Just treats, no tricks

We went to the Lobers' to trick-or-treat tonight, and it worked out perfectly. The kids had a great time, and tore through the Lobers' development like a little mob. . (You don't actually even need to give them the sugar, you know, for kids to become hyper and crazy. Just the promise of it is enough to jack them up.)

So here are a few pictures of our night. Happy Halloween everybody! :)

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I decided to pull my whiny, melodramatic rant off of here. The world will be a better place for it. Or, at least, my blog will be. :)

Angels with Sticky Faces

Katie found an angel costume in a bag of hand-me-downs today, and she immediately put it on and began floating around the house proclaiming heavenly things in a sing-songy sort of way. As I was getting ready to do the elliptical machine, Katie was standing in the middle of the basement singing, "You must all share your things.......You must all be kind to each other.... You need to love God...." Nobody was paying her any particular attention.

Fast forward about 15 minutes (I can never go long on the elliptical without being interuppted), I had taken my headphones off and noticed Katie standing over Beth, who was innocently enough laying on the floor and drawing. Katie was angelically singing:

Beth! I fear that you are going to hell!
Oh dear Beth, you are going to go to hell!

Beth, being Beth, didn't even realize that Katie was there. And Katie, who didn't previously know that telling someone they are going to hell is included in "bad words," was immedietly enlightened. And I found myself again stumped by the philosophy of my children. Do angels know, before a person dies, if they are going to hell for certain or not?

Never once before having children did it occur to me that I would one day sit at the computer with my 7 year old daughter, googling variations on "angels and damnation." But there I was. It's an interesting life.

$32 in pumpkins

This is what happens when you foolishly say, "Pick whichever pumpkin you want!"
Beth's alone weighs more than she does, I think.

Katie's birthday- a picture retrospective

Birthday Celebretion: Part II happens in a week, with the Discovery Zone and the Beloved Jonathan!

Did you know?

A bag of flour, when emptied upside-down on the kitchen floor by an unnamed child, makes a really big mess. It is much more tricky to clean up than you would think, especially when said child runs in a panic through the pile of flour, leaving little white footprints to follow her sobs throughout the house.

And when another child wakes up prematurely from her nap (because of the sobs and the pounding footsteps) and also begins to scream, and you frantically try to fill her cup with milk to calm her down because you just realized that it is almost time to pick the other children up from school (because you lost track of time, you see, sweeping up clouds of flour that resettle into even more piles of flour), and you spill the milk all over a pile of flour still on the floor.....well then, you have made glue. Except that this glue smells kind of funky. And I really wasn't planning on gluing anything onto the kitchen floor (which, by the way, is wood - like, real actual hardwood.)

All of the newly expecting mothers I know right now - write this down and remember this. Because they will not tell you these stories in your parenting magazines and "what to do when" books. And they certainly will not offer advice on how to scrape homemade glue off of your floors.

You know the meal you've prepared is not a winner when....

....your 21 month old daughter says, "I don't like this! I need to throw in garbage."

Have iTunes?

I made a CD of songs that pertain to Abbie's situation. It's available on iTunes through imix. I thought I'd post the songs, because taken all together I think it really captures the way this all feels. A word of warning, though! We are lovers of Rock here, so....uh, some of these songs might not appeal to everyone. :)

The Tumor Mix

1- Theme from Blinking Lights..............................The Eels
2-Blackbird...............................................................CSN
3-Bad Day.................................................................Danial Powter
4-Wires......................................................................Athlete
5-Wonder...................................................................Natalie Merchant
6-We're All in this Together....................................Old Crow Medicine Show
7-Sometimes You Can't Make it on your Own.....U2
8-I Will Keep the Bad Things From You...............The Damnwells
9-The Funeral...........................................................Band of Horses
10-Alive......................................................................Pearl Jam
11-Daughter with It's Okay.....................................Pearl Jam (Live from Quickens Loan Arena)
12-Glosoli....................................................................Sigur Ros


A bit of an explanation:

3- This is Abbie's favorite song, hands down. And it is pretty relevant, since she's had quite a few "bad days." She started asking me to sing this to her in the hospital, and it's now a ritual (that we go through many, many, many times whenever we go back.)

4 - this song is about a baby born prematurely, but the lines "Running....down corridors....got to get to you, got to see this through" explain exactly how I feel any time I'm obliged to leave the hospital for a bit. And I love the lines, "I see it in your eyes, I see it in your eyes....You will be alright."

5- This is really more a tribute to my cousin, Mary, who passed away as an infant. I remember hearing my aunt and uncle say that it made them think of her, and it has made me think of her ever since. Mary has been in my mind constantly ever since Abbie's tumor was first diagnosed, and I ask her to intercede for Abbie all of the time. I have to believe that her innocent little soul praying for my innocent little child has to be very powerful.

8- This song is more of a love song, but I really identify with the desire to "keep the bad things from you."

