A couple of videos of Rebecca

As usual, it has been a busy couple of days for me at Casa Colina. I evaluated three patients yesterday on the inpatient unit. I assessed one very unpleasant and acerbic (I combed thesaurus.com to find that word to use in my report) woman who is absolutely FINE and has no memory problems and the ONLY thing wrong with her is her hip and leg and NOTHING is wrong with her brain, THANK YOU VERY MUCH. Alrighty sister, I'm with you in that - denial is my favorite state of mind too. Except....she completely bombed every task that required visuospatial integration and executive functioning and that her report now says that she can't drive. Then today, I tested a very pleasant lady who could have passed for my best friend Brenda's twin. Sadly, I don't take quite as much effort to comb the thesaurus for positive adjectives. One of my mentors at Casa Colina and I have a thing about finding descriptive adjectives to spice up our reports and make them a little less monotonous (sadly, this is what makes for spice in the life of psychology nerds like us).

I'm so frustrated that I'm ready to shake some people in my department. I turned in my comp paper exactly four weeks ago tomorrow, and I don't have it back yet. Come on people, I need to schedule a dissertation proposal defense in the next four weeks, and I'd really like it to not be on the very last second before I need to race to the post office to put my internship applications in the mailbox. Surely it will be before the end of this week.

Ramy starts his murder trial next week. His mom and one of his sisters are on their way to the Philippines (or maybe they're there by now...I don't know. They left around midnight last night and I think it is about a 16 hour flight). Regardless, please pray they have a safe trip there and back and don't get mugged or sticken by dengue fever or any other similar malady.

Rebecca is marvelous as always. She loves to tell the dogs "noooo" when they do something they aren't allowed to do. She loves to dance, of course, and she sings along with the Little Einsteins on the rocketship. Any picture of Dora is met with an immediate and ecstatic "Da-Ra!" in at least one octave higher than her normal voice. She loves Baby Lucy and Raggedy more than ever, and I'm pretty sure she attempted to breastfeed Baby Lucy the other day. Sydney remains her favorite creature though (as you can probably tell by the series of pictures in my last post - she was wiping Sydney's face after she had eaten, by the way - and in the videos above). She tells Sydney goodnight and blows her kisses every evening when we go upstairs to bed, and every morning, she says, "Hi Sydney" and waves to her all the way down the stairs. It's awfully nice to come home to a sweet little voice that says, "Hi, Mama!" from the moment she hears my car pull in until I have picked her up! I think my favorite new thing of Rebecca's is that she says "Amen" at the end of prayers. It started last week with her repeating "Amen" after I finished saying each prayer (we do the Our Father, the Hail Mary, and the Glory Be every night and almost every morning). Then at church on Sunday, we got to what she thought was the end of the Lord's Prayer (and really was, the way we say it, but there's an additional ending that the priest tacks on to the end when it is said during mass) and Rebecca said "A-man". I'm also fairly sure that she has attempted to cross herself at least a couple of times, but I can't be certain about it. I'm glad to see that I have taught her something more than how to talk on a cell phone and how to throw a purse over her shoulder!

Tomorrow starts my fall quarter classes at Loma Linda. I think these are the last two classes I may be taking. I'm taking my other religion class, which should be better than the summer one I took - this one is Spirituality in Everyday Life and then I'm also taking an advanced neuropsych assessment class. Both are just on Thursdays, and they fit in well with my schedule. My Thursdays will consist of going to U of R to do dissertation study-related stuff at 9, neuropsych assessment class from 10-12, a meeting or providing supervision for one of my students from 12-1, my religion class from 1-4, and then I'm teaching the projective personality assessment lab from 4-5. Busy, but it all fits in well, and I don't have any time to get in trouble or goof off.

My mom comes tomorrow evening, and she'll be here until Tuesday. We'll be hitting our church's Harvest Festival and shopping and having good food and enjoying playing with and dressing up Rebecca. Please pray she has safe travels!