see ya, sucker!

Actually, Abbie's Occupational Therapist is a wonderful woman, and she has been great with Abbie. I'll actually miss her. But she's outta here!

Yup, Abbie is doing well enough that she was discharged from OT yesterday. We'll still probably see a PT/OT through the state about twice a week, but Abbie's last evaluation has her just a month or two behind where she should be.

This is such a happy moment for us. Chris and I were talking last night about our friends' daughter, who is a year younger than Abbie, and who has recently begun to crawl. I remember when they came to visit right after Abbie's first surgery, and I realized that Ella was stronger and more mobile at 3 months than Abbie was at 17 months. It made me so sad, and it really drove home just how much the surgery had affected her.

But here we are, a mere four months later, and Abbie is back to crawling up and down the stairs and running around the house. She can totally dust Ella if she wants to!

It's crazy how resiliant she is. The OT told me yesterday that Abbie is really doing everything, naturally, that she needs to do in order to improve. I know that she is really too young to feel sorry for herself, but it is still amazing to me that she just keeps chugging away despite all of the trauma she has gone through. And she keeps smiling, and laughing, and teasing everybody with that sweet little way that babies have.

Holy cow, I love this kid.

Tricky

Today is the first Football Sunday of the season! All must now bow down to the big-screen tv, and the large men running around on it.

This is an important time for Chris. He bought all of the girls brand-new Ravens shirts, and then he hunkered down in the basement to revel in the first full day of football since last year. It's been a long, sad off-season for him.

The girls were really great today, spending some time watching the game with him downstairs but mainly playing either upstairs or outside.

And then, about an hour before bedtime, Katie revolted.

She did it subtly. It could not have been more smooth had she been a criminal mastermind who had spent months planning it with a crack team of other criminal masterminds.

I was working on assembling a bookcase in the living room, and Katie quietly slipped away and went downstairs. Where she told Chris that she thought I needed his help. And then casually mentioned that she might flip the channel - just for a minute - while he was away.

I didn't need help. Chris came upstairs just long enough to ascertain this, and then he immediately realized that he had been snookered.

Maybe she really did think that I needed help. I was using tools and stuff, and maybe that seemed like the sort of thing a pregnant woman shouldn't be messing with alone. Or maybe she just wanted to catch up on a few minutes of Animal Planet. It was probably a mixture of both. But the fact is, no-one could have read the situation better and then turned it to her own advantage better than Katie did. Except Chris.

This may seem like I am bragging about my child being sneaky, but that's really not the case. I know she sincerely thought I needed help. But when she acted on her assumptiom, she knew it was only an assumption and she knew it would buy her a few minutes with the t.v. And it makes me laugh, because that is pure Chris. She may not look just like him, but she more than any of the girls is her father's daughter. Chris writ small, and female, and way too smart.

Microcosm

Chris: All I want is to get a little bit of peace in this world.

Me: I think having five kids was the wrong way to go about that.

This happened last week, but it still has me giggling

One good thing about the older girls going to school is that Claire and Abbie have suddenly become Big Buddies. Previously, they were really more Tolerant Rivals, so I'm glad to see the change.

My mom asked me the other day if I have to worry about Claire overpowering Abbie, but the truth is that, despite her sweet and gentle demeanor, if there is any bullying going on between the two of them I can almost be guaranteed that Abbie is not the victim.

For example:

Last week the two younger girls were playing in the living room while I was helping the two older ones with homework. At some point Claire decided to abandon the game, and she went to the basement door to go downstairs. Abbie was following right on her heels, though, and slammed the door shut before Claire could get through. So Claire opened the door again, and again Abbie slammed it shut. This happened three or four times before Chris, who was in the basement and thought that Claire was just playing with the door, yelled up to her to leave the door closed.

Claire moaned at how unfair it was, but the look on Abbie's face said it all. She knew she was the victor. Abbie very gently took Claire's hand, and in a tone that implied just accept it and be a good loser, said to Claire, "Come on, dear" and led her back to the living room.

And Claire went.

Our family is beginning to cramp our style....

I just realized today that we really need to change our Sunday morning mass routine.

We have always been the types who sneak into the church mere seconds before the processional begins. (OK, in the interest of honesty-- sometimes it's during the processional.) We have a hard time gettting there early. I don't really even know why; it has always been like this, even before the advent of our children. Even before marriage -- I barely made it to mass on time back in the days when the only person I needed to concern myself with was me. I have some very fond memories of running through campus in high heels, trying to maintain modesty while still achieving maximum speed. (This differs from my weekday college memories, where I was still running, but in sweatpants and tennis shoes, and I had farther to go.)

So, we have this problem. But now, instead of slipping into a pew in the back, we are faced with a more complicated scenario; we have to find a pew that will fit ALL of us, and we have to somehow do it as unobtrusively as possible while herding four (and soon to be more) squirrely little girls through the quiet church.

It can't be done. Let's face it, it just can't.

We have to change. Get our act together. Organize our lives. Get on the ball and all that.

Darn it.

First day of school.....a little late

So far, so good! Eh, more or less. Katie came home from her first day very happy, and claiming that she had already made a friend. Beth had a great time, too, although it's nearly impossible to get any details from her.

More later, but I wanted to get this picture up! :)

Scenes that warm the heart...

Peeking my head into the living room tonight, I saw Abbie, who was very tired tonight, laying on the floor. Beth had put a little pillow under her head, covered her with a baby blanket, and was just about to lay down beside her to read her a story.

I love it when they take care of each other!!!

Just for my own amusement

Let's see if this works

Good answer

Yesterday, Abbie was doing her "Mommy pilllow!" routine, where she insists that I lay with her on the couch. I was getting frustrated because there were things I needed to do, and at one point I snapped, "Abbie, I am really not that great!"

Beth, who overheard me, immediately replied, "Well Mom, to her you ARE"

Not the answer we were expecting

I am not feeling very well today. Maybe it's the death-throes of my twenties, maybe it's the sleepless nights due to the steroids that Abbie is on, or maybe, just maybe it's the baby making me sick.

As I was laying on the couch in a stupor this afternoon, after conspicuously and rudely crashing in front of a friend who was here visiting (and who had so nicely brought us dinner -- I'm so sorry I was grouchy, Vanessa!), Chris jokingly told the girls that the baby was being naughty in my tummy. He loves to bait them, so he turned to Claire and asked her, "Should we spank the baby? That's not nice to make Mommy sick!"

Claire calmly turned to him and said, "No. That would be disgusting. She would have blood everywhere."

Uh -- who would have......? what would.....? I so do not want to know what Claire was visualizing in her head!

Poolside Reflections

The girls and I were having a quiet afternoon in the pool, when the differences between boys and girls became very, very clear to me. At first we were all just calmly doing our own thing - Claire and Beth were cruising the perimeter of the pool, Katie was swimming from one side to the other, and I was lounging and reading. The change came within seconds -- the quiet sounds of gentle splashing suddenly turned to screams and squeals, the calm water of the pool began to violently splash over the sides, the very air was charged with chaos. What made this huge difference? Chris.

He is incapable of #1 - getting into the pool without a big jump and splash #2 - refraining from picking up every body in sight and tossing them around. He even threw me, which is no small feat!

It's fun, I have to admit, to have this overgrown little boy horsing around. But he can't understand why the girls get nervous when he gets near them, and we can't understand why he can't just.....leave us alone. It would be boring without at least this one boy around. But it would be quieter! ;)

On another note:

Claire is a fish. Seriously, she is just a natural swimmer. If you toss her in the pool, she immediately starts to swim. The only problem here being -- she can't actually swim with her head above the water, but man she can zip around anywhere with it undernieth.

(For the life of me, I can't remember how to spell "underneith." Does the i come first or the e??? All those years of spelling lessons down the drain!)

It is just the cutest thing to watch her go, so fearlessly, in the water! It makes us both so happy. Little Larry in her natural element. Except that she doesn't have gills. And she thinks she does.

Growing up........kind of

Yesterday, I took Katie and Beth with me to the evening mass. Afterwards, while Beth picked acorns for her "nature collection" (a plastic bag with various rotting and molding specimens from the great outdoors. This is her greatest treasure, and she always "needs" to pick up a new acorn after mass,) Katie paraphrased the homily for me. She remembered it remarkably well, and had understood the gist of it.

Afterwards, we ran to the pharmacy and then to the store, and Katie bagged the groceries while I used the self-checkout. As we left, I complimented her on the great job she did bagging (she really did!) and she replied, "Well, I was just pretending that I was on Endurance (a rip-of off Survivor for kids) and I had their music in my head."

After reflecting a moment, she said, "I think I'm becoming very grown up. I have a lot of grown-up thoughts now."

Not Everything that happens in Vegas...stays in Vegas

I'm pregnant.

Stop. Take a moment to breathe. Yes, I am pregnant.

So....let's chat for a moment. I am guessing that a lot of people will hear this news, and think, "What? These people are crazy!!! Don't they already have a baby -- a baby with a brain tumor??? Haven't they already had to make major life changes because they are already overwhelmed? Stupid, rabbit-like breeding Catholics!"

