via Jami on Pinterest

I saw this idea on Pinterest recently, and decided this week as I was pulling out the various bags of frozen fruits to make smoothies that this idea is brilliant, especially on mornings when the girls needs to make their own breakfast.

Here's what I put in my freezer smoothie packs:

1 cup various fruits--mixed berries, mango, and 1/2 a ripe banana

small handful of spinach

3 cubes of greek strawberry yogurt frozen in ice cube trays

These packs took minutes to make. Now they are all looking cute in my freezer, ready to be dumped into the blender with some vanilla soy milk and blended for a quick breakfast or after school snack. I debated whether to make them big enough for two smoothies, or just one. Since the girls are on different schedules now, I opted for single packs this time around.

Utah or Bust: Blackham Style

Kolby's brother Clayton and his wife's family go to the Oakley Rodeo every year for the 4th of July. They had extra tickets this year, so we decided to join them. I went to rodeos all the time growing up, and wanted the girls to experience this for the first time.

They were a little concerned about the animals, and cheered for the bulls and broncos a little more than the cowboys, but we all had a great time.

Kolby's mom moved up to Farmington a little over a year ago and you can see the Lagoon ferris wheel from her back deck. So Lagoon is a must when we go to Utah now. The kids love all the roller coasters, and even agreed to take a break from the rides to check out the water park this time. Ana came with Aidan and baby Amare, and I had fun holding Amare while the kids played with Aidan. Although I did have to fight this one quite a bit for him.

On our way back from the cabin we stopped at Clay and Courtney's house for a barbeque. Pammy and Rex brought their big blow up water slide, and mayhem ensued.

And we snuck in a few family photos with us in our fanciest duds and a beautiful background.

All the Blackham cousins

Pammy and Rex
I did a little multi-tasking, snuggling Amare while I studied for the NCLEX.
And I love this picture of the Blackham Girls. Mia, Maddie, and Addie.

We had such a great time in Utah. Amare was born three weeks early, and was three weeks old when we arrived. I was so pleased to see that he was still just an itty bitty thing. Ana and Adrian stayed at Pammy's house when we were there, so we got in a lot of snuggle time with him. This is one of the hardest parts about living away--seeing how much the babies grow in between visits. Hopefully we'll get to Utah again soon before he gets too big!

Cast 2.0

We're so relieved! Amelia had her appointment at Seattle Children's yesterday, and when the doctor reviewed her xrays, he said everything looked good. The wrist fracture is near the growth plate but is a nice clean break and should heal very nicely without affecting growth of that bone. And the xray of the elbow looks good. They pulled her plaster splint off to get a good look at everything, and when they kept her wrist splinted she could move her elbow without pain. It is still really swollen and bruised, so she must have landed on it as well, but it's not broken. And the great thing about that? A smaller cast.
Getting that smaller cast did not feel good.
But it was worth it for an awesome small blue cast that does not require a sling. We go back next week for one more xray to make sure it's healing straight, and she'll get to pick another color of cast.

I caught her hanging from the monkey bars in our backyard last night.

"I'm her nurse."

Back in the day when I first started nursing school, I sort of thought I knew what kind of nursing I wanted to do (oncology), but I committed to keep an open mind and see where my experiences took me. The one thing I knew I didn't want to do was pediatric nursing. (Insert laugh track here.) See what happens when you think you know something?

A few months ago I went to a job fair (even though I was pretty certain nothing would come out of it) and I met the VP of a pediatric home health agency. Everything she said to me sounded great to me. I knew I didn't want to do home health, but I figured in this bad economy, it was a good back-up plan. I emailed her the next day and told her how much I enjoyed our conversation. And then after I graduated I emailed her again--once again as a back-up plan. A week later they had me in for an interview. And at the end of the interview they offered me a job.

I had two interviews that week. One was for my "dream job" with Seattle Children's on the floor where I had done my senior practicum. I really don't think I interviewed particularly well, but I also had the very distinct feeling from the first question they asked me that they were not in the least bit interested in me.

However, during my interview with the manager at New Care Concepts, I could not stop thinking about what a perfect fit this company was for me, and what a perfect fit I was for them. Everything we talked about--the type of nursing care they provide, the type of patients they have, their nurses, their vision, their corporate culture, etc. I was shocked to discover it felt like where the last four years had intended to lead me.

But still, when they offered me the job, I resisted. And in fact, I suppose I'm still a little resistant because new grads are supposed to do hospital nursing, med-surg to be exact. And I always thought I wanted to do hospital nursing. I do want to do hospital nursing. My instructor told me on my last day of clinical, "I pegged you as an ICU nurse the first quarter I had you, and my opinion hasn't changed." I really like the fast paced environment of a hospital floor.

