Day +1274: Happy Birthday Isaac, Camp Okizu and More!

Well, once again another month has gone by along with all kinds of activities. The problem is, the longer I wait between posts, the more there is to write about and the more daunting the task seems. Just need to get back in the habit of posting more frequently. That's my intention, anyway.

There have been several big events since the last update. The most important one was Isaac's 4th birthday! Four is a fun one, because they fully understand what a birthday is all about and they may even have some memories of their own last birthday. Mina of course wanted a huge party on her 4th birthday, with all of her friends and the princess dress. I refer to it as her "debutante ball". We kept asking Isaac what he wanted to do on his birthday, but he never really had an answer. We had several suggestions, e.g., have a big party, have just a few friends over, have it at our house, have it at the playground, go to Train Town like last year, etc., but he never really grabbed ahold of an idea. He can be pretty shy sometimes, and I think he was just uncomfortable thinking about being in the spotlight like that. We finally decided to have just a few people over on the day of his birthday, and it ended up working out great. It was a hike day at school, and they did a healthy hike, about two miles in Stern Grove, a park in San Francisco. I got to be the parent participant that day, and they did his school birthday at the park. Then I took Isaac, Mina, Soren and Calvin on the muni train all the way into downtown, where we changed trains to get on the N-Judah. It was very exciting for the kids, especially when we all had to get off the train and walk for a few blocks because there had been an accident and the trains couldn't go through a certain portion of the tunnel. Ronan and Aiofe Rose joined us at our house, and we had sausages and beans and a chocolate cake with raspberries on top, which Isaac had asked for. His favorite birthday present was a new bridge for his Brio train set. Auntie Teri got to be here too, which was great. All in all, I think it worked out just about perfectly for him. Lots of excitement, and I know his birthday felt special to him, but not so much excitement as to overwhelm him. That night as we were lying in bed almost asleep, he whispered "Daddy? I'm dreaming about my big hike!"

Mina was a great big sister, just genuinely excited for her brother and not at all trying to steal the show. In fact her first comment when she came out in the morning was "why is the whole house not decorated?" Keri and Teri did some decorations later on so it felt plenty festive, but Mina was clearly looking forward to the excitement of Isaac's birthday in a very genuine way.

Another fun event that happened this month was the annual Cole Street Fair. This is where they block off two blocks of Cole Street and a block of Parnassus and bring in booths, food, a big jumpy tent, and most of all, music. It's a great place to see live music because the musicians play right there on the street, with no amplification. Keri took Mina to a school work day, and I took Isaac down to the street fair in the morning. After we watched the first band, the violin player came right over to us and started talking to Isaac. She was very impressed with how he sat still and paid close attention while they played for 45 minutes. She told him "You must have a lot of music in you!" If she only knew! This has actually become somewhat of a theme. It has now happened several times that musicians have noticed how intently Isaac watches them and have said something to us afterwards. One time we were watching a jazz concert and the saxophonist came right down off the stage to walk through the audience and made his first stop right in front of Isaac. Unfortunately he came on a little too strong and Isaac didn't like it too much.

But the street fair was a big hit. We watched several bands, then left and went to the playground for a while, then went back to the street fair with Rich, Olgica, Niko and Lenka. Isaac was totally fascinated by the fact that the street was blocked off and cars couldn't go on it. He kept asking about it, why the cars couldn't come onto the street, why the policeman was standing by the gate, etc. Since then, "Street Fair" has become one of his favorite games. He takes his blocks and barricades the hallway so cars can't go there, because there is a street fair going on. And whenever we go down to Cole Street, he says "This is where the street fair was!" And he always wonders why there isn't a street fair going on now.

Another big event that happened recently is that one of my partners at E3, Snuller Price, got married and Mina got to be a flower girl! She was so excited. Snu asked me about it a few weeks before the wedding, so I went home and asked Mina and she got the biggest smile on her face. I told her she would get to walk down the aisle with flowers while wearing a princess dress. The next morning she came in very early and asked "Is it going to be cement?" I said "Huh?", and finally she said "The aisle. Is it going to be cement?" Then I figured it out, and I told her it was probably going to be wood chips, since the wedding was going to be held outside at a vinyard that Snu owns with his dad near Clear Lake, about four hours north of the Bay Area (it ended up being small cinder blocks). Mina got to wear her dress again from her 4th birthday, which luckily still fits her perfectly, and there were two other flower girls, both six-year-olds. All three of them were blond with teeth missing in the front, and about the same height. They became an inseparable trio, running around the party arm in arm chanting "Here come the flower girls! Here come the flower girls!" Eric Cutter from E3 was one of the other dads, and he posted some pictures here: http://picasaweb.google.com/CutterStark/SnullerErikaSWedding?authkey=pX_acZMHOxI.

You can tell Mina is a San Francisco girl: it was very hot up there that weekend, in the 90s during the day. As we were driving home on Sunday, Mina said "I can't wait to get back to the city where it's cold!"