Well, here is the truth: I have moments when I am very scared. I don't know what our life is going to look like 8 months from now. We know that Abbie will need 6 weeks of radiation, but we don't know when that will be. We don't know how sick the chemo will make her, or if it will even work at all. I don't know what it will be like to have the girls in a traditional school - as the first day looms, I'm starting to wonder if we've actually just created more work for ourselves rather than less. I can't see the future, and it worries me that this baby will arrive in a time of chaos, frustration, or - dear God forbid - sorrow. I am afraid.

This, though, is also the truth: I have moments when I am filled with an absolute glowing joy, thinking of the life growing quietly inside of me. In my heart I knew that our family was not yet complete, and it is exciting and wonderful to think that our family has not yet been defined, and that we are one step closer to becoming who we were meant to be. And I can think of many, many positives this baby will bring to our family. I am excited. We are all excited, and we are all happy to have something so positive - an adorable, sweet-smelling, funny little baby- to look forward to.

So, there we are. Feel free to discuss among yourselves, I just ask that you keep the three Socratic filters in mind while you discuss my family:

• Is it True?
• Is it Useful?
• Is it Good?

(And P.S. to Carol B. -- this title was just for you!!!! :) )

The next phase

We had Abbie's oncology appointment yesterday, and they told us that they do not really expect chemotherapy to shrink the tumor at this point. We are starting a new protocol, but this is really just to buy time before we have to move to radiation. The danger of radiation is much higher in children under 3, so if we can get through this next year and a half without the tumor growing it would be best.

So she's be getting a new chemo every day for five days, and then we'll have a 28 day reprieve. Then five days of chemo again, etc. After the second round, we'll get another MRI to see if the tumor has spread. If it hasn't, then they'll put her on a regimen where she will be getting chemo every day - the initial stronger medication layered with other, less-intense, medication. If the tumor HAS grown, though, we will need to move straight to radiation regardless of her age.

The biggest danger with this chemo is her platelet count -- so we'll be monitoring that closely. And, of course, we are worried about the tumor continuing to grow. Please pray that the tumor stops growing with this new medication -- we just need to squeak through these next 18 months. I am resigned to the need for radiation, but the longer we can hold it off, the better.

Regardless of when she gets it, though, it will probably not happen here. Because of her age, they recommend that we take her to Boston, where they have some super-new radiation thing that will affect less surrounding tissue. They are guessing that it will take about 6 weeeks, so, uh, that will be an interesting juggling act. I guess we'll just temporarily move to Boston? I don't know. But I guess that's really the least of our problems right now.

Hard decisions and brave little girls

We are not going to homeschool this year.

This decision comes by many hours of anguished prayer and hard, hard thought. But with all that we have going on in this family right now, I have to be honest with myself and face my limitations as a parent, and as a homeschooler. And it's just all too much, it is something that I know I can't do well this year.

So we told Katie and Beth two days ago, and my heart was in my throat as we sat them down at the table. In the end, I couldn't compose myself, and Chris had to do all the talking. Katie was, as we knew she would be, very upset. She loves Christiana, and she loves her friends there, and she loves having me work in the nursery. But I can't tell you how proud, and amazed, and humbled I was to watch this little girl have her cry out, and then pull herself together and just.......accept the change. She hasn't whined or complained or moped since; instead this 6 year old kid has listed the positive things that will come from going to "regular school," and has talked to me about ways she'd like to stay in touch with her CHA friends.

This is a blow to Katie, no mistake. But she's handled the bad news with more grace and dignity than most adults I know, and I am so so so proud of her. What a brave kid. What a smart kid. My hope now is that in the future I can handle major change with the grace of my little redheaded daughter.


(Oh, and Beth? Her reaction was very typical Beth: "Um, okay!" and off she ran to play in her room.)

Kiss the hurt away

I have ugly knees. It's just a reality, and I am OK with it. All those years of crawling around on the floor after my children haven't really helped matters, and I now have scabby, dry, flaky knees that make pedicurists cringe in horror.

Today, Abbie was playing in the living room when she suddenly came over to me with a concerned look on her face. "Aww," she said, cocking her quirky little face at me, "boo-boo!"
And then she slowly bent down the neck that bears a red and raw scar that extends about 1/2 way up her head, and she kissed my knees.

I've gotta think that when Christ said, "The kingdom of Heaven belongs to such as these," this was exactly the sort of thing He was talking about.

Fighting Fear

So, how are we doing?

We're doing really well. We are happy and relieved to see Abbie regain her lost arm and leg strength. We are glad to be back home, glad to be back among the girls, glad to have Abbie back with them. We are hopeful, hopeful that she won't need to undergo anymore dangerous surgeries, hopeful that we may be able to avoid radiation. We are overjoyed to see Abbie laugh, and dance, and try to run.

But, as happy as we are, under all of this runs an icy stream of fear. I've found myself suddenly paranoid about all sorts of things that I never sweated before: will the girls fall off the swingset? will Katie fall off her bunk bed? will Beth fall down the stairs? will Claire bang her head on the coffee table when she (again) jumps off the couch after (again) being told not to? It's as though, having once breached the nest of protection we thought we had wrapped our children in, Danger may now swoop in at any moment, at any unexpected time.

The moment of crisis, I've found, is often the easiest. When the oncologist at Sinai showed up in the waiting room that first time to tell me that it was a miracle my baby could walk, I could almost hear the clink as my emotions shut down, as I went totally numb. This time again, standing in the neurosurgeons office, looking at the MRI images that showed a tumor much bigger than it should be, I again almost heard that clink. Almost my first reaction was to laugh. You can't be serious. This couldn't possibly be real.

It's in the time after the danger has passed that I start to panic. When things slow down, I have the leisure to think about what could have happened, how close to disaster we were. I have the time to think about all the ways things could still go bad. Chris is so good in this way, his optimism really keeps me more grounded. But, deep down, I am still afraid.

This has been a summer for tragedies, it seems. We keep hearing about so many people this summer who have lost their children in terrible, unbearable ways. And I can't help thinking, what makes me think God will spare us when He doesn't spare these others? Putting your trust in God does not mean that He will keep all pain from you.

The Saturday before Abbie's last surgery, I ran into the National Basilica (which is convieniently just down the road from Children's) for mass, and heard a homily that seemed tailor-made for me. The priest was talking about the loaves and fishes, and he said, "People often think that God does not answer their prayers. But it's just that He gives us what we need, not what we want."

I read a paraphrase of a speech Fr. Groeshel gave at the wake of little Joshua Schmiedicke, the son of FUS alumni who died in a car accident last month, and I am trying to hold onto it for my own peace. So weak of me to be so disjointed when I still have the comfort of my little one sitting in my lap. But here's some of what he said, and I am trying to keep it firmly in mind when I'm overwhelmed with my own fears:

Why does God allow this kind of suffering? Regina mentions Joshua's favorite movie was The Passion of the Christ. In that movie, we see the Blessed Mother following her Son to Calvary. And the entire time, Mary was asking Why? Why does he have to suffer? Why does he have to be scourged? Why the crown of thorns? Why the cross? Stop it, please, please stop it.


But God did not stop it. He suffered, He died. And that is his only answer to the question of why.

Do not ask God 'Why?' Ask Him 'What?' What can I do? What can be done with my life, and what should I do to gain Heaven? For Jesus also asked why, on the Cross! Therefore, if our Lord asked why, and was answered by death on the Cross, so must we suffer with the loss of earthly possession, our earthly body, and our earthly selfishness.

What having a hole in your head actually looks like

Here is my little war-veteran:




Here she is at home, the next day:

A little aside: if things continue at this rate, by the time she reaches adulthood, Abbie will be half-human, half-machine. I wonder if her surgeon would be willing to give her laser-shooting eyes, just for fun.

Home!

I am very happy to report that we are back home already! The recovery from this last surgery is much easier than the first one, and Abbie is already walking around the house. Babies are amazing!!!

We immediately saw improvement after the shunt was placed, so that most likely means that most of her symtoms were due to that, and not to the tumor growth. This is a big relief, and it will most likely mean that we'll have more options for treatment. We don't meet with oncology until next week, so I don't know for sure what they will suggest, but neurosurgy seemed to think that we will have time to try different chemos insteading needing to move to radiation or surgery to remove the tumor. Surgery, as I've said, is very dangerous, and radiation would not be much less so due to Abbie's age. So, we are very hopeful that we will be able to give a more aggressive chemotherapy regimen a try.

This is just such a roller coaster, it's difficult to catch our breath. It really does look like the tumor had not grown as much as they feared, but it's hard to feel too relieved when we know that at any moment something else might pop up to put Abbie in danger. The constant fear is exhausting. Please continue to pray for us, and most especially for Abbie, who has really been a trooper throughout this. The hosptal does not bring out the best in her manners (she routinely commands the nurses and doctors to "Go away! Shut the door!"), but despite the fact that they carved into her skull this week, she has hit the ground running. God bless her.

Home!

First Step Done

Abbie came out of surgery well on Monday. She is already awake, and there is a noticeable improvement in the use of her arms. She is fighting the doctors/nurses as they poke and prod her! :) We now have to wait a couple of days for the MRI and then determine what the next step will be.
Please continue to pray!

