Hikingmommy

I am a wife, mommy, and ER doctor, sometimes all at once and sometimes one at a time.

Learning to speak

Some people have the ability to learn languages and pick up the sounds, nuances, and all that goes into speaking and understanding a language fairly easily. In college I lived with a girl who was American, grew up in Argentina, was a French major and was taking German “for fun”. My other roommate was a […]

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Uh oh…

Nothing like hearing those words makes a mommy stop. “Uh oh” was the second word that Leighton learned how to say (his first was Daisy, the name of our dog). For Caedmon it was his first word. Caedmon is at the stage where he uses it often. Most of the time it is not a […]

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Life Lessons

In the ER I interact with people from all different walks of life. I share in some of their greatest joys and also in some of their hardest and darkest hours. And everything in between. And in that I also see the dirt and grim and yuckiness that most keep hidden. A lot of that […]

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The Waiting

I have never been good at waiting. I think that’s part of why I like Emergency Medicine. There is no waiting, it is always open and there are almost always people to be seen. And I don’t have to sit around and wait for results, I can go see a few more people and get […]

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We Were THAT Family

Yes we were. We were that family that people got frustrated at, that people talked bad about, that made people groan. And really there was nothing we could do about it. It started innocently enough. We had the opportunity to go camping as a family for the first time this past weekend with some good […]

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Grief and Loss

We had our last of our core training this past weekend for our adoption. We covered a lot of information and watched a video entitled Adoption, We Can Do Better, which was broken up into 5 mini sessions that covered everything from reasons for adopting to transracial families. We also talked a lot about the […]

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Self Esteem

As a mom I have learned not to base my self esteem on what my kids say. Sometimes they say things that are great and other times not so great (although usually pretty funny). This week is a good example of both. Monday evening after a long day in the ER for me, I was […]

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Words

We all grow up with the saying that “sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me”. And while it all sounds nice and cute, it’s really not true as anyone who has lived for any amount of time could tell you. Language plays a huge role in our day to […]

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