Answers

Since at least one person expressed interest, at some point I will tell you about my interesting genealogical findings. As for now, I'll give the answers to the questions I got in comments:

First off, Dovid. He has ADHD and is a challenge all around. He still has accidents because he gets so engrossed in things that he does so he doesn't make it to the bathroom on time. He also talks a lot and has difficulty with social interaction. So he doesn't realize that the other person wants him to be quiet or just isn't interested in what he's talking about. He doesn't talk about the other kids at school much (except for one boy who I don't think is a mutual friend), so I don't know if he really has any friends. I hate thinking about how lonely he must be. But B"H he is very smart, so academically he does quite well. I'm always impressed with the things that he knows.

Right now not TTC and not planning on any more kids in the near future. I am quite content (and overwhelmed) with 4. Maybe once these guys get older and less of a handful I might have a change of heart, but I am too busy to think otherwise at this point.

As for work, I cannot get into a midwifery practice because no one wants a new graduate midwife (especially one without many years of labor & delivery experience). So I'm a bit stuck unless I want to go into a home birth practice or private practice, neither of which is a viable option for me.

I'm getting my doctor of nursing practice degree in midwifery, though at this point I'm not sure what I'm going to do with it. My end goal was to be a midwife, and now I just feel so worn out by it that I think retirement is my end point. haha

You Miss Me?

How surprised was I today to see that someone was looking for an update and that I hadn't posted anything since last August when I became a CNM. I'm not really sure why I don't update more. I am busy - doing my DNP, working, kids - but not so busy that I can't take a few minutes to say hello to anyone who is still reading. *waves to all of my "fans"*

The nine months have not been particularly eventful. The twins are in 2nd grade and doing fairly well. Dovid is on a medication that has made him much easier to handle at school, though he still struggles with anything related to social interaction. Chana is progressing steadily and hopefully will be able to continue on to 3rd grade with Dovid next year. Tzipora has whizzed her way through kindergarten and can read! She's got a lot of sight words down, and we are all super proud of her. She also is friends with basically her entire class. Gavriella is also having fun in her first year at "school" in the 3-year-old class. She's an adorable gem, and I love it when her teachers send me photos of all of the fun things she is doing in class.

As for me, I /finally/ got a job, but not as a midwife. I was hired to work as a labor and delivery nurse (part-time nights). This is not ideal, but it is work. Meanwhile, I am plugging along with my doctoral studies and will hopefully finish in September. At that point you can all call me doc. :D

In about a week, we're going to be attending a family reunion with my grandfather and people from that side of the family that none of us have met. My mom, Uncle Ron, my sister and brother-in-law will also be there. It's going to be very exciting, and I promise to take lots of pictures and actually post about it. Maybe I'll get back into a groove or something... Feel free to leave a comment if you want me to post about something in particular. I feel as though I don't know what to talk about. I've made some pretty interesting genealogical discoveries over the past few months, but I doubt they would be interesting to anyone outside of my family.

Certified Nurse Midwife

I know I do not post here very often, but exciting things don't happen very often, and I have no idea if anyone even comes to look at my blog any more. My day to day life seems pretty dull to me, especially because I have been in school for so long (seems like forever). None of my kids remember a time when I wasn't in school studying for something. They have no idea who Mommy is when she doesn't have her nose in a book. I started my pre-requisites for nursing school in January 2010, when my twins were not even a year old. My now 5-year-old was conceived during my first semester of pre-requisites, and my almost 3-year-old was born about two months after becoming an RN. My goal from day one was to become a midwife, even though it seemed like that day would never come.

It took six and a half years of blood, sweat, and many tears. These last few semesters of midwifery clinicals nearly broke me entirely. There were times when I wondered if I really should be doing this. I was beaten down so hard that I thought I would never graduate, even after spending all of that time and money. But, after eight months of clinicals, I did graduate (finally!). I got my congratulatory email from my school the day after my birthday last week. But even though that gave me my master's in nursing, I still could not call myself a midwife. Not until today...

Today I passed the AMCB (American Midwifery Certification Board) exam which makes me a CNM (Certified Nurse Midwife).

I took this selfie right after getting into my car after passing the exam. I studied my brains out over the last week, and it paid off.

I wish I could tell you that I'm done with school, but there is one piece left for me to accomplish. I am going to do my school's 9-month DNP program for my doctorate. Once that is finished I will be 100% done with school, and then you'll be able to call me Dr. Kahn. (I've always wanted to be called that. See 90's Nickelodeon TV show Salute Your Shorts if you don't know why.)

My next step is to find a midwifery position in my area, though that is proving to be somewhat difficult. I have interviewed at several hospitals, but most (if not all) places want someone with at least some midwifery experience or at least some labor and delivery RN experience. I have neither. In the meanwhile, I will be working at Roxbury Community College as a maternity clinical instructor for their nursing students and hopefully will pick up some doula clients to keep improving birth on a small scale even if I'm not working as a midwife (yet).

Huge Update (Part 2)

In November 2014, Ron, Gavriella, and I attended Rhode Island Comic Con in Providence, RI. Once again, we had a fabulous time meeting interesting people. I dressed up like Tauriel from The Hobbit.

Here I am with Colin Baker, most noted for being the 6th Doctor in Doctor Who.

We all then got to meet John Rhys-Davies, who played Gimli in Lord of the Rings and Sallah in Indiana Jones.

Gavriella got along really well with George Takei, who played Sulu in Star Trek. He was so sweet to her and kept shaking her hand.