To Clarify

Some of the details get muddled in all of this, so here are a few points to clarify the confusion some people have expressed:

• Abbie has cancer. Because most of the tumor was removed from her spine, it is primarily now just in her brain. Actually, what she has is not a tumor at all, it is an astrocytoma. So although we keep saying "benign tumor," the reality is that it is cancerous and it is growing. "Benign" in regards to an astrocytoma just means "slow-moving" as opposed to "fast-moving" malignant.
• Abbie's mobility was improving daily. Before she began to weaken, she was climbing steps and trying to run. This Monday, I told Chris that her arms seemed weaker to me, and he told me that I was paranoid. On Tuesday, he agreed that she looked weaker, and her OT told me that she was not doing certain exercises that she had been able to do previously. By Wednesday, she was slightly shaky when she walked. By Thursday she was very unsteady. By Friday her arms hung limp at her sides and she could barely walk a foot before falling over. We were admitted to the hospital on Friday.

Feel free to ask any questions you might have, and I'll try to answer them whenever I pop in here.

Bad News

We have just received some bad news about Abbie, and I am sending out the call to yet again beg all of you for prayers.

The short version of events is that an MRI of Abbie's tumor on Thursday shows that she has a very large cyst growing above the tumor in her brain stem, and that it has grown significantly again in her upper spinal cord. There is no explanation for why this has happened -- although the tumor is cancerous, it is benign (meaning slow moving) so we have no idea how it could have spread so quickly. There are several theories, but we won't know for sure until the cyct has been drained.

On Monday Abbie will undergo another surgery, where they will remove a small piece of her skull and insert a shunt to drain the cyst. We will then monitor her closely in the next couple of days to see what the tumor does, and how her mobility improves. If neither are good, then she will need to undergo another brain surgery, to remove the tumor from her brain stem. I cannot emphasise enough how dangerous that surgery would be. It is unbearable to think about, and we aren't going to dwell on it until we know for certain if it will be necessary or not.

Please, please pray for us and most especially please pray for my sweet baby.

The brutal truth

The girls and I were talking about grandmas tonight over mac-n-cheese. We had a friend over, so while he and Chris grilled some steaks on the porch, I boiled up the good stuff for our less discerning children.

We began talking about the wine glass I was sipping out of, something I cherish very much as it came from my Grandma Niccoli. (The glass, not the wine!) They were confused to hear that I had a Grandma Niccoli, someone other than their Grandma Niccoli, and this led into a discussion about generations, marriage, the passing on of names, and, finally, nicknames. The girls sometimes refer to their grandmothers as "The Grandma who sews" and "The Grandma who doesn't sew," and as we discussed this I jokingly asked them what their kids would call me.

Not missing a beat, not missing a beat! Beth responded, "Grandma Lazy Bum."

Want to see our pictures?

So, I've been trying to figure out how to make our pictures more private, so that joe-schmo-the potential-pedophile-down-the-street can't figure out how to get my kids. Paranoid, maybe, but.....So I've created a flickr account, that, as far as I can tell, is somewhat private. At least, I think it is.

So if you'd like to see the pictures I've put up (of the house and Becky's wedding) just email me (either through my profile here, or through my regular email) and I'll send you an invitation to view the photos!

Don't be shy about emailing me, either! Mom's friends, or Christiana people, or people who I don't even know who have been praying for Abbie are all more than welcome, I just need an email. :)

Forget who rocks the cradle, she who holds the remote....

We added DVR to our cable when we moved, but it's been a bear to figure out. (DVR is like Tivo, just the generic version.) Chris has messed around with it a bit, but still doesn't quite understand all the ins and outs of getting it to work. We haven't mentioned it to the kids, though, because........well, what do they care?

The other day, I called the kids up for lunch, and then ran downstairs to get something or other. To my surprise, Franklin was paused on the t.v. When I mentioned it to the kids, Katie breezily replied, "Oh yeah, we didn't want to miss the end." Seems that not only has she discovered the DVR, she is actually the current authority on how to use it.

My management of this household is on such shaky ground it isn't even funny. Any day now I expect to wake up to find Katie in the kitchen, frying up a few eggs while she sorts the bills. And I don't know how to handle it when it happens -- do I snatch the bills out of her hand and tell her to mind her own business, or do I just pull up a chair and thank her for the egg???

happy early fourth of july!

We let the girls stay up late tonight because the fire department in our neighborhood was putting on a fireworks show. The field they use is just behind our house, sort of seperated by a field and a little line of trees, so we were guessing that we'd be able to see the fireworks from our yard.

So, around 9, we grabbed a blanket and curled up on the porch to watch the fireworks. We could see them perfectly, but were far enough away that the noise wasn't freaking the girls out, and it was just really, really nice. Surrounded by lighting bugs, cuddled up together watching the fireworks light up the field behind the trees, it was a magic that we all felt. Beth, as so often happens, summed it up best when she said, "I can't even say anything about these fireworks! It's just too amazing!"

My outdoor warrior

Chris bought a riding mower.
We really debated whether he should just start with a push mower, and see if he could do it.

Wanna guess how long it took him to mow our lawn with the riding mower? Two and a half hours.

Then he had to buy a push mower anyways, because the riding one can't handle some of the hills in our yard.

Wanna guess how long it took him to "detail" with the push mower? An hour and half.

I guess the days of just using a plug-in weed whacker are really gone. Pictures tomorrow!

Things are looking up!

At least a dozen times a day, Beth heaves a big sigh and declares, "This is the life!" It's safe to say that the girls are really enjoying our new pool, and all the fun stuff that comes with a big yard. And we are enjoying it, too, despite the fact that we are still as intimidated as all get-out everytime we poke around the flowers and bushes that are planted everywhere.

It's nice feel so at home here already. This house just feels right. There are still lots of boxes to unpack, walls to paint and pictures to hang, but everything here seems perfect. We love the train that comes by two or three times a day, the tip of it just glanced through the trees. We love the basement, cool and bright and cozy, and we love the kitchen, which is not perfect when it comes to counter space, but just begs everyone to gather together and hang out around the table.

Chris and I have taken to jumping into the pool, once the girls are tucked into bed, to swim a few laps and yesterday I took a break to hang on the side and look out over our new yard. The field behind us was literally sparkling with fireflies, and as I listened to the somehow cozy braying of our neighbors' goat (yes, I said our neighbors' goat) I pictured Beth's sunny little face and realized that she has it just right -- this is the life!

The hitchin' post

Wedding bells were ringing around here yesterday! Chris' sister spent her last morning sharing the same name as me, and it was one heck of a day. Everything was really very nice, the flowers and dresses, decorations and reception -- it was all beautiful and fun. But I've noticed that some weddings can be spot on when it comes to all the periphery - food, planning, all the bells and whistles -- and they still can't compare in any way to the ones centered around a couple who are just clearly in love and clearly eager to devote the rest of their lives to each other. There is just a special spark to everything when the priorities are right, when the priorities are on, well, getting married instead of putting on a really kicking party. The ceremony, the couple themselves, the very air that affects the kind of enjoyment the guests have are all brightened, clarified, infused with a type of beauty that is kind of like the difference in scenery on a particularly sunny day.

That being said, Dante and Becky's wedding was really beautiful. In every possible way. While watching them exchanging vows on the alter, I was - to paraphrase Anne of Green Gables - just filled with deep-down, bottom-of-the-heart gladness.

All of this joy and sunny-happy-la-la-la, though, was for Chris and I filtered through a jumble of chaos and frustration at the hands of our children. They were really pretty good, the move and the cancer and all things considered.....But..........big old sigh, it was a tough afternoon. Abbie seems to have developed a fear of crowds, my guess being that, to her, any stranger could plausibly suddenly spring some sleeping gas on her, leaving her to yet again wake up with more boo-boos that she doesn't understand. From that perspective, her behavior makes sense, but it was still frustrating. We had been so hopeful that she would be okay, that we would be able to dance and be silly as a family together, that Chris and I could have snuck in a slow dance here or there, that visiting and talking with people who are hardly ever seen but much thought of would be easy and enjoyable.........but it all was just not possible, given the uptight and cranky baby who couldn't decide what might make the evening bearable. The real killer, though, was that right as Abbie finally calmed down and realized that a wedding can be fun, right as she turned back into her sweet self and we began to enjoy ourselves, Claire flashed me a surprised look and then puked all over herself.

That was bad enough, but I actually managed to clean her up pretty well, and as we headed back into the reception room I told myself that there was no real harm done, and that we would manage to squeak through the last hour or so just fine. But - silly me - the first vomit was just a preliminary, and the second left us with no choice but to cut our losses and go home.

So, although neither of us will ever be reconciled to the fact that we missed seeing Dante and Becky off, hopefully with time all the happiness and beauty of the day will remain and the frustrations will fade somewhat, leaving us laughing at our dumb luck and the ticklish stomaches of our children that so often propel us away from social situations before we're ready to go.

And what I will really laugh about, in the future, is the tense and embarrassed conversation I had with Claire, during the gospel reading, about a foot from the priest, when she suddenly had the desperate need to discuss how much wedding cake she could have. Let's just say that #1- she was not happy with the amount of time she was going to have to endure before said cake, and #2- God was clearly not happy with her priorities, because when the much anticipated cake did come, it certainly did her no good.