Yet another big event that happened a couple of weeks ago was our annual trip to Camp Okizu! Okizu is the oncology camp in the Sierra foothills to the north that is so wonderful. We had gone twice before, but both times over Memorial Day weekend. We liked that better, because it was a three-day weekend. It's kind of a long drive for a regular weekend. We left San Francisco at 2 PM and didn't get up there until after 8:00. It normally takes four hours or a little less, but with traffic, potty breaks, and stopping for dinner it took us much longer. Mina was *so* excited to be there. She remembered it from last year, and she was just bouncing off the walls. Isaac remembered only one thing, as far as I can tell: the Boomwhackers. If you don't know, Boomwhackers are little plastic tubes of varying lengths that make different sounds when you whack them on your hand, and a tradition at Okizu is to have a little song with Boomwhackers one of the nights. The song only lasts about 10 minutes, but it was Isaac's favorite part of the weekend. In fact, the only way I could drag him away from NPG to get in the car was to mention the Boomwhackers. He kept asking why the Boomwhacker part was so short. The other reason why going in October was a bit of a drag was because I didn't recognize any of the faces. I had gotten to know some of the people over the two Memorial Days we were there -- it's funny how fast you make friends when you have something like leukemia in common. This time it was all new people, but it was still very fun. Keri opted to stay home for the weekend, both to have some time alone but also because she was asked to do a guest lecture at USF and needed to prepare something. The weather was also a bit of an issue -- it was very cold at night, in the low 30s, and the cabins are not insulated. We slept in our clothes and I put the kids' winter jackets on them, and we put the mattresses on the floor and slept huddled together. We were warm enough while in our sleeping bags, but it was very cold getting up. It was kind of fun at the same time, though, and it's something the kids will definitely remember.

The highlight of the weekend for Mina was doing the ropes course. They have several trees set up for climbing, and you put on a climbing harness and helmet and someone belays you. You can go 60 feet or more up into a swaying tree. We had never thought to take Mina to the ropes course before, but after her climbing adventure this summer I knew we had to do it. She loved it, of course. She wasn't as comfortable climbing up the metal spikes they had pounded into the trees as she was on the rocks over the summer, but she still had a ball. The part she liked best was the zipline. They clip you into a cable that runs about 100 yards over a gulley, and you run down the hill until the gulley approaches, then you jump into the air go zinging through the air until you land in a soft pile of sand on the other side. We watched the others do it for a while, and Mina kept wanting to try it but chickening out at the last minute. Finally the camp counselor asked if we wanted to do a tandem run, and I said "Sure!" So they clipped us both in, I picked Mina up in my arms and ran down the hill, and we both went sailing through the air. That was all it took to break the log jam. After that she went about six times by herself. It was so funny to watch her running down the hill so determinedly, definitely the littlest one who was going by herself. She made a six-year-old friend there, Lauren, who wasn't sure if she wanted to go by herself or not. So Mina said, "You should just watch me do it, and do what I do." Sure enough, Lauren wasn't going to be outdone so she ended up doing it herself too.

Mina will be eligible to go by herself next summer when she's six. They have a bus that leaves from San Francisco. After the weekend up there I asked Mina if she wanted to go up there on the bus with counselors and other kids and she said "Yes!" with a big smile and nod. We'll see what happens when the time comes. I'm hoping we'll get to go next Memorial Day again so the memory will be fresh in Mina's mind when it comes time for her to go. Isaac will get to go to "Sibs' week" when he's six, but he didn't like that idea so much. He loves Camp Okizu, and in fact he asked several times why we couldn't live there, but he does not like the idea of going without Mina. He said he wants to be with his Sissy always.

"Camp Okizu" is now another game the kids are playing at home. Isaac grabs a pot and spoon and bangs it before every meal and calls it "ringing the dinner bell". Then one of them gets up on a chair and yells out "Hello campers! How's your lunch?" Then they make an announcement about where the kids are going to meet and where the grown-ups are going to meet. The woman who does the announcements is called "Beta" (all the counselors go by nicknames while at Okizu for privacy reasons), so they take turns being Beta, or sometimes Isaac says he is Dr. Mike (the former BMT director at Stanford who founded the camp).

Last thing I wanted to report about is the kids' health. Isaac had a checkup recently for school. When he got done and went to school, he asked Julie "What are they checking up on?" Anyway, he was at the 95th percentile -- in weight! If you know how skinny he is, you'll figure out it's only because he's so tall, off the charts in fact. I always figured he would be tall, but I had him at 6'3" or 6'4", not at 6'8"! But he does have Keri's body style, so we'll see. May have to start getting him interested in basketball instead of baseball. Both Mina and Isaac got flu shots while they were at the doctors' office, and neither of them cried. Mina started being tough a long time ago while going to the "shot doctor", and Isaac has watched her enough times that he doesn't want to cry either. Mina went for a checkup at the endocrinologist, and everything is fine. She is at the 50th percentile in height and 75th in weight -- not because she has any fat, but because of how solidly she is built. She's the one with the baseball build! We were thinking 50th percentile might be falling off a bit, but the endocrinologist was not worried at all. She has to go in for a hand X-ray soon to check on her bone density. So far so good on all fronts. She is strong as an ox and just as stubborn sometimes -- it's so much fun to watch her do the monkey bars!