So here we are, it is early February and already this year so much has changed.
Karsten is almost 7 months old, I can hardly believe it! At his 6.5 month check up he weighed 18 pounds and 4 ounces, talk about a chunk butt! Karsten was also 27 and ¼ inches long, which places him in the 75th percentile for his age…poor little guy slowed down a bit on that growing, we were in the 90th and 95th percentile until now..oh well his weight is average and his head size, surprisingly, is actually in the 25th percentile…never thought he had a small head.
Karsten has been doing lots of neat new things too. Recently Karsten has been more motivated to roll over, something that he previously could do but had no interest in doing. He can sit up all by himself for long periods of time, reach forward and grab a toy while balancing, push himself forward and on-to his belly from sitting, and the coolest thing….he started mimicking a crawl! Karsten can also stand up and hold onto the crib or couch with no support for a few minutes at a time. As my ears have recently been “feeling” Karsten is also actively teething, we can see his cute little pearly whites trying desperately to break skin…or gum…whichever comes first.
Early this week Karsten also started saying “mamama” which I of course understand to mean Mama…hey leave me alone with my delusions. Karsten also started saying daddadadda which we think is “dada”…again only a mother’s ears might hear this but that is good enough for me.
Karsten is wearing 9-12 month and 12-month clothes, like I said chunky butt. He actually seems big now, I look at him when other people hold him and he still looks somewhat tiny but not my little cuddly newborn anymore, now he is a baby with his own little personality and his own likes and dislikes. One thing I really do love though is that he has started reaching his arms out for me when he wants to be picked up, this just melts my heart…”mommy I want you now.” Oh what a wonderful thing to be a mommy and watch your little ones grow.
Karsten also likes to pretend that he will sleep in his crib, we have made it one night where he has made it until 7:40 am…pretty much all night. Most other nights Karsten will wake up between 4 and 5am and refuse to sleep in the crib… I don’t blame him our bed is pretty comfy.
In other news as some of you may know Karsten and I took a little “vacation” down to Arizona starting in mid-January. Karsten and I had a fun time driving down to AZ together, this was his first trip in his “big-boy” carseat, his first trip with just mommy, and his first time sitting in a high-chair at a restaurant….hey I gotta eat. While in AZ we had a good time with family and seeing a few friends when time allowed but we missed Ryan (daddy) a lot even though we got to see him on the webcam fairly regularly. At the end of January Ryan came down to AZ to join us for a few days then we headed back up to Utah this week.
While in AZ we got to enjoy the warm weather by taking a number of walks, see friends, eat yummy food, and of course see the family we love!
As many of you may be wondering at this point, or have heard rumors or half of the story, our lives are about to change in big ways in the coming months, let me explain and begin by saying “our marriage is fine, in fact it is great.” For some reason I have been asked a great deal lately about our marriage so I thought I would quash any rumors to the contrary.
So about a year and a half ago we embarked on this journey, moving to Utah and starting graduate school. We started the program feeling like the Lord wanted us to take this opportunity and to pursue this path, a significant factor in our decision to move and take advantage of the opportunity. When we came up to Utah we knew graduate school would present many challenges, but Ryan is a dedicated student, very smart, and was aware that the 3 years of school would involve major sacrifices and pretty much no life outside of school and vacations. The school that Ryan enrolled in is a 3-year program with block classes, this means that he takes 1 class at a time (like med school classes) and finishes that class in 2 weeks. He attends school about 8 hours a day and spent the vast majority of the evening and afternoon studying. When Ryan is not in class he is interning (working) or studying…or as I like to say sleeping. The school requires that students get a 90%+ on every single final (test) in order to pass the class, if you get an 89% or lower you flunk. Students are only allowed to “flunk” 5 tests per year. The first year and a half Ryan passed every single test with a 90% or higher, like I said smarty pants. Ryan’s school does not use any textbooks, instead they rely on PowerPoint slides that instructors create. Instructors are given pretty much no guidelines on their presentations, just told “teach this material” and when I say material I mean “teach cardiac pharmacology”…ummm hello what about that…everything?
During year 1 the average instructor used 50 slides of content per day that they sat and lectured to, occasionally they would have 100 slides per day. Now you might be saying “hmmm 100 PowerPoint slides isn’t bad” but when you consider those slides have every detail about drugs and the body on them at varying levels of detail and font plus if you have no other materials than those slides a 100 slides a day to memorize completely, that day, takes on new meaning. During this year most of the instructors in the first half of the year used 80 slides per day but recently they starting using 250+ slides per day to lecture to. One day Ryan came home, the instructor “covered” 300+ slides in a few hours – yes this is impossible to do with any level of “quality teaching”. So anyways Ryan has been left to memorize thousands of PowerPoint slides and interpret what random phrases instructors say mean and how to use them in clinical settings. Needless to say Ryan has been a bit stressed out with school.
The stress of school has caused us to make some tough choices about what we want to do with our future and how we want to live. We tried a few different approaches, pretty much everything we could think of to make it easier for Ryan to do well in school. In the end, after a lot of prayer and contemplation we have decided it would be best for Ryan to withdraw from school. We really feel like school is not our best option at this time, at least not this program right now. We want to thank all of you who have been praying for us and have helped us out when we have been trying out various approaches to studying.
We know that the next few years are going to involve a lot of challenges and that we now face some new stresses that we would not have necessarily faced had we finished school. Honestly though we feel good about this decision, it was not what we had in mind when we came up to Utah to go to school and it was not our first choice but we think it is for the best.
On a personal note, over the past few months I have really grown as a wife and a person because I have learned to see my husband in a new way, a way that has confirmed to me that he is the most amazing man I know and truly my eternal companion. Some might look at this decision and call it foolish, others might scoff and say that it is “stupid” – we are aware of these criticisms and understand their basis yet we still made the decision, and it was our decision to make. ….For all those who are wondering. Ryan did not flunk out of school, he is welcome to return and complete the program should he wish to do so at some point in the future.
In other words on some happy upbeat notes we will be moving back home very soon – YEAH! Good-bye icky cold weather! In fact good-bye “weather” in general! We are very excited to be moving on from this chapter of our lives, we are looking forward to having more time to spend together, more time with Karsten, and the ability to have the time together we have been missing over the past year and a half. It is so funny, one day a few weeks ago I had a dream where I got up and just started living the life I wanted to live, free from restraints and the rat race we so often commit ourselves to living. I recall telling Ryan about my dream and saying that it was kind of a funny dream to have. Well now we have the chance and are taking it. When we wake up each day we are going to live the life we want to live, no more rat race, no more just making due until we get the opportunities we want, we are making the opportunities. Will it be easy, no; will it be fun all the time, absolutely not; will we have a chance to start fresh and take different opportunities – yes!
So here’s to an exciting new journey and rolling with the hills and valleys of life!
5 years ago