Home Sweet Home

Here is a view of our new backyard, taken from the deck of our new pool! :-)

Things were finally worked out on Friday, and we moved that night. We are starting to settle in somewhat now, and you know what? Despite the pain of getting here, when the girls and I ate breakfast this morning on our deck, listening to the birds chirping and feeling a nice breeze blowing across our yard, it all seems worth it.

Abbie is doing well, she had her second dose of chemo yesterday without incident. She was well anti-nausea-drugged up, and we've had no problems yet this time. Right now we are feeling very upbeat and hopeful, and this whole mess seems absolutely manageable. Our biggest worry right now is how to work letting Abbie swim, since we don't want to have to change her dressing too often, but it needs to be changed whenever she gets wet. In the scheme of things, this is by no means a terrible problem to have. :)

Chris' sister is getting married this weekend, so our focus is shifting somewhat this week from our own insanity to hers. Another good problem! I'll update with more pictures of the house as I #1 - get the time and #2 - unpack enough to have some decent pictures. In the meantime, here's another picture of the yard, with three happy little girls about to jump into our new pool for the first time.

Timeline of Torture

Here's a rough estimate of how things have gone down with our move. Keep in mind that in between the points I list here are countless other irritations and frustrations, but to list them all would take about a week.

• May17 we put an offer in on a house. This is the day Abbie is diagnosed with a brain tumor
• May 21 - we hear from our agent that the offer has been accepted. The ball is set to begin rolling on Tuesday the 13 of June.
• Abbie's broviac surgery is scheduled for June 12. The hospital assures us that they will get us out of there in time to close on our house.
• June 12- while in the OR waiting room, we hear the the closing on our house has been cancelled. After much discussion, a new date is set for June 14, in the morning, before we close on our new house.
• June 13- the closing on our house is again cancelled. We again reschedule everything for later the next day.
• June 14 - the closing is AGAIN cancelled. At this point, our house is full of family who have come to help us move. We spend the day putzing around the half-empty house. Chris goes on the offensive, taking over for our realtor and negotiating everything himself. We are hopeful that things will be fixed by the next day, and we decide to keep the movers we hired, and ask them to hold our stuff overnight if need be.
• June 15 - Both closings are scheduled for this afternoon, after Chris literally tracks down the selling agent using the internet, and shows up at her office. He speaks to everyone involved, including the lender of the guy buying our house. He learns nothing good about our own agent. ONE HOUR before the scheduled closing on our house, it is again cancelled.
• We are now just waiting to see what happens. For now we are scheduled to close on our house tomorrow, but who really believes that? We have not heard back from the selling agent on the house we wanted to buy, so who knows if that will go through??? The movers are booked through the weekend, so if we can't move into a new house tomorrow, they will have to re-move our stuff back into our old house.
• If things do not go through tomorrow, we are not going to move at all. We will cancel both house sales, and just unpack back into our old, cramped, but now sparklingly clean townhouse.

I think we've cycled through a few of the stages of grief, landing us in "complete ambivilance to everything" with an occasional occurance of "angry enough to chew off the nose of the next person to look cross-eyed at us."

Have a good night! I'm off to lay down on our bare floor and pretend to sleep while gnashing my teeth to a fine white powder.

Baby is fine, house is a mess

This is a tough post to write because I am really, really angry. I mean seeing-red-wish-we-were-still-in-Old-Testament-times-so-that-we-could-do-some-smiting angry.

First off, though, Abbie is doing just fine!

The broviac was put in on Monday, and she was given her first chemo dose on Tuesday afternoon. The delay (from Mon to Tues) was due to the pharmacy in the hospital dragging their feet on getting the meds to us, irritating, but not a huge deal in the scheme of things. Abbie was pretty sick Tuesday night; she threw up for the first time around 8pm and didn't really stop until 5 the next morning. Once we had established that she wasn't dehydrated (I think that extra day on the IV probably helped us here,) the hospital ordered some anti-nausea meds for her, and they worked like a charm. So right now she is happily watching tv in the living room, munching on Cheerios.

It's a big relief to have the chemo start off so uneventfully, and I really wish that I could say the same for our plans to move, but......We were supposed to close on our house on Tuesday, it is now Friday and we are no nearer the end than we were a week ago. Due to some really extreme imcompetence on the part of our real estate agent, along with the stupidity of the buying agent and the evilness (oh yes, the evilness) of the selling agent, we may not move after all.

This all began with a call Chris recieved in the OR waiting room, during Abbie's surgery, and things very swiftly went downhill from there. As you might imagine they would, when your agent decides to drop a bomb on you while you are waiting for your daughter to get out of surgery. At this point, I have no idea what is going to happen; Chris is about to morph into Mad Max today and we'll see what he is able to accomplish.

My only question right now, though, is -- Does anybody know of a real estate agent who is not either incompetent or evil? Because from this vantage point, looking over the real estate landscape looks very similar to the way I imagine Hell.

Today.....

......I am so thankful for family. Uncle Mike, Colleen and Aunt Patty showed up here last night, and today they packed up the entire house in one fell swoop. And more re-enforcements are at this moment on the way to help with the unpacking!

.....I felt so guilty as I carried my sweet baby up to her crib, as she teasingly pointed out her "stinky feet," knowing that tomorrow she will be so upset to find herself back at the hospital. This poor baby, who is beginning to really recover from her last surgery, only to be hurt again tomorrow. This surgery is such a little thing, and I have been calm about it all week. But tonight, watching her giggle without any worries, it just feels like it is too much -- too much to yet again starve her all day and then end it by terrifying and hurting her. We have to do it, we would be bad parents if we didn't, but I just wish it didn't feel like we are bad parents because we do.

permissive parenting?

Abbie's PT came yesterday, just in time to witness her take a temper tantrum with gusto. She wanted to play in the exersaucer but I said, "No," because I didn't want her to be tired out before the physical therapy session. She was unhappy with this answer, and right at that minute came the knock on our door. When Abbie recognized it as the guy who had been poking her earlier in the week, she absolutely lost it.

So, at least he was able to witness her new ability to roll onto her stomach from her back (with the added enhancement of kicking legs and wailing). The best thing, though, the thing that made me almost giddy with happiness was when she slapped me.

I don't in general condone hitting around here -- in fact, I bet the girls would claim that I am pretty adamantly against it. But on Monday, when the PT was testing Abbie's arm strength, all she could do was cry, "all done! all done!" while her arm hung limply in his hands. Today, she pushed him with her other hand, twisted herself to get away from him, and then in anger flailed out at me, slapping me right on the forehead. I looked over at Chris, and the expression on his face exactly expressed how I felt.

He was smiling, almost laughing.
She slapped me!
We are so proud!

Chemo update

Monday is the day, officially. We'll go in, have the broviac inserted, and then Abbie will be given her first dose of chemotherapy. We'll be kept overnight so that they can monitor her reaction and train us in maintaining the broviac (which should get her good and angry.)

And then -- back home just in time to close on our current house, finish packing and move.

Pity Party

So, all day yesterday and today I have been doing all of the necessary address-switching and turn on/turn off-ing, ect in preparation for our move next week. Let me repeat -- I spent ALL DAY YESTERDAY AND TODAY doing this. I was laughing this morning with Chris about how I've already memorized our new address.

To find out that the real estate agent for our new house LIED about the zip code so that the house would pop up as a swankier location. So the zip code I was using ALL DAY YESTERDAY AND TODAY is wrong. Which means that I have to do it all, all over again.

I really need a drink.

Wanna see something amazing?

Behold the power of the exersaucer!!! Vanessa, I can't thank you enough for lending this to us! It wasn't in our house five minutes before Abbie was sqawking to be put in it, and she wasn't in it four seconds before she stood up and remained standing while playing with the yellow duck! The physical therapist recommended this to us, and boy! was he right. She spent a good half an hour in there (about 20 minutes longer than we've been able to get her to sit upright at one time before), and was spinning herself around by the end.

To everyone who last saw Abbie in the week following her operation -- can you believe these pictures??? I can hardly believe them myself.

Miracle? I couldn't say for sure, but from this end it's looking suspicious.

At last!

A long, long awaited event has finally taken place here ................


Katie lost her first tooth!

She has been growing her big teeth behind her stubborn baby ones for a few months now, and I was beginning to despair that they would ever come out on their own. We actually had an appointment with the dentist, where I anticipated some forced tooth removal, but we had to cancel it due to the issues with Abbie.

So I'm grateful for this, at least! She was very brave, and let Chris pull it out this morning after he realized that it was hanging on by a thread. And now we just have to wait for the tooth fairy!

So does anyone know where to buy a tooth pillow?

First appointment with PT

Abbie had her first PT session at home this morning, and it went really well. She was still pretty suspicious of the guy, but he was able to evaluate her and show me some excersises to do with her. We'll meet with him again later this week, but after testing her reflexes and watching while I tried to make her support herself on her feet some, he believes that she could be walking in a matter of weeks. I am just so happy to hear this!!! So keep up the prayers, and hopefully she'll be on the right track soon!

