Spring...somewhat

Natalie, ready for a walk in our 20 buck Craiglist jogger. Nice.



Cousin Will at his 2nd bday party. Good work on the Santa frosting beard! Sorry about the red-eye.



At Matthew Marsteiner's 3rd bday party at a local "bounce house". Karen is delicately negotiating the slide with Will and Natalie.





Karen and Eunice with Natalie (in a very graceful nasal extraction moment. ;) )






Having fun at the Clemyjontri park near Langley, VA.








More fun...

Yet more fun. Obviously, this slide is not designed for adults, or I'm just getting fat.

Ronnie Mervis, deep in the diamond mines of South Africa. Ok, actually holding a slightly skeptical Natalie.

Hello to my avid blog followers, eagerly awaiting the follow-up to my original entry! Ok, so there's actually only 1 follower so far (strong work, Will).

Despite Jimmy's skepticism, I have managed a second post. Ok, it's only taken me the better part of 4 months.

Anway, it's been a busy time. I'm wrapping up residency, thank God! Really only a couple of weeks of nights left and other than that, pretty much easy (read: living like a normal person, with actual weekends off and all) stuff through June. No complaints here.

I've finished interviewing for my Allergy fellowship which is nice. It's a match process, but thusfar I think from both a program standpoint and geography perspective, I'm leaning towards Tampa. (University of South Florida) It has an excellent and well-respected training program, and I think both Karen and I would be happy in Florida for a couple of years, if not more. Yes, Tampa is the #1 most foreclosed housing market in the nation. Maybe we could get a good deal on a foreclosure or short sell, but given that the fellowship is only 2 years, we might just rent (at least the first year) and consider buying if it looks like we'll stay longer.

We've had a few birthdays as you can see from above. Natalie's cousin Will turned 2 last month, and Sydney and David had a party at their place, which was fun. Also, our friends Leslie and Tim Marsteiner's older son Matthew turned 3, and had a party at what Karen likes to describe as a "bounce house". (Place with a bunch of amusement park-style moon bounce things). Definmitely fun, though Natalie was a little young to fully enjoy all aspects of it. However, they had a little kids' side which was a bit more sedate, so she definitely enjoyed that.

Speaking of Natalie, she's doing great. She'll be 1 year in 2 days, hard as that is to imagine. Not quite walking, but cruising with elan, and not quite talking, but babbling loquaciously in a language beknownst only to herself. She's eating most everything, though not yet 100% people food. Her favorites are pasta and chicken. You absolutely could not believe how rapidly she can make elbow macaroni disappear. Quite astonishing! Still nursing, so we'll have to wean that out. I'm wondering how that's going to go.

Karen is well. She continues to keep us economically inline with her various couponing and other deft (mostly legal) savings strategies. Hopefully, once I can moonlight in a few months, the fiscal situation won't be quite so intense. She's also very busy at this time planning Natalie's party, as well as hosting baby showers for our friend Nicole as well as for my sister. Lot of fertility this year, it seems.

Ok, that's pretty much it from scenic Durham, NC. Hope everyone is well. I'm sure my 3rd installment with be prior to Natalie's college graduation.

cheers,

Dave

First post

Karen and Natalie


Oh, yes, it's dinner time!

Doing my best to pet Katie gently.

At Jimmy's wedding in October, in SF. Natalie actually travelled really well.

Not, perhaps, my best hair day, but I'm happy.

I do love me a bumbo!

Our holiday card picture. Only took about 30 takes to get something remotely acceptable!

Hi all,

well, I thought I would enter the technological age and start a little blog. As you may discern from the title, one of the primary purposes of this blog is to have a facile way to keep friends and family up to date on recent developments with our growing family. Given that I'm among the world's most abysmal correspondents (and not that much better by phone, either), I thought this would be a good way to at least post some regular updates on what's going on chez Fitzhugh.

So, for those of you with whom I've been really out of touch, the biggest news is the arrival of Natalie (hence the eponymous blog). Ok, ok, this happened 8 months ago, but still, it's been quite a change, as any new parent can attest. She's doing great, crawling avidly, babbling away in a language beknownst only to her, smiling very charmingly. I'm going to be the first to give in whenever she wants anything when she's older, I can tell you.