11- Pearl Jam only plays this live, but the "It's Okay" segway has always been a favorite with our kids. This is another song I sing to Abbie all the time when we are in the hospital. The main lyrics are "It's okay...It's okay, you don't have to run and hide away. It's okay...It's okay, you know we've all seen better days."

12- This song was on constant repeat in my mind during both of Abbie's major surgeries. It's not in english, but it is clearly a song about a journey -- a long, difficult journey. The video shows children marching over mountains until they get to a cliff, and jump off..........and they all fly away. It is beautiful, and poignant, and one of my favorite songs of all time. And for me it reflects the hope I have that Abbie is going to be okay, and stronger for this ordeal. And the hope, or really the conviction, that no matter what she is in good Hands.


So, anyways, here's the link to the imix. If it doesn't work, I can email a link to you through iTunes. It's not worth it, though, unless you are actually going to buy all of the songs. But I thought I'd put it out there, just in case. :)

Here's the link from my email:

Congratulations, your iMix "Soundtrack to living with an ill child" has been published in the iTunes Music store at:http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewIMix?id=201489222

Hooray!

We just came home from meeting with Abbie's oncologists as well as her surgeon, Dr. Myseros, and thus far things are looking good! Finally! :)

The tumor does not seem to have grown at all, although the MRI showed some areas with increased dye uptake. That does not necessarily point to anything bad, however; it could be due to any number of things, most of them either indifferent or, gasp!, positive. Since she is doing so well physically there is little cause for concern at this point.

So, two more months of chemo and then another MRI. But we're finally starting to feel a little more hope that things will continue to go well. I was all tied up in knots on the drive to DC this morning, but when we came home I suddenly noticed what a gorgeous day it is! Thank God for the fall, and for allowing us to enjoy it with our beautiful little girls!

Beth measures my worth, and I rate pretty OK

It is kind of "cheating" to just throw up posts with quotes from the girls, but I hope it is at least amusing.

Here's one from Beth. (The best ones always come from Beth, in case you haven't noticed!)

Mommy, I think you are the second best Mommy ever! Because I think Mary was probably a little bit better.

So far, nothing to report

No word on Abbie's MRI yet. We have an appointment with oncology next Thursday, so we'll definitely know by then.

For now, here's a little story to keep you preoccupied. :)

On our last visit to the clinic at Sinai, we were sitting in the room with two doctors and a nurse, doing something or other (I can't remember what.) When Claire suddenly turned to me and said, "I don't know if you love me. Because you spank me all the time!"

For the record, I've spanked her once. About four months ago. And she was totally asking for it.

If I said I wasn't worried about Abbie's upcoming MRI...

I would be lying.

I'm not very worried, but......you know. We haven't had a "good" MRI yet, so it's hard to not be a little anxious.

Good news most likely awaits us, but........if you have a prayer to throw our way, we won't turn it down. :)

Fun with cancer

You can tell how well Abbie is doing and how small and quiet my worries about her are, by the fact that I am about to whine and complain about small stuff.

So, here I go! To begin with, Abbie is just fine. Her fever was already gone by the time I took her to the clinic. I apparently made a mistake by telling the answering service that it was "not an emergency" when I called the day her fever appeared. It's hard to switch your perspective that way -- a little fever, coming a few days after another child has had the same, really mild, illness just doesn't feel like an emergency. However, because of Abbie's weakened immune system coupled with the fact that her broviac provides any bacteria quick and easy access to her heart, any fever (even if it's below 100) needs to be treated as an emergency. I was told that any infection would take less than 24 hrs to put her into septic shock. So, we don't have the time to determine if the fever is in fact related to infection; she needs to go on antibiotics right away.

That being said, no-one really thought that she had an infection with this fever. But it's a chance that we just can't take, no matter how benign it seems. So.....here comes the whine.....we ended up spending two days at the oncology clinic so they could give her the antibiotics. (We didn't spend the night, and the actual administration of the medication took about half an hour. But, it's just the way things go there; you show up bright and early in the morning, and by the time you get away it's almost time to pick up the older girls from school. Just a lot of sitting around and waiting.) It's not a huge deal. I understand that the clinic is very busy, and I understand that the hospital pharmacy has to prioritize which medication to make -- so they guy in danger of imminent death upstairs trumps my baby downstairs, which is fine, of course. I never actually want us to be the ones prioritized; it's much better to be healthier and on the periphery than in danger and the center of attention.

But......um, spending the day entertaining two little kids in the rather dull oncology clinic isn't exactly fun. Especially when your mind momentarily went beserk, and you forgot to pack enough supplies to last four or five hours. (On day 2, I had enough food to keep the entire clinic fed for a week, but of course we ended up getting out of there about an hour earlier than we had the day before, when all I had was a baggie full of Cheeze-its.)

So, waah-waah-waah, poor us. We happened to be there when one of the nurses went into labor with her baby, though, so that was cool to hear. I hope her labor went well! Maybe I should have offered up my boredom for her and her baby.......