Oh, and for the record, I haven't been given a date yet for the broviac placement. I have a sinking feeling that it is not going to happen until next week -- just in time for our move. Hooray.

Dangerous

I've already packed away most of the girls' clothes, so it's sometimes tough to find weather-appropriate, clean, matching outfits for one or two of them. The only shorts I have for Abbie this morning are purple, so I ended up having to open a box of clothes to find a shirt to match it. After digging around in the box a bit, the only one I came up with was one with the words "I'M THE BIG SISTER" printed across the front.

The words were just the right shade of purple, and I really thought about putting it on her.

But then I really thought about putting it on her.

Matching is overrated. She can wear green.

Abbie before and after sugery

I can't get these dumb pictures in the right order, so I'll just say which are which. The picture with Abbie in a peach shirt on the phone is from the night before her surgery. The closeup of her face is 2 days post-op. The one with Beth is the same day, when we celebrated Beth's 5th bday in the hospital. The one with Abbie in a wagon is the from the day before we were discharged from the hospital. She really, really loved being pulled around in that wagon. I mean, really loved it. Chris once spent a solid two and a half hours pulling her around the hosptial!

First appt with oncology

Abbie is going to be set up with what is called a broviac in the next week or two. It's sort of like an IV line that is surgically implanted into a larger vein, so that she won't have to be re-stuck every time she goes in for chemo or has to have bloodwork done. This is pretty standard for chemo patients, and I'll be grateful to not have to hold her down anymore while people poke around her veins trying to find one that works.

So, chemo treatments start this coming week or the next, depending on when they can schedule the broviac placement. We had been hoping to have a little more time before starting all of this, but her doctor feels that it is just too risky, because the tumor is so close to her breathing and swallowing centers.

The good news is that the tumor is grade 1, and her chemo treatments are going to be on the far end of low on the spectrum. So there is a chance that she will stay healthy (and keep her hair) for the entire duration. It's one of those things that we will just have to wait and see about -- she may tolerate the medication very well, or she may get some of the side effects (nausea, lethargy, weakened immunity, hair loss). There is no way to really predict it, unfortunately.

Hopefully I'll hear today about when she'll be scheduled for the broviac. It is considered a surgery, and we may need to be admitted for a day so that they can train us on maintaining it, etc. We'll see. The PA mentioned being admitted several times, but the actual doctor didn't seem to think it was a given.

In case you haven't heard....

- Two weeks ago, Abbie was diagnosed with a benign fibrillary astrocytoma (probably spelled wrong). It is a tumor that reaches from her brain stem down into her spine.
-We were admitted immediately to Children's National Hospital in DC, where we were told that she needed surgery to at least biopsy the tumor, and remove as much of it as was possible.
-The tumor is actually embedded in her spinal cord, so it was likely that she would sustain major damage from surgery.
-She was operated on on a Friday, and 80% of the tumor was removed, without any major damage. The unofficial word was that it was benign.
-Her arms and trunk are very weak, but functioning, after surgery. It is going to take some physical therapy, but she will eventually regain everything back.
-We are home now, and resting, and glad to be out of the hospital! (Although, everyone there was really incredible.)
-She will need chemotherapy to shrink the tumor that remains in her brain, but it will be on an out-patient basis, and the chemo will be low-dose. It shouldn't take more than a year.

Busy couple of weeks. Keep us in your prayers!

Am I that cranky?

Note left for me from Katie:

I love you no matter what you do I still love you

love, Katie

It's been a busy time

Well! I am sorry about the long break I took from this blog, but I have some very good reasons.

Reason #1 -

Chris and Dante, with some help from Dan, put in a beautiful new wood (laminate) floor in our living room! It is absolutely gorgeous, and it somehow magically makes the rest of the house look much nicer, too. (That may also be due, in part, to the frantic cleaning, purging, and packing I've been doing, though.)

Reason #2

We have been extremely, almost obsessively, preoccupied with the little nest of hatchling on our deck. We monitored the mommy robin while she laid an egg a day for four days, and then stalked her (through the glass door) throughout the two weeks it took her to hatch her little birdies. The four baby birds have just begun to grow feathers now, and they chirp impatiently with open beaks while they wait to be fed. The girls have named them after Katie's current Narnia obsession: Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy.

Reason #3

Our house is for sale! Actually, it is almost sold!!!! I don't want to count our chickens before they're hatched (appropriate analogy, given our current bird-watching), but we have a buyer and we are very close to closing the contract. :-) If this goes through, our house will have been on the market a mere day and a half!

And Reason #4, which is the most serious and least positive is this:

Abbie has had a very seriously strained neck for going on three months, and we've been running her all over town to figure out what the deal is. In the meantime, she has been getting worse and worse -- at this point, she can barely move her head from side to side, and she won't move her head up at all. So she is walking around with hunched shoulders, her chin close to her chest.

She has an MRI next week, which will hopefully provide us with some answers. So please say a prayer for her!

So, things are looking to continue on in this hectic way for quite a while, but I promise to try and update this more often. :)

Oh, and the fish?

They're dead.

Suspicious characters

I tried, for the second time in a week, to go to Kohl's today. Chris bought a bunch of stuff there last week and got a voucher for $30, so I wanted to go before it expired. The first attempt was aborted after someone had a temper tantrum in the lobby because only the one-seat carts were left. The second time began much more productively but as always it took twice as long as I had anticipated, and we were pressed for time because it was almost time to pick Katie up from school. So we waited, third in line, for a few minutes while an almost comatose woman sllllooooowly scanned half a dozen candles, pausing after each one to stare blankly at the cash register screen, then slllllooooowly set the candles down on the counter (not in a bag, mind you - that was another step for us to anticipate). After about five minutes of this (number of candles scanned: three) an older woman behind me politely requested the clerk to call for help. So the clerk rolled to a stop, and slllooooowly picked up the walkie-talkie thing, and in a leisurely drawl asked for assistance. Then back to the candles. Sllllooooooowly.

When the woman patiently waiting to pay for her candles produced a coupon, and the clerk again ceased to function as she considered the myriad ways she could process it, I gave up and walked out of the line. And now we come to the point of this whole story -- I left the line, and the clerk again stopped to reassure me that, at some point before closing, someone else might show up to speed things up. I replied that I really couldn't wait any longer because I needed to pick up my daughter from school. The people left waiting were all watching this, probably contemplating whether it was better to follow my example or continue to rot in line. Beth surveyed this scene, and as I rolled the cart in the direction of the door, in her wonderfully loud and clear voice said, "Mommy, are we going to steal this stuff?"

Look up!

This is just a note to tell everyone to check out the new quote under my blog name. I was flipping through an old favorite book of mine (The Little Prince), when I ran across it and realized that it is a perfect description of life in this little house. :)

Truly a force

I wish I could figure out how to put up videos, because it's a real shame to keep the sight of Abbie singing along to Kelly Clarkson's "Since U Been Gone" all to ourselves.

The only word she can actually say is "gone," but she belts it out with all the force of her little personality. That, and The Long Winters "Cinnamon" are the only things that can placate her when she gets fussy in the car, and she sings along to both with gusto. But there is something particularly cute and funny about "Since U Been Gone." It's a breakup song, sort of in the vein of "I Will Survive," and watching our little Kook Attack rocking out to lyrics like, "Since you've been gone I can breathe for the first time!" just knocks me out.

That actually reminds me of another funny story from our trip to Vermont. In the funeral home, Beth was hanging out in an adjoining room with Andy. She told him that she had a song in her head, and asked if he'd like to hear her hum it. Of course he did. So she began, "Ba ba ba-ba ba ba ba ba-ba, hmmm hmmm hmmmmmm hmmmmmmm" Andy recognized it right away. What was she singing? "I Want to be Sedated" by the Ramones. Rock on, little girl.

She knows me too well

A question Katie asks me at least three times each week: "What is your favorite thing to do, Mommy?"
pause
"And you can't say 'sleep'!"

Hiding from the PC police....

Here are two stories, both from the same day (yesterday), both ending with me wanting the ground to swallow me up. Enjoy!

Claire works on color identification
Let me begin by stating that Claire has still not mastered her colors. I've even discussed the possibility of her having color-blindness with her doctor, but at the end of the day it appears that she just doesn't care to learn them quite yet. So........yesterday I was working in the nursery, and Claire was palling around with Kameron, a little boy who usually comes in after pre-school. His mom, for the record, was in the room. They were holding hands, playing some sort of game, when Claire looked down and was suddenly struck by a difference. "Hey Mommy," she said to me, still staring at Kameron, "his skin is a different color." She contemplated his dark complexion for a moment before turning back to me and saying, "I think he is blue."

