Day +725: Wonderful Birthday Party

Just five days until the two-year anniversary of Mina's transplant on Sunday. We've been looking to this milestone for so long, it's hard to believe it's nearly here. We are heading for the Russian River for the weekend, and we've scheduled a telephone call with Sean Rodriguez, Mina's donor, for Sunday. That should be a very fun and interesting call. Other than that, we are just planning to relax, go to the beach, go for a hike, throw rocks into the river, etc. Two years is a big milestone for AML, but it's not the end of the battle by any means. I'm sure I'll start worrying again and looking forward to the three-year anniversary on Monday. And I've always looked to starting kindergarten (at about 3.5 years) and the 5-year anniversary as milestones when maybe we could actually start to relax a bit about the AML. But the odds are pretty good even at two years, and this is the milestone Dr. Loh has always talked about. So we're going to enjoy the occasion, and enjoy each other, but then get right back into the trenches on Monday.

Mina's birthday party was absolutely wonderful. We didn't do anything special; in fact, I was still out picking up the bagels and coffee when the first guests arrived, and Blaire and Walt had to help out in the kitchen for quite a long time or else there's no knowing when the birthday cupcakes would have been done. And we didn't have a clown or an animal show, or any entertainment, except a lame attempt to form a conga line and a pretty dorky version of the hoky poky. But Mina got to wear her new princess dress -- gown, really -- and there was a big turnout of both school friends and family friends. Some of the other little girls wore princess dresses too, and Mina loaned one of hers out to Devon, who was the first guest to arrive and didn't have a princess dress on.

We are still basking in the glow three days later, and in fact in true Olsen/Olson fashion we still haven't gotten around to opening up all of the presents. She got some really terrific gifts, with a heavy princess theme to them, which went over big with her of course. We weren't quite expecting so many, and we're already attempting to lay the groundwork for a much smaller party for next year.

Isaac had fun at Mina's party too. He doesn't seem to be quite at the age yet where jealousy is a big issue with him. He seemed geniunely happy for Mina that it was her birthday, and seemed to enjoy the whole affair without a hint of an attention issue. He's a very sweet boy these days, and he really loves his sister. Keri and I both decided we really like that age. Three is harder somehow, because the kids become much more self-aware and opinionated, and they start trying to trick you. They are still very sweet at two, and Isaac has been a joy to have around these days.

I posted some pictures and a couple of videos of the party. The link is in the sidebar to the right. I'll post some more this weekend. Thanks for checking in, and thanks to everyone who sent birthday gifts and wishes.

Happy Birthday to Sissy!

Trying a little something new with the blog, we'll see how this works. This is how Mina's birthday got started today. The video is 56 MB on my machine, so you might want to click it, then go grab a cup a coffee or something while you wait for it to download. Isaac has been very sweet about Mina's birthday all day. The first thing he did when Mina got up was to give her a big hug and say Happy Birthday! Usually Mina is the initiator of their hugs, so this was a special occasion.

11 PM Update: OK, so it didn't work to post a video directly to the blog through Picasa. So instead I had to upload it to the web, so you should be able to get to it through the new photo album: http://picasaweb.google.com/arneolson/Spring200702. The video took about half an hour to upload at 330 Kbps, all for about 3 minutes of grainy video. There are some fun pictures though.

Mina has been very excited all week about her birthday, but this morning she was in a rather serious mood. She was happy of course when she woke up -- the first thing she said to me in bed was, in a whispered voice, "Daddy, I'm four!" This morning she opened two presents from Momma and Dadda: the fairies she is opening in the video, and a pretty dress that she loves. I have pictures that I will attempt to make into an album tonight. Then tonight she got another pretty dress, and, what she said she always wanted from the very beginning, a new baby doll! This one is a beautiful little baby doll that she has already named Lucy and said is Lily's sister. She is sleeping happily with Lucy tonight; in fact, the first thing she did was tell Isaac he could sleep with Lily. She would never have done that before tonight. I don't think Lilly has much to worry about, she's pretty much taken over from Waah Baby as Mina's special baby. But it will be interesting to see how things evolve. I suspect there is probably room in Mina's heart for two special babies now. Isaac had no interest in sleeping with Lily, of course, but he did give her a big hug. And he seemed happy enough about being an uncle again to Lucy.

In the afternoon, Meghan made Mina a pink birthday cake with pink frosting! The cake is very yummy, and Mina said she was very excited about it.

I think we're going to have a houseful on Saturday. I'm a bit nervous about it, but what Mina really really wanted was to have all her school friends over to her house, so that's what we're going to do. I'll post more Saturday night after the party.