But after my disappointing interview with Children's, and my fantastic interview with NCC, I thought long and hard about that commitment to be open-minded, and about the interesting directions life has taken me when I've let it. And most of all, I knew that I was really ready to work. I know a lot of new grads who haven't worked for over a year since graduating. And I had an offer for a job I knew I would love. So despite the direction I thought I was supposed to go, I accepted that this was where life was leading me for now. And now every night that I go to work, I am so tickled pink that I am there.

New Care is a company that provides intensive home health care for medically fragile kids. Most of their patients have nurses in the home for 16-24 hours a day. My kiddo is dependent on a ventilator for breathing, and tube feedings for nutrition, and a wheelchair for mobility, and she is nothing short of amazing. And every time I go to work, I can see what having a nurse in the home does to ease this family's burden. It almost allows them to ignore all the medical equipment, and just be a family.

One thing that really surprised me in nursing school was how holistic nursing is. I didn't realize that nurses don't really focus on the medical diagnosis, they focus on the issues that stem from the patient's medical condition--how that condition effects this person's ability to function normally in his/her life, how to get them abck to functioning normally or how to help them establish a new normal. That's what home health is--finding and dealing with the new normal. The great thing about caring for this one patient in her home, is that I get to think about all aspects of her care every time I'm with her. How is her medical condition effecting her ability to develop like a normal 5 year old? What do we need to think about socially (she has playdates and sleepovers!)? What about academically? What choices can I let her make to feel more in control? What can I help her do for herself, because that's what 5 year olds are all about, right? And I'm doing all this while I'm monitoring her respiratory status and keeping her airway clear and giving her meds and all the other fun things I learned in school.

Anyway, I love it. I love my job. I love being a nurse. I probably won't be doing this particular job forever--I'm sure I will have 10 different careers as a nurse over the years. But for now, I am learning so much and I am so grateful that I have a job I love straight out of school.

And there's no Looney Tunes scrubs required.

I'm so excited to see where all of this leads me...

Jumping right in

So ready or not, school began.

Madeline has been so excited for middle school--only a few butterflies, almost all excitement. Despite the fact that most of her friends had their moms drive them to school the first day, Madeline wanted to ride the bus. She didn't mind if I walked to the bus stop with her, gave her a kiss, and took 42 photos of her getting on the bus. However, she did not know that I drove by the school a couple times during the day, in hopes that I might see her through the windows. No, actually I didn't. Or maybe I did.

Amelia was almost as thrilled to have the elementary school all to herself, with no big sister to boss her around and bring home the school notes.

But I had a very melancholy day at home missing my girls. I've decided it's the lakes and neighborhood pool that make me resist summer's end so much. I remember looking forward to school starting when we lived in Portland. But it is just so decadent to spend an afternoon hanging out beside the lake.

And so on the second day of school, I decided we should go to the lake when the kids got home from school since it was 80 degrees outside. The girls changed into their swimsuits, threw on their flip-flops, grabbed a beach towel and we headed to Idylwood Park for a little while.


Lifeguards are only on duty until Labor Day, and for some reason Amelia felt much more free jumping off the dock without the lifeguards watching. (I was watching very closely!)

Madeline did what she usually does--tries to catch minnows, follows the ducks, and recruits kids to build sand castles with her.

When I gave the girls the 15 minute warning, they decided to play on the playground. As soon as I set my purse and the beach towels down on the park bench, I heard Amelia cry out. She ran up to me and said, "Mom I fell off the zipline and broke my arm! We have to go!" (And then there were a few tears. Or a lot of tears. We can't remember now.)

I inspected it quickly (and so calmly! No hand flapping or crying or anything. You'd think I was a nurse or something), and it did not look good (elbow looked funky). Mia is not known to have a high pain tolerance, but her reaction to this was very clear: "My arm is broken. It hurts worse than anything has ever hurt. And it does not work." I handed my phone to Maddie and told her to call Kolby to find out where the nearest ER was. He was in a meeting, and we scared him pretty bad with 3 or 4 phone calls in a row followed by an urgent text, so he snuck out of his meeting to answer and helped us find the nearest ER. (Evergreen ER in Redmond is fantastic, ya'll!)

At first after the xrays they said her wrist had a simple break in both bones, but the xrays on the now swollen elbow were unclear so they sent them to an orthopedist to look at. Then they came back in and said the elbow was still unclear, but the orthopedist was concerned because the fracture in the wrist went into the growth plate. So we're heading to the ortho clinic at Children's tomorrow to get it checked out. They casted her up, gave us some Tylenol with codeine, and sent us home for the night.

In the meantime, Mia's home with me! No school for two days until Children's clears her to return to school. Too bad we can't go play at the lake.

(I fell asleep three times in the writing of this post.)