I need to buy Ho-Ho's more often, I guess
Story number 2, later that same day. I promised Katie and Beth that I would buy them a dessert at the grocery store while they were in ballet class. When the class was over, they both immediately rushed over to interrogote me on what I brought back. It was very crowded (the ballet class is actually held in a gym. A very busy, crowded, yuppie gym), so I was somewhat distracted as I gathered shoes and coats, and I hurriedly answered, "Ho-Ho's" as I threw Katie's slippers into her bag.
"What?" asked Beth in that particularly loud, screechy, traffic-stopping voice she can get sometimes. "What are HOMOS?"
"No," I told her as I desperately tried to hussle them into their coats, "I said ho-ho's. It's like a cake roll...."
But she was undeterred and kept insisting, "What are HOMOS? Mommy, WHAT ARE HOMOS????"
In telling this story today to my mom, she asked me if the people around me were laughing. I have to say that I have no idea - I was so mortified that I didn't even have the courage to look up, I just gathered them up and barrelled out of there as fast as I could.

Fish update #2 - more fish

Our eleven remaining baby fishies are doing well, growing pretty big and hanging around the front of the tank to check us out when we walk by.

The only problem is that they have recently been joined by.......30 new baby fish.

I don't know what to do. These poor babies seem doomed to a cannabalistic dinner, but I don't have another tank to put them into (and we don't really have the room for another tank either.) I'm not even sure the net could pick them up, they are so tiny and delicate. How do I save these fish??? Any advice (beyond flushing them, Mom!!! I know your ways!) would be appreciated.....

update: Chris and I discussed this issue tonight, and what do you think his solution is? They just may be toilet-bound after all.........

Dress shopping with Katie

Katie and I ran to David's Bridal tonight to order bridesmaid dresses - for both Monica and Becky's wedding for me, and a Junior Bridesmaid dress for Becky's wedding for Katie. A saleslady brought us to a changing room, brought us the dresses we needed in various sizes to see which fit, and then promptly dissapeared. She was unfortunately still carrying the paper I had written the dress codes on, which had the directions home on the back. So, after figuring out which sizes to get, Katie and I went on a quest through the chaotic store to find this lady, despite the fact that I could not for the life of me remember what she looked like. Luckily for me, Katie was at my side.

"She had on a black jacket and pants," said Katie. We searched all over the store, but couldn't find a woman wearing a black jacket and pants, but that didn't deter Katie's insistance that she was right.

And she was, of course. I finally gave up and decided to just get in line anyway, but soon afterwards the saleslady walked by. Before she got to us, Katie said, "That's her!" But I so did NOT recognize her face that I wasn't confident that Katie was right. But the saleslady remembered us, and stopped to make sure we were all set.

It's so strange, in a way, to have this tiny little girl at my side in whom I can actually rely. Katie remembers my parking spaces, Katie remembers the grocery lists I mumble to myself before getting to the store and promptly forgetting, Katie remembers all the little things I've never managed to force myself to remember. She's like the miniature embodiment of all the things I am not, and it's cool to watch her, and develop an appreciation for all of these awesome qualities she is teaching me to value.

We made an impromtu (and quick!) trip into Vermont this week for the funeral of Chris' Grandfather. In case you haven't noticed, I'm not really comfortable going into really emotional issues on here; maybe it's the stigma of narcissistic "bloggers," or maybe it's my constant fear of coming across as "cheesey" instead of sincere, but whatever the reason I deliberately try to keep my post on here light. So, I am not going to say much about Chris' Grandfather, who was dearly loved and will be dearly missed. But please pray for his soul, and most especially for the grieving people he left behind.

And now on to our trip tallies:

Hours driven - 20
Incidents of vomitting - 7
Number of "vomit bags" I packed - 6
Number of words exchanged with Becky at rest stops (who was following behind us in her car) during the first two hours of the trip, during which all 7 vomits occured - maybe five, and those were limited to things like, "Have a plastic bag?"
Number of times Becky repeated the offer (made before leaving from home) to take a couple of the girls in her car - NONE!

And here are some quotes that are worth preserving (most, you will note, come from Beth):

Beth, to Chris after the funeral mass, "Wow, there are a lot of old people here!"

Beth, to me after being told to please hurry because she was making a very extended trip to the only ladies' room in the funeral parlor, "I think that when people listen through the door and hear my low moaning, they will understand that there's a little girl who is using potty in here."
(Note: "low moaning" are her exact words!)

Claire, to someone she's never met before in her life, "My tights are PINK, see! And I use potty now because I am a BIG GIRL! And Uncle Andy is the biggest and he is my BEST FRIEND!"
(This was repeated several times to several different strangers. Claire clearly thought that the reason for the gathering was purely to show off how cute she can be.)

Katie, yelling down the entire length of the funeral home (to the extreme amusement of the funeral director), "Mom, are you going to the BATHROOM?"

St Patty's Day tradition

This is another tradition I did NOT plan on, but last year I made "green eggs and ham" for dinner on St. Patrick's Day. (I just tinted eggs and ham green - the ham looked more black than green, but whatever.) Everyone hated it. Chris thought it looked disgusting, and the girls are no Sam-I-am. So it was a shock when Katie and Beth asked me, hopefully, if I was going to make green eggs and ham again for St. Patty's Day. I was at a loss to come up with a meatless Irish dinner, anyways, since it was on a Friday, so I decided to go ahead and make it again, except that instead of ham we had pancakes. Tinted green, of course. For whatever reason, they LOVED it this time! Claire and Katie gobbled up their bright green cheese omlettes (with white cheese, no orange around here!) just as eagerly as they ate the pancakes (which were brown on the outside but still kept the bright green on the inside.) Go figure. So a new tradition is born, one that Chris is not exactly thrilled about but what can I do? The people have spoken.

(By the way, I am aware that pancakes and omlettes aren't exactly "Irish" foods, but that's why I dye them green. What is an "Irish meal" anyways? Corned beef? Blech. Beef stew and potatoes are OK, but they hardly feel like a celebration meal, you know?)

Proof of bad parenting

So........I'm having a kind of bad morning. I was up several times last night with cranky kids (bad dreams and teething, and a wet bed all in one night. Fun!) Chris is sick, and I am still dissapointed about having to cancel a trip to see my family this weekend. So this has been a lax morning so far -- Abbie and I are still in our PJs (which really impressed the Mormons who just stopped by), and I let the older girls dress themselves. So, just in case anyone is under the assumption that we've got it together around here (small chance, but still...) here is the proof of my poor parenting:

Claire's outfit:

On top of that, the girls asked if they could put on temporary tatoos. I let them, but did not monitor the application process. The result? Beth put hers ON HER FACE:

And exhibit #3 detailing my poor parenting, here is Abbie with a face smeared with snot. I'll clean her up........eventually:

update: while typing this, Claire wet her pants, so she is now, at least, wearing pants that match her shirt. And my motivation to take a shower just increased by quite a bit.

Mom, this is for you

Katie overheard me talking to my mother about her illness (she has pneumonia). Katie also knows that we were supposed to go into Pittsburgh this weekend for a visit, but had to cancel due to my (bleeping) back. So, with her ability - inherited from Chris- to think ahead and predict what will happen and how people will feel, Katie realized that Grandma Niccoli must be feeling pretty down this weekend, and she wanted to make her feel better. So here it is. I'm proud of my sweet girl.

Sacrifice Beads

In case you can't tell, I'm trying to make up for the two weeks I lost on here while recovering from my back. :)

So last week the girls went to "K4J," a religion class we go to once a month. Every month introduces a different virtue, and the theme this month is "Sacrifice." So Katie and Beth were both given St. Therese beads to use during Lent.

St. Therese and her sisters (she was the youngest, I think, of 5) used to make these things called "sacrifice beads," a string of beads that is tied together in a way that allows you to pull them along the string. On the top is a crucifix, and the deal is that every time you make a sacrifice, you pull a bead towards the crucifix. The goal is to pull all your beads during the day. However, for the sacrifice to count, you have to keep it a SECRET. No bragging, no comparing sacrifices, it should be a secret between you and Jesus.

Well, we've been having a hard time preserving the spirit of that around here. Katie's mouth runs non-stop all day long, so secrets are not exactly her forte. This is a speech I've heard several times a day for the last week: Katie, "I made three sacrifices so far today! Of course, it's a secret. I can't tell you what I did. But can I tell you that I did something that was really hard for me? I think that makes God feel really happy, I like to make some sacrifices but we are supposed to keep it a secret but I can just tell you that mine had something to do with Claire I keep my beads hidden in my pocket so no-one can see them Beth wants me to always see when she pulls a bead but I keep mine a secret it's in my pocket Claire always wants to take my toys but today I did a really good thing pulled a bead keeping it a secret a secret a secret I LET CLAIRE PLAY WITH MY TOY."

Beth, on the surface, does much better, but she has a certain way of advertising her sacrifices , that is actually more noticeable than if she spent all day talking about it. This is a scenario that we've gone through just as often as Katie's little speeches: Beth sits at the table coloring. Katie asks her for the red crayon, Beth hands it to her and then sighs loudly. She then gets up, walks over to the counter where her beads are, picks the beads up, casts a look at Katie, dramatically pulls one, then goes back to her seat. Katie says, "Why did you just pull that bead? Giving me the red crayon was not a sacrifice, you weren't using the red one. That was just doing a favor." Beth replies, "It's a secret." Katie: "I'm just telling you that giving me the crayon was not a sacrifice." Beth: "I can't talk about this because we are supposed to keep our sacrifices a SECRET."

