Layla's 3 weeks old, Dave is 312

Well, she's 3 1/2 weeks old really, but I was just slow to put pics up. Big news this week? Layla broke the 7 pound barrier! By, like, 2 ounces or so. This is great, because she's finally starting to gain weight! Her appetite is up, too, so that is good. We haven't been able to teach her any new tricks yet, though. In other news, my birthday was this week, and I turned 26! We've been so busy getting used to having Layla around and setting routines with her that we didn't want to stress out about one more thing, so it was pretty low-key. My parents stopped by a few days earlier and we had cupcakes, and then on my actual birthday my brother's family came over and Cara made us all the most delicious calzones and pizza that I have ever had, it was soooooo good. I'm not posting the recipe for that one because it is a jealously guarded secret. Today we are going over to Cara's parents, and I think we'll have a little post-birthday dinner there too. So really I had three mini-birthdays instead of one big one! Summer plans are starting to materialize: We are going to take a few days and go down to Tucson, Arizona, to visit Cara's sister who just moved there. I know that July is the absolute best time of the year to visit Arizona (shout out to APM alumni!) but it will be fun to go back to the desert for a few days. I'm gonna be pretty busy; I've got my research project to work on, surveying recently arrived refugees and assessing their health needs. Also, I'll keep working at the diabetes clinic once a week, and I signed up to work at a homeless-and-uninsured children's clinic a couple times a month as well. I think it's kind of funny that they let us pretend to be doctors at free clinics like this, whereas in a real private practice or hospital, we wouldn't be able to do nearly as much until we actually graduate. It's like, it's okay to practice on poor people, to hone our skills so we don't mess up on the rich people. The ethical arguement concerning that will have to wait for another day. Oh! And, kind of on a whim, my friend James Daniel and I decided to go to the AMA conference in Chicago in June! That will be fun; I've heard Chicago in the summer is about as pleasant as Tucson. Cara and I want to go camping a lot, too.... wow, the summer is packed already and we haven't even started.


Layla has a bad habit of tearing her face up with her little razor fingernails. She gets excited, flails her arms around, and ends up going Wolverine on her cheeks and eyeballs. Se we have these little mitten-things to protect her from herself; she kind of looks like a boxer. It also makes me think of veterinarians who put those satellite-dish collars on dogs who just had surgery, so they don't try to chew off their stiches.






Yeah, I know this last one is not the best photo of either of us. All her other pictures are cute, so she didn't inherit my horrible photogenicity.