It's official!

I am now officially working part time at the health unit in the Embassy. I am very excited for this opportunity as it's been 2 years now since I had to quit my job at the Burn Unit so we could move and allow Eric to begin his new career. While I have enjoyed having the opportunity to stay at home with Keenan I do feel like my brain and my knowledge of nursing is dwindling. This job is only for 6 months but by then it will be almost time for us to move again. We hired a nanny for Keenan and now he gets to spend more of his day at the park with his friends and will maybe even learn a little bit of Russian in the process.

I am learning a lot about Ukrainian health care as part of my job is to to accompany our patients to some of the local clinics for further evaluations or testing like x-rays, sonograms, stuff like that. Doctors and nurses get paid next to nothing, state funding is next to nothing and many things they just can't treat. The Ukrainian health care systems has a long ways to go; the state health care facilities are supposed to be free for the citizens but if they really want treatment (so I've been told) they are expected to bribe their Doctors and nurses and in some cases provide all the supplies and medicines to be used, which includes your hospitals bed sheets and food. Emergency Departments are rare and so are ambulances equipped with any thing of use in an emergency other than a place to lie. Private clinics are starting to pop up and the two I've been to are actually quite nice. Services are expected to be paid for immediately and some places do not take insurances of any kind so only the wealthy can afford to go, but for Americans the prices seem quite cheap. For example 2 MRI's cost less than $400 USD. I'm not exactly sure the price of an MRI in the states but I'm pretty sure when I was in college I paid around $4000 for one when I was having a lot of back troubles.

At any rate this job should be interesting and I'm looking forward to it.

Also official: Keenan "gave" up his binky( read forced) at the end of June and is doing quite well without it. It took a good week of battles at bedtime. At first he cried and yelled for his binky then switched to yelling "mama daddy mamma daddy", then on to yelling for "Cookie Monster". The Cookie Monster one surprised us as he has never much cared about his stuffed toys then one night started yelling for his Cookie Monster and Big Bird. He used to go to bed so easily at around 7:30 or 8 but now it's closer to 9 and we can still usually hear him talking until around 10. GRRR, how frustrating!

Also we are quite proud of Keenan as he has been wearing big boy underwear full time for almost a month now. It is still definitely a work in progress as he usually doesn't tell us he needs to poo poo until it's starting to happen, then he'll look at us and say "yucky" while crouching down to do his business. But, he's getting better and better and we don't have too many accidents. I still watch the time like a hawk and if he hasn't mentioned going for a while then I'll sit him on the pot. At first I brought a small travel potty with us to the park and everywhere else we went but he wanted to be like daddy and stand up, so why fight it? All the Ukrainian kids pee at the park in the bushes or grass sooo, now Keenan does too.

I'm so proud!!

We had a BIG week! We've been casually trying to get Keenan to use his potty more. Mostly we (read Jessica) put Keenan on the potty when he first wakes up in the morning, before night time and sometimes a few times in between. Occasionally I'll keep him naked in the kitchen with me while I'm baking (or cleaning), he'll usually use the potty then but squat behind the table while I'm not looking to do his other business. So imagine my surprise when he was running around the house naked the other day when he caught my eye and suddenly said "uh oh, poo poo" we quickly ran to the potty to sit. After reading two books nothing had happened so I finally started to fix my hair while Keenan played, then he said "poo poo" again and sat down and had success! Yeah! Finally poo poo in the potty and not on the floor! Very exciting day for us! Needless to say I made a big deal about it and was cheering like crazy! Keenan was excited to get a "mellow" (marshmallow) .

Then on a few days later we were all playing "Rock Band"; Keenan was on air guitar until he got bored and wandered off. In the middle of a song I could hear that Keenan was playing the bathroom, sounded like he was messing with the toilet seat or something. Eric and I both ran in there to find him emptying his potty pan in the toilet and saying "poo poo". As you could imagine there was a bit of a mess but, he went poo poo all by himself! Yeah!! My little boy is growing up so quickly.

Is Keenan potty trained? If your idea of potty training means running around naked with me watching him like a hawk, well then kind of. If he thinks I'm not looking he'll take the opportunity to see what all he can pee on. If you mean does he use the potty more than his diaper, then "no". If the diaper is on then it's going to get filled but, I guess you've got to start some where.