October 6-10: just us again

Getting harder to think of punchy phrases for the titles. Things are going along. Mina Brigitta and Lars Isaac had a great time with Grandma, and we were all sad to see her go on Saturday. She loves having visitors. As Grandma was getting ready to go, Mina kept saying "Anta coming in a week!" It's hard to tell her that people can't always come down and see her as often as she'd like them to. Plus, the doctors said that with cold and flu season approaching, it would probably be best if Mina Brigitta didn't go back to the playground for a while. So her world just got a little smaller again. She did get to see Amber today, and that always helps. Keri says she always comes back with a swing in her step and an extra boost of confidence.

The rash on her neck is not really going away, and she now has some bumps on the back of her left calf, so Keri will take her back to the clinic on Wednesday, even though she doesn't have an appointment. I would like her to be seen by the dermatologist as well. Seems pretty likely at this point that she has some mild, chronic GVHD. This is not uncommon and would not be unexpected, but it could potentially be very serious so we had hoped to avoid it. On the other hand, they always say that a little GVHD helps with the leukemia, so it's not necessarily a bad thing if it keeps doing what it's doing now.

Mina Brigitta's latest phrase is "make Sissy happy!" She first said it to me when I was spinning her around inside the house. She said "Dis make Sissy happy!" Then this weekend we took her back to the carousel, and all the way down there she kept saying "Wide-a-wide the hoe-sie make Sissy happy!" This time she rode on the bench by herself, and then sat with me on the doggie. She's also started asking questions like "Where are we?" and "Where going?" So we've started talking about San Francisco, and streetnames in our neighborhood so she can start to orient herself in the world. She still talks a lot about the pole house. Her latest thing is to take her baby to the pole house. This morning we had to take Waah Baby there for an X-ray because she hurt her foot. I asked Mina if she had fun in the pole house, and she said "Yeah!" She always nods her head when I ask if she wants to go back there. But when I asked whether she liked it better at the pole house or at Sissy's house, she said "Sissy's house!"

I put together a little photo album from Isaac's birthday: http://www.mendozabaseball.com/minabrigitta/isaac%27s%201st%20birthday/. We didn't take too many pictures because we've been having trouble getting the pictures from the digital camera to the computer and then deleting them from the camera. Poor guy just doesn't get quite the same treatment as his Sissy. He had fun, though.