It is a good thing that I am not married to Henry VIII

Today was the Big Sonogram. My sister Rachel was positive that we are having a boy. Katie was countering that, logically, given the number of girls we already have (4) compared to the number of boys (0), it is most likely another girl. Chris thought, for the first time since Katie, that a boy was at least a possibility. I think it's safe to say, though, that his family believes that we are destined to have all girls.

.......I suppose a drumroll would be appropriate...........



It's a GIRL, of course!

So, are we obligated to name the baby Therese? Or maybe I should draw from my literary background and name the baby Lydia. (If you've read the book, this is obviously a joke!) In any case, I guess we're in good company.

And at least I don't need to buy new baby clothes. :)

I have a huge backlog of stories to tell....

But first, here's one from this morning illustrating why I've been too tired to write this stuff down lately:

Abbie woke up last night at 1 am, then again at 2, 3, 4, and 5am. At 6 I threw her into bed with us, where she remained quiet for about twenty minutes. Then she proclaimed, "I take good nap!" which is her way of officially declaring that she is ready to begin the day.

I grunted and rolled over.

She gently patted my head and said, "I love you Mommy. I really love you."

So I grudgingly fell out of bed (that is really the most accurate way to describe it.) As we made our way through the still pitch-dark house, she again patted me sweetly and cooed, "You're so cute, Mommy!"

Yeah, right, kid. You're not slick enough (yet) to completely sucker me. But it did buy her enough goodwill to procure a cup of milk before I collapsed on the couch, closing my eyes against the flickering light of "The Upside-Down Show."

Addict

Claire is really jonesing these days. Our post-Halloween ritual has been set in stone from day one, modeled after my childhood memories of post-Halloween candy consumption.

This means that we celebrate All Saints' Day by gorging on candy from morning until night. After that, however, we have a strict 2-peices-of-candy-a-day rule, once after lunch and once after dinner (if they eat dinner.)

Claire just can't seem to get it this year, though. We did not have this problem last year, but now this little one wakes up with an intense craving for candy that lasts until we get a small respite when she goes back to sleep. Despite the fact that I have NEVER ONCE given in and let the girls eat candy before breakfast, Claire asks me for some every single morning. And she seems to believe that continued nagging might be effective in this situation, even though it never has to date.

Yesterday, I realized that we were dealing with something very serious. She asked for candy before breakfast: denied. She asked for candy during breakfast: denied. She asked for candy after breakfast: denied, and threatened with a time-out if she asked again.

Then I ran into the bathroom for a quick shower, feeling fairly confident that the issue had been handled, at least until lunchtime. As the water ran, though, I heard a tiny voice outside the door to the bathroom.

"What?" I yelled out the door. A mumbly voice answered something like "whiny whiny whiny MOMMY, whiny whiny whiny."

So I hopped out of the shower, unlocked the door, and then hopped back in. I then told whoever it was to open the door so that I could hear her, assuming that Abbie had stolen a toy, or someone wasn't playing with someone else....the usual stuff that suddenly becomes urgent when I want ten minutes to take a shower.

The door opened, and a spray of unruly brown hair peeped around the doorknob. A tiny voice asked, "Can I have some candy now?"

Does Hershey sponser some kind of rehab? At least we are now down to the yickiest leftovers, and hopefully once Claire gets past the shakes things will calm down.

Things that make me happy

1- Spending an hour wandering around a bookstore, all by myself.
2- Finding a new book of short stories by Susanna Clarke, author of this book
3- Coming home to the deliciously smoky smell of our first fire blazing in the fireplace!
4- Old Crow on On Demand!!!!
5- The really fake fire on the electric heater we have in the basement
6- Feeling the baby kick
7- "Fun size" snickers bars
8- My new tea pot's perfectly shrill shriek when the water boils
9- A clean house, courtesy of Merry Maids (and Uncle Kevin and Aunt Sally!)
10- Discovering that there is actually one more Jane Austin book that I haven't read!!!!
11- Anticipating the moment when I can curl up on the couch and read it!
12- Realizing that we need to paint the kitchen green, not blue, and imagining what it will look like when we do.
Bonus 13- Anything with pumpkin in it!!!

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.......

Apologies for the long silence.....

...... but my apparently aging back again went out and I spent the last week laying flat on my back. Very pathetic, although I enjoyed having the time to read a few good books. And found out that Chris makes a pretty good Mr. Mom!

In other news: Beth had a fever last weekend, and now Abbie seems to have it. Because of her central line, she can't have tylenol or anything, and we have to take her in to have bloodwork done. In these circumstances (where we are almost certain that she just picked up Beth's mild bug) it's looking like they will just give us some antibiotics and send us home. We'll find out for sure tomorrow, though, when I take her in.

If you have a spare prayer, we'll take it. :)

More quotes

Beth: Ow, my arm! My capable arm!


Abbie, with a laugh: Mommy! I just made a poopie noise!

Awesome prayer, courtesy of Beth

Glory be to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. As it was in the beginning, about a strawberry, world without end. Amen!