From that point, school and work basically took over my life. When I wasn't doing one, I was doing the other, except during my two week breaks between semesters. In the spring of 2015 I started to get back into acting, something I did quite a bit of as a teen and that I miss doing. I auditioned for many student and other films, and I was lucky enough to be cast in a few of them.

The first one I did was called "The Edible Phase." It's an incredibly creepy 2 minute film with no dialogue and a whole lot of symbolism. See if you can get through the whole thing. haha You only get to see my face at the beginning, but if you stay until the end you get to see Gavriella make her film debut.



I was also cast in many roles in a horror film that is hopefully coming out in November called "Once Upon a Deadtime Story." I don't have any clips from that, but when it comes out I will be sure to share with you how you can see it. On the same day that I filmed my first scene for the horror movie, I also filmed a short called "The Catcher," where I play a hypnotist. You can watch that one, and it is much less creepy than the first film though still somewhat creepy.



I haven't been cast in anything since then, though I have sent in quite a few auditions for things. Hopefully I'll have the opportunity to participate in more things as time goes on.

In May, I took a two-day trip to New York to meet my grandpa for the first time. I know I wrote about finding my mother's birth family way back in 2013, but this was the first opportunity I've had to meet her birth father. Grandpa Joel is a hoot! We had a great time together, and I wish he lived closer so I could see him more often and introduce him to the kids. We didn't exactly get the greatest picture of the two of us, but it's something.

We attended another comic con within the last few weeks called MASSive Comic Con in Worcester, MA. Our entire purpose was to go see Sean Astin again, and we actually ran into him completely by accident on the way out of the parking lot into the convention. He is a real gentleman and talked to us for over 10 minutes as a line formed at his booth. We took a video, but it's not very good. Either you can see us well and not hear us or hear us well and not see anything. haha But feel free to enjoy it anyway!


That brings us almost entirely up to date. I will do my best to post more regularly, but no promises. School and work have me running like a nutcase, though I am grateful for both! I will be starting clinicals for school in November, but I'll be doing them about an hour and a half from Boston. Sounds like a lovely commute, doesn't it? But it's all I have, and I will take it gladly!

Huge Update (Part 1)

Whoops... I can't believe it's been almost a year and a half since my last post. That's unreal!! So much has happened since then that I don't really know where to begin with it all...

Back in August 2013, even before Gavriella was born, I started a bachelor of science in nursing (BSN) program at Western Governors University. I continued the program after Gavriella was born, really pushing through as hard and fast as I could. I was able to complete the entire thing in 5 months and earned my degree at the very beginning of January 2014.

I made my sort of annual trip to Missouri just around then (Jan 2014) and was able to meet my student mentor from WGU, since she lives in the area that I was visiting. It was perfect timing, and my trip was awesome as a whole. I brought Gavriella along with me so she could see all of the people who were so excited when I first got pregnant the year before. I also got to meet some new people, which included my friend Heavyn's other best friend, Victoria. Less than a month later, the day before Heavyn's birthday, Victoria was tragically killed in a car accident. I feel so privileged to have met her and had the chance to spend the afternoon together before she died. I'm only sorry I didn't take a picture with her to remember our time.

I had another fun travel experience in March 2014, when I went to Louisville, KY for Louisville Comic Con. Gavriella came with me, of course, and we got to meet some fantastic people.

For example, Matt Smith (The 11th Doctor from Dr Who)

Karen Gillan (Amy Pond from Dr Who)

Jon Heder (Napoleon Dynamite)

And Sean Astin! (He's in too many films to name them all, but most importantly he was Samwise Gamgee in Lord of the Rings)

Sean loved getting to hold Gavriella. We had spoken via Skype about 6 weeks prior to the convention, so he was looking forward to this for weeks. It was funny, because the first time I walked up and saw him he didn't recognize me for a minute, but when he finally did his face lit up and he came around the table to give me a big hug. If you call my phone, you can hear his personalized outgoing voicemail message.

The day after I got back from Louisville I started my first hospital nursing job as a med/surg float pool RN at Carney Hospital. I worked per diem for there for a little over a year.

We had a bit of some turnover with childcare over the course of the past year, but our one rock is our 'manny' Ron. His first trip from his old home in New York to his new home here in Boston was in March 2014. Starting in May he was commuting from NY to Boston (and back) every week to help us out. He finally made the official move to Boston a few months ago.

Right after finishing my BSN I applied to an MSN+DNP program in midwifery at Frontier Nursing University. Ever since I decided I wanted to be a midwife, that is where I wanted to study. I didn't really have any other option in my head, and I made the deadline to apply in order to do my orientation in May and start classes in July...I only had to be accepted. I got that acceptance letter at the beginning of March, attended the orientation in Hyden, KY in May, and began my first classes in July.

The kids had a decent school year in 2013-2014. Chana and Dovid were at Torah Academy in the pre-k, and Tzipora was at a family play group. Even though there were struggles, the kids got through. During the summer they all went to Camp Shemesh, and during one of the weeks in between camp and school they traveled down to DC to visit with Aunt Shira and Uncle Ben. They had a wonderful trip and got to experience a week of camp down in Virginia.

In early August 2014, I got to attend Boston Comic Con with the whole family. I had the opportunity to introduce all of them to Sean Astin, and I got to meet John Barrowman (Captain Jack from Dr Who).

John had a particularly good time making Gavriella laugh. At first she was a bit leery, but then she cheered up, as you can see.

I think that is plenty for you to read for now, but more updates will follow. I promise!