So Katie is slowly going batty, because she is just positive that Beth is pulling beads when she doesn't really deserve to. And Beth, I am almost certain, is deliberately pulling beads in front of Katie because she KNOWS it's driving her crazy.

I think I may need some sacrifice beads of my own, so I have something to pull every time I resist the urge to chuck the beads out the window.

Sweet morning

I woke up this morning to the sound of pounding coming from the hallway. Not even fully awake, I sprang out of bed by pure instinct and rushed downstairs to find.......Katie, Beth and Claire all standing in their bedroom with all the lights on, playing store. Katie explained that they decided to play in their room for a while, to give Chris and I a chance to sleep in.

This is just about the most amazing thing I've ever encounted as a parent. I mean, how sweet and thoughtful is that??? Unfortunately the "store" game involved running up and down the hallway, right in front of Abbie's room, otherwise I would have seriously considered going back to bed and letting them finish their game. I am really hoping, though, that this is a sign of the beginning of the end of our sleep-deprived years. Abbie slept through the night, too, which is something of a miracle! I wonder what life would be like if every night was like this.... Will I even remember how to function on a full night's sleep?

fish update

Well, our fish over-population problem seems to be, uh, resolving itself. We started out with almost 30 fish, but at the last count we were down to around 11. I personally have seen Blueberry gulping down a baby, and Chris has witnessed him at it, too, so, well....I guess we don't have to worry about what to do with all those extra fish.

No sympathy from the peanut gallery

Soooooooooo, I haven't posted in a while because I threw my back out. Very, very pathetic. Claire really summed it up the best when, seeing me laying on the couch (my constant abode for about a week) with my eyes closed, she came up to me and said, "You need to get up -- you're the mom! Remember?"

Got Fish?

It is mainly Katie's responsibility to feed the fish, and she does a great job, hardly ever having to be reminded. As she was feeding the fish this morning, she began to talk about baby fish....The conversation between Katie and Beth hit my pre-coffee ears something like this, " Babies.....blah blah blah.....fish....blah blah blah.....Mommies, fish, babies.....blah blah blahblah." It wasn't until they began squealing with delight that I finally took notice. Of the baby fish in our tank. All 28 of them.

Who was the Mommy and Daddy? We're not sure, but the babies look more white-ish and brown-ish, so we're guessing that Strawberry (the brown fish with scary pink eyes) and Vanilla (self-explanatory) are the culprits. Unless, of course, another 28 fish appear tomorrow looking black-ish, in which case our fish tank is a baccanalia.

So, anyone know what we are supposed to do with over 30 fish in a tank that is supposed to hold less than 10?????

What am I complaining about?

On the way home from school today, Katie brought up something that she has been thinking over.

"I know a way that Mommies get a break," she announced.

She had overheard Chris, just last week, explaining to Becky that we desperately needed her to babysit because we "needed a break." So I guess Katie began to think over whether we were really entitled to said break, and her conclusion was a resounding, "No."

"Mommies put their kids to bed very early," she explained to me, "and I always hear you and Daddy laughing downstairs when I am in bed. So see -- you DO get a break. And you get it every single day."

Oh. Problem solved, I guess.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Consider this a big, grubby hug and kiss for all of you! :) As you can see, our morning began with a lot of candy (with some pancakes and eggs thrown in for good measure, but mostly it consisted of chocolate.) I'll maybe post more pictures of the other girls once we're all cleaned up and looking more respectable.

V-day around here is usually pretty casual and low key. We gave the girls little buckets filled with candy, and some mini coffee cups (for hot chocolate, of course.) Later on, I'll get some chicken nuggets for the girls, and Chris will pick up sushi for us while Claire is in ballet class, and we'll probably eat it while watching some season 2 Battlestar Galactica. We tend to feel overdosed on big holidays this time of year, what with three birthdays, Christmas, New Years, AND our anniversary all coming within a few weeks of each other. So we all just try to be especially considerate of each other today, and pig out moderately on chocolate. :)

This and That

Some random stuff:

The Lobers had their baby! Her name is Isabella (Ella) and she is beautiful! I had the privilege to hold her just over an hour after her birth, and let me tell you......it is a dangerous thing to let any woman of childbearing age hold a newborn! But never fear, I immediately recollected that this tiny darling would not be waking me up in the middle of the night.....and there's a few already living in this house taking up that position. But, anyways, we are just thrilled for the Lobers, and we are honored to have been asked to be her godparents! This means I now have 2 "godchild" ornaments to missplace every Christmas. :)

On an unrelated note: Guess what? Katie and Beth are in ballet class with the daughter of one of the Ravens. (One of the pretty important ones) This, of course, was not discovered until Chris picked them up from class one night. Pretty cool!

SNOW!!!!!!

We love snow! Snow days are one of the things that live up to all of the "magic of childhood" hype that everyone always expects life with small children to provide.

Katie and Claire both woke up in the pre-dawn, because they were so excited about the snow. It was then a loooong few hours for them as I had to wait until I could let them out without waking up all of the sleeping DINKs in the dozen or so houses surrounding our "common area." So to keep them preoccupied we made about a million valentine's day crafts. Katie even constructed some kind of paper-house, complete with cut-out animals to live in it. It's actually really cool. Then we had a huge breakfast (that took me a proportionately huge amount of time to cook, to the girls' frustration). Then, once the kitchen was straightened up and the girls were all bundled up, Chris took the older three out to finally play in the snow. And they loved it! Snowball fights, snow chairs (which they, for some reason, are obsessed with), and an unfortunate dog-attack later (no one is hurt, don't worry!) and the girls were cold, tired, and very very happy. Abbie and I, who had been napping during all of this, were also very, very happy. :) Then later that afternoon, I went out with the girls again (Abbie stayed inside and watched from the window) and we completed the snowman begun that morning. I love making snowmen!

So, it's been a good day. Chris just read them two chapters from the current book, and they are now headed upstairs to get ready for bed. Mmmmm, snow days, You just can't beat it!

Catching up on anticdotes

It's been a while since I've really updated this, so here are a few gems from the mouths of my children, for your reading pleasure.

Beth, from under the covers of her bed, upon being asked why she was crying: No-one takes care of me. I have to take care of myself.

Katie, watching the snow coverage on the news: Why do they talk about how much snow there is? Everybody already knows that, it's not really news.

Abbie, with a wicked grin when she should be taking a nap, "Poopie." (She was not poopie -- it was a ruse to trick me into taking her out of her crib.)

Claire, after having a rough day getting along with Katie, "Beth is my best friend! I love Beth!"

I'm sending out my Christmas cards today.....

...so please don't think, when you get our card in a few days, that you are the only one getting their card so late. I guess I can at least claim the distinction of treating everyone in my life equally, although that just means equally poorly.
See, the thing is........Well, I didn't get the cards out in time for Christmas. I just didn't, I have no real excuse. Then, once the holiday was over and I had the time to settle down and finish them, we made the mistake of going "hard core" on potty-training Claire. And that went very, very badly. So badly, in fact, that we are just now finally beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel. The point is, the Christmas cards were kind of pushed to the end of the to-do list. Behind things like clean the bathroom for the 5th time today and pin screaming toddler on the toilet and force her to stay there until she "tinkles" so that she doesn't get a UTI from holding it all day. So, anyways, I apologize for how ridiculously late these cards are. It's a mixture of my own irresponsibility and a really bad month. But hey! I hope you enjoy the picture!

Medievable Times

Here are some pictures from Claire's birthday!

Her birthday presents some difficulties, since she is so limited in what she can eat without throwing up. Cakey, doughy things are absolutely out, so I had some trouble trying to figure out what to make her for her cake, and what to do about breakfast. Some traditions have sort of evolved here, especially involving breakfast. The girls like to wake up to a kitchen decorated for the birthday girl, and have some sort of "big treat" for breakfast. Usually they request cinnamon rolls, but if Claire eats them at all, she usually throws them back up. Coffee cake is out for the same reason, as are pancakes. So what to do? The plan ended up being piling the girls into the car at 6:30am and making a run to Dunkin Donuts. Claire can usually handle the donuts, so that's what we got. Plus I got them some hot chocolate; they see Chris and I getting coffee all the time, so it makes the hot chocolate extra good to them if they can drink it from the styrofoam cups like we do. Plus, they thought it was really cool to go out in their PJs. :)

For her cake, I made a giant chocolate chip cookie. She had requested a Raggedy Ann cake for her birthday, and I was worried that the cookie wouldn't turn out well in the pan, but it ended up just fine and she loved it! Then for dinner we took her to Medieval Times ("Medievable Times," if you ask Beth). Chris and I went to the one outside Chicago back when we were dating, and we just loved it! We had watched a family walking around with several little girls all dressed up as princesses and we, almost admittedly falling in love and both secretly dreaming of what it would be like to start a family together, were just enchanted. I've been dreaming about leading my own troup of little princesses through there ever since. I was so excited, then, when they opened one up here, but when we found out what the ticket prices were (and let's just say, there is not much of a discount for children) we despaired of ever being able to go. However, wonder of wonders, they had a special deal in January where kids could go for free! Ha ha ha! A dream come true for me, and something I knew the girls would just love.

