Day +539: Three and a half

Mina turned three and a half yesterday! She doesn't really get it, but it means a lot to us that she's halfway through her threes. It's kind of a tough age -- she's very willful, and we sometimes have a hard time getting her to brush her teeth, get her pajamas on, get ready for school, etc. But it's a lot of fun, too, and she's doing great. She has so much color and so much energy these days, it's really amazing. She gets these little bruises on her knees and shins, and every time I see them I panic a little. Frequent and large bruises could be caused by low platelets, which would be a primary indicator of the leukemia returning. Yesterday she had a very dark one, nearly black, on her knee. But when I look at them closely they're always relatively small and contained, and they frequently have a little raised bump indicating that they were caused by a hard impact. Then I look at how pink her hands and feet are, and her face, and I start to relax. Someday I won't get these feelings anymore. I'll look forward to that day. In a few days, on the 29th, it'll be 18 months since her transplant. We may be able to start to relax a little in a year or so.

Isaac's toe has nearly recovered. It's been a bit sore still, particularly if the nail gets tweaked, like the other day when I was putting on some pajamas that were a bit tight. He's still eventually going to lose it, I think. But otherwise he doesn't notice it anymore. Grandma Judy is home from the hospital and doing really well, though she's still taking it easy and is not able to hike or climb for a while. Today was Grandpa Monte's 67th birthday, so we called up there tonight and the kids sang him Happy Birthday. They love to sing, but sometimes get shy on the phone so I was happy that they were belting it out tonight. Grandma and Grandpa are coming down in a couple of weeks, so we're really looking forward to that.

Mina and Isaac both had visits to the dentist last week, and Momma proudly reported that the whole crew was amazed with how good our kids were. They both sat in the chairs and opened wide like alligators and allowed the dentist to clean and inspect their teeth. Neither of them had any cavities! Mina has since gone back twice for sealant -- she inherited deep grooves in her molars from her father, so they wanted to seal those up to prevent cavities.

Mina has another new baby. I forget how or why she and Keri were at a store together where Mina fell in love with one of the baby dolls, but they were and she did so Keri couldn't resist. Mina loves this new baby a lot, and wanted to give her other new baby to Isaac right away. When I asked her why, she said because she didn't want to have three babies. I asked who the three babies were, and she said "the new baby, the other new baby, and Waah Baby. But I don't know where Waah Baby is." The new one looks a lot more like Waah Baby, with a full round plastic head and blue eyes that open and close. She's finally gotten used to the idea of having three babies, so she's kept the other new one as well. She's not calling it "Tada" anymore, she's now saying her name is "Baby". It's handy to have two at times, in case we can't locate one of them. But occasionally we now have to locate both of them...

Mina is really enjoying school, and she's definitely picking things up from her new friends. Now she frequently starts a conversation with "Hey, do you know what?" Or sometimes she says, "Do you want to hear what's weally funny?" She has lots of new friends there: Cassidy, Maddy, Reilly, Miranda, but she says her favorite is Annika. Isaac gets to get to school when Keri works there, which has happened a couple of times, and he has a great time too. He'll be able to go as soon as he's poddy trained, but so far he's not showing a lot of interest in that. Kaaren and Keri are working hard on him, so we'll see how far they get.

Day +529: Isaac's sore toe

Isaac did a number on his big toe Sunday night. I didn't see it happen, but I heard a thump and Isaac screaming. We have a foot-high speaker on the floor next to our TV, and I think he was trying to climb it. He's been way into climbing lately and he's totally fearless, so we've been fearing an accident. I think he put his knee on the speaker, it fell over onto his toe with his knee and his full body weight on top of it. His toenail immediately turned black and he screamed bloody murder for at least 20 minutes. He finally calmed down, but when he looked at the speaker he started crying again. Then he was awake for two hours in the middle of the night until the Tylenol finally kicked in. Poor guy.

He bumped it again on Monday, and the kids were telling me the story this morning at breakfast. Isaac told me he had a new owie, and both Isaac and Mina insisted that a soft Elmo toy was the culprit. It didn't make any sense, until I finally figured out that he must have bumped his sore toe against Elmo's plastic eyeball. That seemed to have lifted the toenail just enough to let some of the blood out, so it probably helped. His toe was still kind of swollen this morning, and Keri and I had just decided that she should take him to the doctor. Then I put down, and he immediately ran three or four steps over to the couch with a big grin on his face. We said, "OK, maybe he doesn't need to go to the doctor after all."

Grandma Judy is in the hospital after some surgery Tuesday. She had a rough first day and night because they couldn't find any pain medication she could keep down, but they finally found the right combination and she's doing better now. She's due to come home today and will have to take it easy for a while, but the doctors anticipate no long term effects so she should be climbing and skiing again in a couple of months. The kids called her yesterday morning in the hospital and sang the ABC song, which is their latest.

