Eden: Eleven Months

-Personality really coming out more

-Makes kissy noises

-Starting actions to nursery rhymes

-Waves and high fives

-Getting more curious and close to cruising

-Caught her trying to fold her arms and blow kisses

-Dada might be her first word

-Loves to swim

-Likes to take things out and put them back

-Still doesn't sleep through the night

-Such a princess

*****

We are crazy close to her first birthday and I'm not ready for that! But then again, this is such a fun age. I love that she plays now and laughs and attempts to copy me. Her big thing this month is learning how to make a kissy noise and loves to make them and sometimes kisses me and Sam or tries to blow kisses. Oh my heart.

Although she still loves her mama she has warmed up to Sam quite a bit. He rocks her to sleep a lot of the nights, takes her from me when he gets home, and feeds her ice cream (quick way to this girl's heart). The other day she heard Sam come home from upstairs while I was folding laundry and she started saying "Dada" and headed straight for the stairs. It seemed purposeful so maybe she said her first meaningful word?

We will be in Chicago for her birthday and it will just be her and her mommy and daddy. We are excited for that, but I'm not ready for her to not be a baby anymore. Stay little girl!

Naps seems to be getting shorter and shorter, sadly.

Sam made a swing bed and Eden seems to like it.

I can't with these overalls!!

Picture from a Facebook Father's Day post.

New PJ's and she's modeling them nicely.

Her kisses.

ARVO 2019

Hello everyone! It's me, Sam. It's been a while since I've blogged, and I'm very grateful for Kiley in taking the lead to write about our lives. 

I was blessed to be accepted to present at this year's Annual Meeting for the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology (ARVO). Luckily, when I showed up to the conference on Monday, I ran into Grant Justin (a current 2^nd year resident who is a lot of fun to work with) and Hal Blegen (one of our Rockstar, up-and-coming first years). We decided to go on a bike ride around Vancouver, so we rented a couple bikes and went around Stanley Park. It was gorgeous! Here are some of the photos from our ride:

Grant and I then went to the aquarium and had a good time looking at all the animals. 

We ate poutine for lunch (French fries loaded with pulled pork and bacon), and then Grant and Hal presented in the evening. I had a good time networking with people, and I also found Dr. Das’ group presenting their research (the ones I worked with during medical school). So I got to catch up with them a bit! That was great.

Here are medals from the 2010 Olympics held in Vancouver, as well as the podium where the medal winners stood while their anthems played. How cool!

The following day, after going to a few lectures, I met up with an HPSP medical student who was also presenting at ARVO to talk to her about ophthalmology in the military. She’s currently rotating through our program and doing great. It’s tough to predict what will happen with military medicine in the future, with all the changes that are going on with the DHA and purplization of the military, but hopefully that won’t affect this year’s match. In fact, residency/fellowship results are supposedly being announced tomorrow, and I'm planning on applying for a retina fellowship if one is offered. Wish me luck!

            My presentation was on Tuesday evening. I was pretty stoked about my poster:

As you can probably tell, I decided to have fun with it this year. I presented a case series on patients with central retinal artery occlusion who were treated with hyperbaric oxygen, and since it wasn’t a super enticing research design (case series), I decided to make my poster as flashy as possible. It did the trick! About 80% of the people who passed by my poster stopped to read it, and I got to speak with about half of them about our findings. That is a huge contrast to the last time I was at ARVO and presented "real" research. I also got lots of great feedback from physicians from all over the world regarding management of patients and their views of hyperbaric oxygen. It was awesome!

I guess that's it for now. More to come later!

Joey's 6th Birthday

 Joey got his birthday off of school due to it being Good Friday. So that day I took him to get donuts, a photoshoot (that was featured in his birthday letter post), and open a couple presents. The next day we had a little party for him. We invited two boys from his primary class to have cake, ice cream, open presents, then go to SeaWorld for a behind the scenes shark tour!

Lego Spiderman kit.

Really proud of this cake I made! 

PokeBall kit courtesy of the Wengers.

Magic Tracks courtesy of the Harmons.

 It took a little fin-angling to get people into SeaWorld as cheaply as possible but it worked out!

Here we are looking down into the shark tank and learned about all the different types of sharks they had.

The best picture of all the boys I could get!

Petting a shark

Epaulette Shark! 

Shark poster inside the aquarium.