Well, naturally, they just went nuts once we got there! Claire was actually standing on her chair, jumping up and down and yelling at the top of her lungs is support of our knight. Incidentally, our knight was the black-and-white Warrior-Priest, the same knight Chris and I had all those years ago when we were dating. And he won both times!

So Claire had a very happy day, and she was dead asleep in the car before we got home. The 3rd birthday always seems sort of magical to me -- it is the real transition from babyhood to being a "big girl," and Claire had this adorable mix of the un-self-conscous happiness of babyhood, and the sweet, proud excitment of childhood. So cute. Happy Birthday Claire!

More pictures

Okay, I'm going to try one more time to put more bday pics up. If this doesn't work, we'll all just have to wait until my main site is back up and running.

Happy Moment

I just had the best hour of my life..........well, maybe not THE best hour, but it was definitely up there.

You know how working hard makes you appreciate resting more? Or how giving up certain foods make you appreciate just how delicious they are? Well, the same thing goes for time by yourself. I hardly ever get any time truly to myself, and I realize that this is a blessing, to be so surrounded by these sweet little girls. But......quiet and peace are nice, too, and it's a good thing to get a little sometimes, if you can. :)

Chris was home early tonight, so I was able to leave Katie, Beth and Abbie with him while I took Claire to her ballet class. So after dropping Claire off I walked to Starbucks and got myself a big old uber-yuppie skinny latte! And it was the BEST coffee, I drank it while slowly walking back to the gym where the ballet classes are. I could just walk in silence and think, and it was just so wonderful.

Hooray for husbands who help out! And hooray for disgustingly yuppie neighborhoods with Starbucks on every corner! And hooray for little girls, who are so cute when you get away from them!

Exercise in frustration

This morning, I decided to put in a Pilates video that has been gathering dust in our t.v. stand. With Claire still not quite there on the potty-training, going to the gym has become more hassle than it's worth, with the nursery workers pulling me out of class every ten minutes or so to take her to the bathroom.

So I thought it would be less frustrating to just do a video.

Well, 45 minutes later and I have at least worked up a sweat. For any of you who have ever tried Pilates, you should appreciate this: it is MUCH harder to do when balancing a baby on your hip, or having said baby straddle your chest while doing floor exercises. Not to mention the many, many times I had to pause it in order to re-allign the girls (who all, of course, decided to do the video with me) so that no-one got kicked in the face. So, all in all, I got some kind of work-out, but I'm not sure it's the one Denis Austin had in mind.

This is the story of my life right now. Before putting that video in none of them had any interest in me whatsoever. Abbie was happily playing with her drums, Katie and Beth were playing some kind of store game, and Claire was wandering around in her own world. But the moment I ever try to actually get something done they all suddenly swarm like locusts; Abbie desperately needs to be held, Beth suddenly falls ten times in a row, injuring herself in ten different ways, Claire decides that part of her must be touching part of me at all times, and Katie invariably picks this chaotic time to give us all a sound lecture on where we have failed in life.

But while I was gritting my teeth and desperately trying to just get through the video, I knew in the back of my mind that, could I see the scene in my living room through third person, what I would see would be hilarious. Babies hanging off a hassled mother's pants' leg, threee tiny little girls earnestly trying to follow an adult workout, with no idea that they were constantly getting in the mother's space....it's comedy gold. As a way to start your Saturday though...well, I guess there are worse ways!

Things to consider when dealing with me

My mom sent me this email today:

Becca,

In one of our business mags there is a little column- "Did you Know"

the third one down says


On average,a 4-year old child asks 437 questions a day( ask any parent and we already knew that one!!!)


So I figure you listen to:

481 Katie ( 437 + 10% 44= 481)
437 Beth 437
393 Claire-her's may be statements (437 - 10% 44= 393)
305 Abbie- I want (393 -20% 88=305)
24 Chris (men less verbal- no time to get it in)

1640 verbal requests,responses a day.

I bet the best customer service rep in the world does not deal with as much in one day as you!!!!!!!!!


Something to ponder if you have time.

If I have time, indeed!

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas everyone!!! We spent a wonderful day hanging out with our family here, and although we couldn't be with ALL of our family, everyone was thought of, and loved, and missed.

I've been hearing reports.....

...that some people are actually reading this. So why isn't anyone commenting? Come on, how can I know if anyone (beyond my mom) is reading this if no-one says anything?????

Flying High

Every year, our friendly neighborhood firemen bring Santa around on one of their trucks so that all the kids can wave to him. They always, always hit our neighborhood just after we've put the girls down for the night, and this year was no exception.

I was in the guest room still wrangling with Abbie when I heard the tell-tale sirens, so I jumped up and yelled out, "Girls, Santa's coming!" They knew exactly what I meant. I opened their door just in time to see Katie, in her excitement and fear that she'd miss Santa, take a flying leap out of the top bunk, land (on her feet) on a pillow and go charging out the door. She was like a little Gummi Bear ("bouncing here and there and everywhere.")

This is the kid who never ever, ever (never ever? Never EVER!) makes a move without first analyzing every angle of the situation. This is a girl who solves puzzles before actually putting them together. But at the sound of those sirens she took a rare flight (literally) of fancy and just......let go. So unlike her. But so sweet to see!

And after all that, we still missed Santa. Why do they drive by so fast? Chris eventually picked them all up at once, and carried them (shoeless and coatless and heartbroken) down the sidewalk so that they could at least see Santa as he turned onto the next road. That seemed to satisfy them, and they happily went back to bed after that.

The funniest thing about this is that Katie has been expressing extreme scepticism about Santa this year. She recently asked me how, if Santa is a real person, he hasn't died, because of course all people eventually die. How the heck do you answer that? I just babbled on for a few minutes without really saying anything, and then changed the subject because she had me completely stumped. So not only was it surprising to see Katie so unusually impetuous and childlike, it was surprising to see this reaction to Santa, whom she may not actually fully believe in.

This year has been so cool, with all three of the older girls being so excited and so wrapped up in the magic of Christmas, and last night was just the perfect example. Once I knew Katie had not actually hurt herself, and my heart had begun beating again, I just couldn't help but laugh and laugh and laugh at the whole thing. So cute, so sweet, so innocent and excited! Oh my gosh, Christmas has never been so much fun!

A Christmas Mystery

On Tuesday, while comparing notes at the end of the day, Chris and I discovered that we had identical conversations with Beth in which she claimed to have a solo in the upcoming Christmas Show.

"There is a part of the song that only people with really good voices can sing, and I guess I'm the only one with a really good voice!" said Beth.

Chris asked, "What's the song?"

She couldn't answer. She couldn't remember the song she was apparently going to sing alone in front of the entire school in one day.

What to think? Beth is genuinely pretty gifted musically. I mean, the girl can carry a tune. However, she is not always entirely....reliable. This girl is the reason our fish are named Strawberry, Blueberry, Vanilla, Chocolate and.......Lala Salt. She once told my sister that we gave her a trampoline on her birthday. She was not exactly lying -- we took her to a place where they had trapeze-artists performing, and she watched them. Beth really does not sweat the details -- recieving a trampoline, watching trapeze perfomers -- same basic difference.

So we approached the Christmas Show with anticipation - was Beth really going to have a solo? If so, could she actually get through it, especially since she could not remember the song off-hand?

We needn't have worried, of course. The Pre-School kids filed onto the stage wearing the cutest little choir-angel costumes, and the song began. It was one I've never heard before, but Beth clearly knew the words; her voice was easily five times louder than every other kid up there. The audience was stifling giggles, and Beth breezily belted out the entire song. She did not have a solo, but in the end she was still kind of right -- she may as well have been the only one up there singing; she was definitely the center of attention.

Thanks to "The Grandma who Sews"

This picture isn't the best for showing off the dresses, but it's the best I could do. I made them pose for it before I let them eat their Sunday doughnuts, so they were a little impatient. :)

Grandma Mlinek, the day these came in the mail was a happy one around here! Claire was especially anxious to wear her "Christmas Princess" dress. (Becky will collaborate this as Claire asked, oh many, many times during the ride home from IL, where her Christmas dress was.)

The Big 1

Happy Birthday Abbie! Here are just a few pictures of her day. :) She actually said, "Cheese!" for the first time today while having her picture taken.

Our morning was taken up with ballet lessons, and in the afternoon (after a nice long birthday nap) we went to the fish store to get Abbie's "present" -- some new fish to replace the one who died last week. We've named them Vanilla, Chocolate, and -- there is some dispute over the third one. Abbie named it "Ni," (we thought she would, that is the expression she uses any time she wants something. It's pronounced exactly like the ni in The-Knights-Who-Say-Ni) but Katie insists that we should name it "Strawberry" because it has (very creepy) pink eyes. Time will tell, I guess. I'm rooting for Ni.

Note the cake: I'm pretty proud of this one! My cake decorating skills are slooooowly but surely progressing. Claire gagged while eating it, but I'm not going to take that personally......She does not exactly have a great track record when it comes to cake.

Look for a ton of post-dated updates in the next few days, as I try to catch up on posts I should have written. I just wanted to throw these pictures up in case anyone wanted to see Abbie today. :)