Both the kids have colds. Isaac was actually feverish all day Monday, and both of them have snotty noses. Mina's face is a bit swollen, which seems to happen whenever she has a sinus infection. We'll keep a close eye on her, but I'd really prefer keep her off the antibiotics if possible, so hopefully that won't be necessary. Not too surprising that they'd both get colds so soon after school started.

Keri and Mina spent Saturday night at Bliss & Austin's house (and Melissa's), so Isaac and I had some man time, which was very nice. Rich and Olgica brought Nikola into the city, and we went to the free "Hardly Strictly Bluegrass" festival in Golden Gate Park. Both Niko and Isaac were entranced by the music. We went to one of the little stages rather than trying to fight the crowds to see Elvis Costello or Emmylou Harris, and we got to sit right up front to see a couple of acts. Isaac was standing right in front of the stage for a couple of songs, staring right up at the musicians and practically forcing them to acknowledge him. He was in serious danger of stealing the show, but it was the end of the day so he was losing interest. He wandered off to the duck pond instead.

Not much other news to report at the moment, which is just the way we like it.

Day +520: Happy Birthday Isaac!

Isaac usually plays second fiddle on this blog; it's his good fortune not to have been afflicted with a life-threatening disease. He's also not a real needy kid. He plays by himself a lot, or with his sister, and doesn't demand a lot of our attention. But of course none of that means we love him any less. Keri and I talk frequently about how lucky we are to have Isaac, and that he came along at just the perfect time. He's a really sweet kid, and all three of us enjoy him a lot.

Today (Sunday) is his 2nd birthday. I took him to the zoo this morning while Mina was at the birthday party of one of her new school friends. I figured I would take him to the petting zoo, because I'm still a little bit too paranoid to take Mina there. He sort of liked seeing the animals, but mostly he wanted to ride the toy tractor there and play with the little plastic rake. That came with pretty good timing, because just this morning he had said for the first time in a while that he wanted to ride the tractor with Uncle Bill.

But we didn't have time to do much celebrating otherwise. I'm actually blogging from a hotel in Portland. I have a meeting I have to attend starting at 8 AM, so I flew out at 6:30 and we're going to finish celebrating tomorrow night after I get back. He wasn't real clear on the meaning of having a birthday anyway. He's been singing Happy Birthday all day long, but putting various names in the place of honor: "Happy Birthday to Mina! Happy Birthday to Momma! Happy Birthday to Kaaren! Happy Birthday to Mikhaila!" He had memorized the answer to "How old are you?" (He used to say "Green!" or "Color!"), and was having a hard time figuring out why the answer was different now. We hadn't gotten to the present part yet, so that will give him a better idea of what birthdays are all about.

Mina's school had an optional campout on Friday night, so we went up to Point Reyes along with about four other families, including one of Mina's new best friends, Cassidy. We had a ball. The first thing Mina said as we were pulling into the campground was "where's Grandma?", remembering back to Family Camping weekend with Keri's family in July. Mina was walking around on Saturday morning in about two inches of dust and sand in her fleece jammies with the feet. She'd taken her sandals off, and the jammies were filthy about halfway up to her knees. She had her new baby in the "Baby Joey" position, and soon her friend Cassidy was doing that too. She spent a long time throwing dried pine needles into the fire, saying that she was making "stone soup" (after the book of that name). Then we went on a hike in the redwoods, and she liked finding little spots to hide from bears. A bummer about hiking with little kids in this area is poison oak. This area had lots of it, so we had to be really careful about what the kids touched.

The families seem like a really nice bunch of people, and it's been a lot of fun to see Mina interact with other kids. She rode in Cassidy's car between the campground and the hike, and had a great time. Julie, the teacher, and one of the other parents were marveling at how social Mina is. They said she's a leader, and Julie said she was a "social force." Then she told a story about how Mina rallied a group of about four kids to stop what they were doing and go out to the sand box with her. After all that we've been through over the past three years, with having to worry about so many awful possibilities, after she was on isolation for so long, to hear that she's not only adapting to being with other kids but a "social force", it's enough to bring tears to my eyes. I hope the other parents didn't notice.

Mina, like Keri and I, really benefited from Isaac's presence. He was so interactive at such a young age that she's really had a playmate all along. And we had someone to help absorb the pressure of all our worries. He's taken it all in stride and seems to be really flourishing. He loves his big sister, and more often than not he initiates the games now. His diction is so clear, he can pronounce "L" really well, but Mina still uses "Y". He obviously picks up a lot of his speech from his sister, because when he sings Baah Baah Black Sheep, he goes "one for the yittle boy who yives down the lane"

Isaac, I don't know what we'd have done without you. Happy Birthday little guy, I miss you.