We've been very blessed so far. She's been generally quite healthy, apart from a little cold a few weeks back. She's a pretty good sleeper (and you'd have to expect that, if she's anything like her mom!). I can't recommend enough to new parents the cry-it-out method. Somewhere along 4-6 mos, babies can self-soothe and don't need to be fed at night. We realized that Natalie was using Karen as a giant human pacifier at about 6 mos and finally put her in the nursery. (She had been sleeping in our room in a cosleeper.) I think many moms find it emotionally difficult (though Karen did fine), but basically, once baby is ready for bed (fed, diaper changed, washed up), she goes down and that's it. For us, there was very rapid extinction in terms of crying over about 3 days. First night, 45 min, then 15 min second night, 5 min third night, and now, on most night, there's like 1-2 quick cries when I leave the room to put her down and then she's out till about 6:30-7 AM.

I can't tell you how much we've been able to reclaim our lives now that she's sleeping throught the night. Everyone would always ask if she was, and I'd always feel inadequate as a parent when I'd say no. But the fact is, babies are designed to do this, and she's happier and we're happier.

The toughest thing for us is adhering to a schedule. Neither Karen nor myself is that regimented in terms of maintaining a schedule, but babies absolutely need pretty strict routines in terms of feeding/sleeping. It took a while after getting out of the survival mode of the first few months to realize and then implement said schedule, but we're all better off for it now.

Brief background: I'm currently in my 3rd year of internal medicine residency at UNC Chapel-Hill. Life is pretty good now. I've gotten to the point where I'm not fazed by much on the wards anymore. While medicine is no doubt a lifelong education, I feel good about my clinical skills and confident in my training. My good friend Alan has some insight into the life of the resident on his blog (http://alanchengmd.blogspot.com/2008/12/its-feeling-like-winter.html). Probably the best part is teaching students and interns; the worst part is the crappy hours and overnight call, but that's part of the game. My current plan is to move on to an Allergy/Immunology fellowship, hopefully at UNC. What I'd really like to do is get back to the research world (I have a lot of training in chemokine receptor-mediated leukocyte trafficking, for anyone who's _really_ interest), so I'd like to combine running a research program with seeing patients. Typically, at least at UNC, for clinicians who are doing science, it's an 80/20 research/clinical split, so practically speaking, I would see patients 1 day/week in clinic.

Karen is well. She was working for Mervis pretty much right up until they wouldn't let her fly any more. Domestically, anyway, you can fly up to 36 weeks. She had been telecommuting, so working from home usually M-W, flying up to DC on W night and then working up there R/F and returning Friday night. It was a pretty tenable schedule, but still required that we board Katie (our 48 lb bundle of yellow lab mix joy), since I was (as always) in the hospital.

For now, she's staying home and being super-mommy. It's definitely a tough job, and I certainly appreciate that one could go insane without any other outlets. However, she's gotten involved in the UNC Auxiliary with a weekly playgroup, and she spend a lot of time trying to save us some cash, since we're down to one (resident) income.

For those of you that don't realize, Karen is the consummate deal-finder. Her dad always jokes that she is personally responsible for the economic downturn, and though I don't think there's any direct evidence that Lehman wouldn't haven't imploded had Karen not been on the scene, she really does save us a massive amount.

It's really astonishing how much stuff is available for free. We're always getting gift cards for transferring prescriptions to various pharmacies, spending x amount on discovercard at the mall or what have you. Of course, the downside of this is that any shopping expedition for Karen involves more planning than the Manhattan project (ok, I need to use these 14 coupons, but I still need to ensure that the before tax total is >40 bucks to get the gift card, and they also need to credit my 20 points for using my own bags that they forget last time, and then I need to stop by customer service to ensure that refund me the 1.40 they overcharged us last time). It's often complicated, but we do save. It's a bit overwhelming if I have to go shopping by myself, which is why Karen will typically have mercy and only send me on "simple" expeditions, involving fewer than 2 stores and no customer service forays, if possible.

Seriously, though, we save a ton. Karen reads a couple of blogs every day that have to do with various deals and other ways to save. I don't know them off the top of my head, but I'll post later if anyone is interested.

Ok, this seems like more than enough for my first post. Don't expect this level of verbosity in future editions. ;)

cheers,

Dave