Day +617: Snowy fun in the great Northwest

Blogging from Anta Teri and Uncle Pole's house to say Happy New Year everyone! I spent the week in San Francisco waiting to be called for jury duty. Luckily my group was one of three out of fifteen that didn't get called in. I say "luckily", because I had a huge report to finish by Thursday, and I was in the office every night until 10 PM as it was. Not sure what I would have done if I'd had to spend the day at the courthouse. Keri and the kids split the week between Auntie Kristi's and here. It's always fun to see the kids after it's been awhile. They spent hte day at Grandma Lyn's with Zane and Zoe so I expected them to be distracted by the cousins, but Mina gave me a big smile and a huge hug and said "I haven't seen you in a long time!", and Isaac said "You're Daddy!" Then "Hi Daddy!" over and over again. This week we'll be here until Tuesday or Wednesday, then will head over to Wenatchee, weather permitting. Next weekend we'll be in the Winthrop area for a cross-country ski weekend with Mom, Dad, Kari, Steve and Carmen.

The kids have been having a ball this Christmas. Zoe is three months older than Mina, and they're quite compatible, so they're becoming very close. They both like babies and playing Mommie and schoolteacher. Zoe is a sweet girl. She has more experience in daycare and a 7-year old brother, so she's a bit rougher than Min, but our girl can hold her own pretty well. Mostly the friction comes when Zoe has had enough and wants some time to herself, which Mina doesn't understand. Mina wants to be with her all the time. I really didn't see a lot of Mina when we were all in Idaho.

We had a lot of snow in my parents' back yard, and the whole time we were in Idaho. We have great, hand-me-down snow suits so the kids could be out in it for a long time and never get cold. We went sledding down a big hill in Wenatchee. Mina and Carmen loved it, Isaac not so much. He's a bit young to enjoy speed, and when he went down with Keri, he said "Mommie go too fast". We found a great sledding hill in Idaho with a run out onto a frozen lake where people were ice fishing. I started halfway down the hill with Isaac, and when we first started off he said "Too fast. TOO FAST!" But when we reached the bottom and were coasting out onto the lake, he said "Whee! That's fun Daddy!" I asked it if was too fast, and he said "No, not too fast." Zane and Zoe wanted to go again and again, but Mina and Isaac were satisfied after two runs each.

Mina's favorite thing is to eat the snow. It's funny, whenever she talks about eating the snow, she does this smacking thing with her lips. When we got to the sledding park in Idaho, the first thing she said was "What me gonna eat, smack smack?" So we gave her a big piece of crusty snow, as clean a piece as we could find, and she munched off it for an hour.

Mina keeps demonstrating how incredibly social she is. She really would not leave Zoe alone, being a bit pesty at times I think. When the family arrived back in Lake Stevens, Grandma Lyn took them to meet a friend of hers who runs a day care. They visited during the day, at the daycare, and Mina was taking part in all the activities with the kids, including having lunch. After lunch, the kids all got ready for their naps, and Lyn and Keri were getting ready to go. Mina insisted on lying down for a nap with the kids! She's been a bit short on sleep and is consequently kind of a challenge to deal with, and when Lyn's friend said it was OK if she stayed, they took Isaac and left Mina behind. They were kind of hoping Mina would nap, but she only laid down for 10 minutes and then was a bit sad, but the teachers played with her for the rest of naptime.

Isaac got two gifts for Christmas that have been a bit frustrating to him: a small toy motorcyle and car. "Santa" brought Isaac the motorcycle, but she must have been feeling extremely generous because it's a police motorcycle that makes all kinds of noises, including a siren, the motorcyle engine noise, and playing the theme from "Cops". That's kind of an uncharacteristic gift from Keri Claus, Isaac loves it. The only problem is, he wants to ride it, and it's way too small. Same thing with the car. It's a small toy car, but Isaac doesn't quite understand relative size yet so he's really mad that he can't get in the car. At least he can sit on the motorcycle, even if it's too small to actually take him anywhere, but there's not really anything to be done with the car. It's funny to think that the kid who communicates so well about so many things wouldn't understand such a basic thing about the world, but that's what they say. I remember when Mina was about the same age, she really thought the characters in books should be real, and sometimes she wanted to go into the picture in the book.

We did bring Isaac's guitar with him, so he's had it everywhere this Christmas. He's now letting go of it and playing with lots of other stuff, though it took him a few days to get to that point. There's so much distraction here, it's not too surprising, though he did pick it up a couple of times when he was tired and in his own zone and had a "concert". It will be interesting to see how his relationship with it evolves after we get back home away from all the excitement.

But I'm saving the best news for last: I got a message from the bone marrow team at UCSF on Thursday, and Mina's engraftment study came back 100% donor! It's such a relief. It had been on my mind, just because I worry about every little thing with Mina. Wondering why she's so tired (because she played hard all day and didn't nap, of course), worrying if she looks pale (her natural skin tone is nearly translucent), worrying about the bruises on her legs (which may be exacerbated by her skin tone, and also the aspirin she still takes daily). All normal things, but I can't help worrying, just the same. So it's really nice to be able to relax a bit and take some comfort that she's doing great. But it's always challenging whenever those test results are pending, and I felt myself totally tensing up when I heard Linda's voice on the voice mail, and then tearing up when she gave us the good news. I think the next engraftment study will be in April, around her two-year anniversary. I'll probably be back to worrying some time in February.