Guess Who's Two...

It's hard to believe, but Nic is turning two today. He continues to bring us such joy with his infectious laugh, silly jokes, sweet snuggles, and incessant singing. He is particularly fond of "It's a Small World After All," "The Mighty Bruins," "Rudy Can't Fail," and "Jesus Name Above All Names." His musical taste is rather eclectic. His favorite things to listen to are The Clash and Psalty the Singing Songbook, with a little bit of The Gaslight Anthem thrown in for good measure. His favorite book to carry around is Good Night Moon, but the one he wants to read the most is The More We Are Together, and he still enjoys repeat readings of Moo, Baa, La La La. He LOVES basketball. His vocabulary has expanded quite a bit lately (yay for speech therapy) and he is regularly using at least ten words well and quite a few others sporadically. My favorite word that he uses is "dirty." The child loves to clean his hands. I may just get him a stack of napkins for his birthday! His newest way to express anger over silly toddler disappointments is to cry while sticking out his tongue and make a spitting sound. It is so pathetic and ineffectual that it is really really hard not to laugh....and so mostly we turn around so he can't see us giggling.








Nic's health has been great lately. He hasn't been to the emergency room since the beginning of March, and he continues to have no symptoms from his sickle cell disease. We haven't gotten back his latest hemoglobin electrophoresis yet (the test that tells us about his fetal hemoglobin levels), but we have gotten his latest hemoglobin count, and it has gone up a tiny bit from his last round of testing - he's at 10.8! While it's below "normal," for a child with sickle cell this is wonderful. We will see his hematologist on Wednesday. Please pray for more good results from his latest round of blood work and that Jeff and I would be able to process any new information we receive well, ask good questions, and make good use of our time at the appointment.

Discouraged

The doctor called today with the results from Mom's latest CT scan. The tumor did not shrink this time. We were pretty discouraged by this news.

On the bright side, the tumor also did not grow. In fact, Mom's doctor is perfectly happy with the results, because his goal is tumor stability, and that was achieved.

Mom and Dad meet with the doctor on Thursday to discuss the results and the continuation of Mom's treatment. Because the tumor was stable she can stay in the trial that she is currently in (if she gets worse she has to leave the trial), so that is good news.

Please pray for all of our spirits. Even though we know that Mom's type of tumor rarely shrinks during chemo, it did before so we were really hoping it would again, especially after how good Mom's blood work has been lately. Pray for wisdom for my parents as they meet with the doctor and discuss Mom's progress. And, of course, pray that Mom's cancer would be contained and that her tumor would shrink through this next round of chemo.

Update on Mary: CT Day

Mom has her CT today. In order to have the scan she has to drink Barium, and it makes her feel pretty crummy. Please pray that she can get it out of her system quickly, that the scan will go smoothly, and that the results will be good.
It takes at least two business days for them to read the scan, so the earliest we will hear anything is Tuesday afternoon, but it could be as late as Thursday when they call. Please keep us all in your prayers. These waits are nerve-wracking and the anticipation makes us all a little jumpy. Pray for peace and good sleep for Mom and Dad especially, although I know the rest of the family could use it too.
Thank you all for your continued support in this journey, it means the world to us. We are so grateful to have you praying with us.

True Story: I'm Exhausted!

Everyday for the past ten days I have thought to myself  "today maybe I will have a minute or two to myself and be able to write a blog post." HA! Clearly that has not happened. Life is very very full and very very busy right now, but we are having a great time being a whole family again.

We have had lots of adventures in the past ten days. I would recount in detail the wonderful airplane ride wherein all three boys and I took not one but two flights to get home, on a totally full airplane, but that would require me to relive it, and I don't know that I can do that and maintain my sanity. Suffice to say it was every parent's dream, complete with one melt-down so large that it attracted the attention of two flight attendants, and so much poop that I ran out of clothes to change children into. It was as if all my children conferred about the glories of pooping at high altitudes and then conspired to store up three day's worth in order to bombard me mid-flight as soon as we hit turbulence and the seat belt sign turned on. It was that good.

One might think that after such a fantastic journey it would be smooth sailing once we got here, but our first full day with me at home and Jeff at work was really poorly managed on my part and resulted in much misery for everyone involved. I am happy to report that since that day I have hit my stride and we are managing well, albeit in a home that is dirtier and more disorganized than usual. But when you consider that I have herded the children to three doctor's appointments, two blood draws, three library story times, a park play-date, multiple trips to Target, and two speech therapy appointments, and that I have rearranged the boy's room, made a hot dinner almost every night, done at least 12 loads of laundry, canned 11 pints of pickles (6 dill, 5 garlic-horseradish bread and butter), made two kinds of ice cream, put two batches of banana-chocolate chip pancakes in the freezer, dropped off a load of stuff at the salvation army, and started cloth diapering again...I'm feeling pretty accomplished. Now, if only I could clear off my desk, finally finish my thank you notes, and mail the birth announcements...well, a mother's work is never done.

A Brief Hello

The blog has been a little quiet lately as we've been working on figuring out our new normal. Amy assures me that a more substantial post is forthcoming, but in the meantime, here is a short video hello.

Update on Mary: Good Numbers

Mom got her last chemo of this round today!

Her white count was fantastic - 4600! Also her CA-19 marker was down again to 218 (for perspective, this is down from 1400 when this began, but a healthy person has a CA-19 of less than 35) . Anyhow, we will take any good news we can get. She has another CT scan at the end of next week. It usually takes a few business days to read the scan, so we should have some news by the very end of July or beginning of August. We are praying that the cancer would be contained and that the tumor will have shrunk more.

The chemo regime that mom is on is very hard on veins. Because mom has had a blood clot in the past (during pregnancy), she is at a high risk for having issues with clotting while on these drugs. Please pray that she will not have these problems and that her veins would stay strong and healthy.

Thank you all for your continued prayers. We are so thankful for all the good time we have had with mom in the past few months. The boys and I are back in IL and missing her, but glad to be with Jeff and back to our "normal" life. Even though I am far, I will continue to post updates, I just need to get someone else to send me some pictures. :-)

Swim Lessons, Part Two

After a few days of lessons Tommy experienced a major shift in his opinion about swimming. Instead of begging not to go, he began to ask if he could go. Much better.

At the end of the two weeks he was the first in his class to get in the water, was very enthusiastic about jumping off of the dive platform into the water, and was doing a little dog paddling on his own. He passed his class easily, but that is partially due to very low expectations for "passing."

We are very proud of our new swimmer!