What's Happening

The following is a letter I posted on a family website that I thought I would also post here in case anyone was interested. Sorry it is kind of long.

Dear Family,

I’ve posted a lot of pictures lately but haven’t written anything about what’s been going on. We’ve been keeping pretty busy around these parts lately. Usually Carter and I hang out with our friends quite a bit during the week, but since we’ve gotten home from Kansas City it has been work, work, work. For those who don’t know I take two kids to school at least three times a week. Their names are Siddharth Yende, he’s 3 ½ years old, and Tanvi Yende, she is in second grade. Their parents, Sachin and Namita, are from India and are both physicians here in Pittsburgh. I also clean their house about 2 days a week for around 4-5 hours between the two days. My work day usually consists of getting to their house which is about 15 minutes away around 7:15am and making sure the kids get dressed, brush their teeth, eat breakfast, etc. The kids are awesome with Carter and they also have a dog named Ceasar, he’s a Golden Doodle, that absolutely adores Carter as well. We leave for school around 8:30 and I am done dropping them to where they need to be and home by 9:00 am unless I go back to clean in which I get home between 12:00- 1:00. It is nice to have the additional money seeing as we have all these big surprise expenses on the house and Carter and I really love the kids. Once we get these home expenses paid for I think I will cut out the cleaning because Carter is not a fan and it is very taxing on me, but I love taking the kids so I will do that as long as I can. Other than that, Carter and I like to go to the Toy Lending Library or the Center for Creative Play. They are very similar places. They essentially consist of large rooms filled with toys directed to different age groups and help kids in their mental and physical development. Carter is pretty funny because often times he likes to just go off and do his own thing and doesn’t want me to infringe on his space. He also likes to crawl over to where the big kids are and tries to keep up with them. Though, lately he hasn’t wanted to be as independent, he is going through a clingy phase I was hoping he would skip over.

Matt and I love the stage Carter is in right now. He is funny and trying new things everyday and is constantly surprising us at how smart he is. For example, yesterday when I was changing his diaper I was singing “The Itsy bitsy Spider” and when it came time to sing the part, “up came the sun” Carter put his arms up to make the sun. I thought there was no way that Carter could really be doing that so I tried it a couple more times and sure enough on cue up came his sun. A couple times he even put his little fingers together for the “itsy bitsy spider” part. I guess that goes to show you what repetition can do. We are constantly singing in our house. Carter loves it and it is often the only way I can get him to do certain things. Like when he has grown impatient with eating his rice cereal, I start singing “The Wise Man Built His House Upon the Rock” and he is mesmerized and keeps eating. Thank goodness for primary songs. Speaking of eating, he is an eating machine. We can not put food in front of him fast enough. When we were in KC he ate a whole adult sized bowl of chili. He loves vegetables, peaches, meatloaf, and especially yogurt, but really he eats and enjoys just about anything you put in front of him. He is also getting around pretty fast these days. He tries to stand up to every possible thing he can. If he sees something he could stand up to that he hasn’t tried before he whimpers until you set him down so he can give it a try (which can be frustrating in some public situations). He also has started letting go of things within the last few days so he can either stand by himself or turn slightly and grab a hold of something else to walk around. He is very proud of himself when he tries new things and succeeds, but he is also very frustrated and disappointed when he doesn’t succeed, hmm I wonder where he gets that from. He may look just like his father but so many of his personality traits are just like me. He is very demanding and whatever he wants at that moment, in his mind should be met right then. Another thing about Carter that Matt and I have been commenting on a lot lately is how tough he is. He bonks, falls, crashes, has heavy things land on him and he hardly cries about it or he whimpers for a second and is done. When he got his flu shot the other day he didn’t even cry or whimper. He looked shocked for a second and then shook it off. You can see that he also now is developing an imagination. He talks to himself in big long “sentences” as he plays with his toys and you can tell he has a whole storyline going on.

As for Matt, last month he was on his medicine rotation and ICU/SICU (surgical ICU) he wasn’t a huge fan of medicine, but quite enjoyed the SICU. He got to do some really cool things such as placing central lines into the heart through the neck. He was there for some crazy code blues and only a couple patients died on him. I thought the first patient to die on him would have been really hard, but he seemed to take it in stride as he does most things in life. He had a lady who worked at the hospital who called Matt her adopted son die this month. That was very sad and we all went to the funeral. This month he is on ER which should be pretty good. It is set up that ER docs can only work 13 shifts a month, 10 hour shifts at a time. Matt is only working 12 shifts. So he will be around quite a bit this month, YIPEE. The flip side is that several of those shifts are over night so he will need to sleep quite a bit the day before and the day after. His first shift is today from 4 pm to 2 am. We’ll see how it goes.

I hope Halloween was fun for everyone! We had a good time. The Saturday before Halloween we went to a trunk-or-treat at the church. Then on Halloween we took Carter out trick-or-treating just to a few of our neighbors. We have a fair amount of older neighbors who love Carter so they were delighted to see him all dressed up as a Lion. We got a pretty good amount of kids at our house. In our neighborhood everyone sits out on their porches and gives out candy while the kids walk around, and every group of children had at least one adult with them which was nice. So trick-or-treating night had a real community feel to it and made it very fun. I will post pictures of Carter all dressed up.

We love all of you guys and can’t wait to see everyone around the Holidays. That time can’t come soon enough.

Love,
Amber, Matt, and Carter