I'm gonna say these guys are better than baby jesus.

First, this girl. Does anyone else get slayed by those eyeballs the way I do? One look and I'm like, okay, here's all my money and my car and my house and, fine, here's my heart and whatever else you want. Just take it!

Do not be deceived by her ability to hold her own bottle? She is still very averse to it despite about 4 months of trying to get her to take a bottle so Shan's boobs can get on to other tasks. She has developed her sibling's NO BENDING mantra, so she's basically like hauling around a chunk of lead.  She likes bouncing up and down and into things, and it'd be nice to have a conversation with her mom but she won't allow it.

Meanwhile, here's this.

His favorite thing to do is squats. The boy who never cries must do 1,000 squats a day and he's a whopping 4 months old. While he was home for Christmas, Gramma Shahin started beefing him up with rice cereal mixed with baby food. Like his dad, he hates pears. Like his dad, he also has a tiny baby afro. He squeals like a dinosaur when he's having fun and no one makes him laugh quite like Gramma. She better watch out though, because once they get big enough to enjoy a little horseplay, Auntie Amber quickly takes that honor.

These babies are the best gifts I got this year. Thanks Shan and Bubba.

Californians: Pink's Hot Dogs

Laila and I had to go to the mall to do some last minute Christmas purgatory crap. And that is when we discovered that a Pink's Hot Dogs had opened up a branch in the mall.

The iconic hot dog stand has been in Hollywood since the 1930s. Whenever we've driven past that one, there has always been a line of people out front, which we interpreted as an indication that we should never go there. Well, Laila and Tom had gone once and after some nostalgic discussion about the lady outside of Kmart who used to sell Laila bacon wrapped hot dogs from a portable grill, we found ourselves in line to get some Pink's. Guys, they have a veggie hot dog so I had no excuse.

No, this is not the true Californian Pink's experience. But it's enough for me because it spared me the traffic and the longer line. And it made me realize I need to resolve to enjoy more of the unique and awesome stuff this state has to offer. Alas, for 2017, I'm making it a goal to be a better Californian.

Emergency Christmas

When I started nursing, the holidays acquired a different kind of flavor. They're still joyful and special, but now they've got a layer of suicidal and despair on them.

It starts on Thanksgiving, which is usually calm enough during the day in the ER that we nurses can have a huge potluck. But at around 9pm, ambulances start rolling in with elderly, usually white, people who just can't take the lonely anymore and start having thoughts about putting their heads in the oven.

Christmas, well, Christmas in hospitals is linked with a diagnosis of "holiday heart." You eat too much, drink too much, put too much stress on your body from imbibing, and your heart starts to quiver from it all. We also get heart failure exacerbations and drunk driving accidents and suicidals in honor of the birth of Jesus. (On a side note, when women tell me there is no way they can be pregnant so there's no need to do a pregnancy test, I say, "Well, thanks to the Virgin Mary anyone under 55 has to get one." I'm your favorite nurse, right?) 

Miraculously, New Years Eves have become a bit of a bore thanks to Uber, which should probably get federal funding on New Years Eve and July 4th for all the accidents it prevents. The past couple of years we have super staffed our trauma bay only to find it was overkill. Better safe than sorry, except for every other day when we're desperately understaffed. 

Even as families are cuddling and enjoying their favorite foods, people are still dying on these holidays. I always knew that, but being on the fringe of that loss takes some of the sweetness away. Oh, and don't forget the 3% of PTSD I have from the shooting outside room 23 just before Christmas last year. 

The Emergency Department is hallowed ground. But even with all the death and disaster that it hosts, it also hosts miraculous feats of humankind. People who are doctors and nurses step in to situations that are disgusting and foreign and uncharted and do it with confidence, kindness, and a smile on their face. We gown up, don gloves, and dive in... most often to shit. Literal shit. This holiday I cleaned a man whose diarrhea was so abundant he was basically bathing in shit, a woman who had been laying in shit for so long it had started eating the skin off the back of her body, and another guy who had shit caked under his fingernails who kindly exposed me to fungal meningitis. 

To celebrate the season, my work had a hot cocoa and tamales celebration... we are multicultural even if we are religiously inappropriate sometimes. At the party (so glamorous it was in our break room), we had a photo booth. While looking at these pictures, it made me realize that I work with extraordinary people. Who else in my life would gown up, don gloves, and dive into the shit with me, even if it means they'll be exposed to something awful? The fact that people like this exist is kind of a miracle. That's something to celebrate.