Day +712: Special guests and parent-teacher conferences

We had a houseful last week -- cousin Kendra came to visit us from North Idaho on her spring break, and Uncle Eric was here all the way from Sheffield, England for a philosophy conference. Kendra is a junior and a cheerleader/shot-putter at Timberlake High in Spirit Lake, Idaho. Eric is a Professor of Philosophy at Sheffield University. Kendra was here from Tuesday through Sunday, and Eric was here from Monday through Monday. It was a lot of fun having them. This was Kendra's third spring break with us, and the kids love her. Last year Mina called her "my fwiend". This year Kendra was happy to get her name back, but she spent a lot of time entertaining the kids and they just ate it up. The kids don't know Uncle Eric as well, but they warmed up to him pretty quickly, and he and Isaac established a morning routine of playing a serious game of "balloon". On Monday when we were driving Eric to the airport, Mina was singing a song to herself in the back seat, all about how Uncle Eric had to go the airport and fly back home to his house. One of the lines went, "And we will miss him, yes we will." Totally on her own, out of the blue.

Keri and I had another round of parent-teacher conferences last Thursday. It's nice to spend a couple of hours talking about your kids with someone who gets to observe them in a different setting. Teacher Julie confirmed for us that Mina really is the most socially advanced kid at the school, and the most enthusiastic participant in all that the school has to offer. She loves her school friends deeply, and Julie confirmed what we had already kind of figured out, that Mina wants nothing more than to have some of her school friends over to our house. Julie said she even announced it at the snack table one day. Julie thought the announcement was going to be about her birthday, but instead it was just generally about wanting the kids to come over.

So we got a start on that today -- the kids are on spring break this week, so Keri invited one of Mina's best friends, Anika, to come over. Mina was so excited, Keri said she was glowing all afternoon. Mina loves to share things, so she was really excited to show Anika all of her toys. Keri said that as Anika and her mom were leaving, Anika said "I love you!" to Mina.

Julie also said that Isaac is really adapting well to school. He was pretty shy the first several weeks, but he's really opened up in the last two or three weeks and now chats up all the parent helpers. We had noticed too that he's been talking to anybody and everybody. He's always been a big talker with us -- he's the kid who talked the whole two hour airplane trip from Seattle to San Francisco, so that the woman in front turned around and said with a half-smile, half-frown, "He's a really good talker." But he's always been a bit shy with people he doesn't know, kids or adults. Not so much anymore. Julie said one day recently he walked up to Soren, another shy kid, and said "Do you want to talk to me?"

Julie says that Mina watches out for Isaac too. They sit next to each other every day during snack time, and Mina tries to make sure Isaac is doing OK. And she says that "it's cool to be Mina's little sister", which means that Isaac gets to play with the 3-year-olds in a way that most of the younger kids don't. The other day they were playing bus, and Isaac wanted to play, so they had him sit in a box and be the driver. That's what he loves to do anyway, so he was happy as a clam sitting there, and the big kids just sort of went on with their game.

The one thing that was harder to hear at the parent-teacher conference was Julie talking about possible "holes" in Mina's learning. Julie said that Mina really doesn't get it when Julie tries to demonstrate to her how certain things work, e.g., mixing blue and yellow to get green or mixing dirt and water to make mud. And she said Mina's counting skills are sometimes there and sometimes not. Julie thinks that the public schools are not a good match for Mina's learning style, and she's recommending that Mina go to the Waldorf school for kindergarten instead of public school. Even though Mina would be eligible for extra help through the public school, Julie has worked in some of the "special ed" programs and doesn't think they tend to be all that helpful. It's a bit sobering to be talking about potential learning disabilities at this point, but I guess we knew the subject was going to come up eventually. It was nice to think, in the absence of any evidence to the contrary, that maybe Mina somehow miraculously escaped all of her treatment without any serious side effects. But that would be extremely unlikely, and it's better that we be prepared for things that might arise, even if they don't.

The Waldorf school would make a lot of sense, because Mina really does seem to thrive in that environment, and she really is the one who is getting the most out of it, and especially out of the aspects of it that are unique to the Waldorf system. But it costs a lot of money to send a kid to that school, and then we would either have to put Isaac there too or have them go to different schools. It's probably not even realistic, but it's something that we'll be thinking about over the next several months.

Mina is getting very excited about her birthday. She really wanted to have it here, mostly because she wants all of her school friends to come to her house, so we're somehow going to cram 15 kids and their parents into our little two-bedroom flat. Mina wants them all to wear fancy clothes too, but we're thinking of keeping the option open to escape to the playground if it gets too hectic here. Should be fun and interesting. The party is Saturday the 21st, two days after her 4th birthday.

Then the following weekend we're planning to go to the Russian River, just the four of us, to commemorate the two-year anniversary of her transplant. We went there last year on the one-year anniversary and had a wonderful time.

Strange and exciting times ahead, and I can't believe they're coming up so fast!