Time flies...

... whether or not you are having fun, apparently!

It really bugs me when I get behind on blogging, because I feel like I have to come up with a huge catch-up post (or posts, if I'm really behind) and I just don't have time for that right now. However, you'll be pleased to hear that this time I will condense the last two months of our lives into bullet points and not slam you with a huge mega-post :)

So - since getting back from PNG at the start of June, here's what's been going on in the Crouch household:

• Mark got swallowed by the hospital in June since he'd been out of the call pool for about 4 months, ouch!

• He has been named one of the two chief residents for the upcoming academic year - a huge responsibility and privilege. So proud of him! We attended a somewhat fun conference in Dallas for incoming chief residents of the regional residency programs more or less as soon as we got back from PNG.

• Image Summer Retreat! Lots of planning and organising for both of us this year, since Mark is chief and I am (surprise) chief wife! There are a couple events for spouses at the retreat every year, which I and the other chief wife Josephine were coordinating. Kind of stressful ... not so much a 'retreat' for either us or our hubbies, who were also presenting their research projects that they'd spent all year working on!

• Planned/ hosted a couple of brunches & baby showers

• Finally got in to see my OB, after 2 1/2 months of us being gone/ him moving offices so his scheduling system got all crazy. I have only gained about 8lbs, but my belly is EXPLODING. By the time I turned 20 weeks (yup - just the half way point), I am having trouble eating anything more than a large snack at one time, I'm struggling to breathe well, my skin doesn't want to stretch one more millimeter, and I feel symptomatic of gestational diabetes again. And this child is WIGGLY!! We had a little scare the other day; I had a bunch of sporadic contractions during the day, and then a couple hours of contractions every 7-10 minutes during the evening. It turned out to be nothing more than dehydration and tiredness, so I'm trying to drink a ton and take it easy ... but in our 3rd week of temperatures above 100, it's not easy!

• Image moved hospitals! Hillcrest, the hospital the residents had been based out of for the last 10 or 15 years, decided their budget wouldn't sustain the residency any more. So after meeting with several other hospitals in town, we moved to St John. This is a HUGE transition - both for the hospital and us!! And, being a chief, a lot of the responsibility of making that go as smoothly as possible on the day-to-day front has fallen to Mark (especially since he's running the hospital service this month).
  

• We celebrated our 6th anniversary, woohoo!! Left that little girl of ours at Mimi and Papa's for the night, and went out for dinner and a B&B. Mark had the awesome idea of taking me to a culinary supply store called The Stock Pot, which offers cooking classes every couple of weeks in addition to having an incredible array of kitchen supplies. So we got to have a class with the executive chef of one of the really nice restaurants in town, and learned how to make a 4-course meal using only locally grown foods from the farmers market - and of course got to eat everything we learned how to make, and took home a bunch of new delicious recipes! I will be trying them out at home shortly, so I'll share the recipes as I make them :)

• I am potty training Anna, and moving her to a big-girl bed. Simultaneously, which definitely wasn't the plan, but is just how it worked out! I was going to move her bed first, but she started talking about potties and going pee-pee before I had her bed all refinished, and then it all kind of happened at once. Tomorrow night will be her first night in the big-girl bed (we're doing it cold turkey - moving her crib into the new nursery so there's no going back!) - again, I will keep you posted on how it goes! On the potty training front, she gets a tattoo for every time she goes pee-pee on the big girl potty, and she's been nicely tatted up ever since we started :) We've had a couple accidents, but on the whole it's going really well! Can't believe she's big enough for any of this...
  

So ... most of that has been fun, some of it has been draining, but all of it has flown by! And that is all that I have the energy for tonight. I am going to go brush my teeth, snuggle with my massage pillow, and hope that Mark's cholestasis lady's induction doesn't take all night.