Picnic

The other day Tessa wanted to have a picnic. Unfortunately the weather was cool and windy and an outside the house, real life with fun food picnic wasn't going to happen. Not to be deterred, she improvised:

They had a marvelous time.

Time Machine

Jay and I are pretty good natured about our ages. We often see a movie on TV and realize that we saw it back in a theater when it first came out 20 years ago and say, "We're getting so old!" But really, we're not. We're both in our early 40's and that's just the way it is. Everyone turns 40 at some point.

We've got two activities planned for this summer that might have us feeling our age a bit more than normal. We have bought tickets to two concerts a week apart. On June 3rd we're going to see U2. We've wanted to see them in concert for a while but it's never worked out. A week later, June 10th, we're going to see Sting. When we bought our U2 tickets we didn't realize that another concert that we (well, really me) would want to see would be coming so soon. I almost didn't buy the Sting tickets. It just seems so College-Sophomore-On-Spring-Break to indulge in two concerts in a week. We've got to figure out child care. They are both in Salt Lake. The boys will have started baseball by then. But, as Jay pointed out, we've had a pretty stressful 2010 so far and we deserve a little bit of fun.

So if we seem tired in early June, blame it on the concerts. Or our desire to relive our youth. Whatever.

Mind Reader

Jay has Tessa convinced that he can read her mind. Most mornings he is up before the kids and gets them breakfast. He started pretending to read Tessa's mind and now she thinks he really can. They apparently spend time every morning with Jay concentrating very hard on what Tessa might want for breakfast (Apple Jacks! Granola Bar! Oatmeal!); once he gets to what she wants she says, "yes!" and sings his praises far and wide.

She has also taken to calling him "My Sweet Daddy" and yesterday informed him that when she grows up she might have to marry him. In my borrowed "marry dress". He loves it, of course. He praises her and calls her Sweet Princess Pie. I don't have the heart to break it to her that her favorite Mind Reader, Sweet Daddy, and Future Husband is playing her like a violin.

It wouldn't bother me except that it seems that Jay has taken all the fun roles. My main role seems to be helping her on Wii games (and listening to her berate me when I don't complete the games fast enough or to her satisfaction) and wiping her bum after she goes to the bathroom. Why do I feel like I got the raw end of this deal?

Make It A Pink One

Today the family filled out their NCAA Tournament brackets. I'm abstaining this year. I just can't be bothered to care that much and frankly Henry sucks the enjoyment out of stuff like that at this point. He's already bugging me with all his smack talk and chest thumping so I just said no.

Everyone else is participating, however. We are geeked enough that we actually started an online bracket so that Uncle Philip can participate, much to Henry's delight. He loves the idea of another serious sports fan picking the games. His only other real competition is Jay, since William and Tessa tend to go with the color of the teams (William) or the last team mentioned in the pairing (Tessa, explaining her pick of Siena to win it all).

As a matter of fact, Tessa refused to go to bed before sitting down and picking her teams, sending the peanut gallery into gales of laughter. As she picked teams like Siena and Wofford to go deep into the tournament, Henry and William giggled like schoolgirls. I guess they figure at least they are assured not to finish last in our pool. Her only disappointment was that her "rocket" (she seemed to have trouble with the word bracket) couldn't be pink. "Make it a pink one, Daddy", she said, as she settled onto Jay's lap to go through all the tournament pairings. If only that were possible.

Captain Funnypants

I've been reading over my blog posts over the last few months. It's been quite a ride, hasn't it? But I realized that, while I've been preoccupied (rightly so) with Henry's condition, I haven't made much mention of our other two children. Remember them? So this entry is dedicated to William.

William is quite the funny little boy. He loves to make people laugh; unfortunately he's still figuring out when jokes and funny stuff are appropriate. He seems to do OK at school but at home it seems that anything goes. If Henry laughs, he keeps going and going and going. It gets annoying. But it's fun to see him develop his sense of humor.

He's also quite the reader. He brings home a new book every night to read and he's doing really well. The books in his current set have two different stories to them and they are pretty long but he seems to breeze right through them. It takes us between 10 and 15 minutes to get through the book but he seems to enjoy reading, which makes me happy.

He's looking forward to playing sports this spring. We've signed him up for soccer and baseball again. Soccer starts in a few weeks. He'll be in the 6 and under league again and they don't play soccer in the strictest sense. They don't have a goalie and all tend to run around after the ball in a pack but it's good exercise and a good introduction to playing on a team. It'll be interesting to see how he does this year. Baseball will be t-ball for him again. He enjoyed both sports last year so I think he will this year as well.

It's hard to believe that he'll be in 1st grade next year. I'll be sending him off to the bus stop in the morning with Henry and they'll both be gone all day. I'm a little worried about Tessa. She is used to being around William all morning so I'm not sure how she'll react when it's just she and I all day, every day. She'll have preschool three mornings a week but still it's a pretty big adjustment for her to make. I'm sensing more princess time in the future.

The Waiting Game

We are officially playing The Waiting Game. Henry has four small (2 mm is the largest) nodules in his lungs. They are absorbing the radioactive iodine, which is good. But we don't know if it will be enough to get rid of them and we won't know for a while - probably months. Our next doctor's appointment is in April, where we will discuss long term treatment plans and monitoring with our pediatric endocrinologist. His blood work looks good, though, so we're as happy as we can be with an 8 year old with cancer that has metastasized to his lungs.

So here we sit. Waiting. But lots of fun things are on the horizon - Easter! Spring Break! Soccer! Baseball! Tessa's birthday! All of these things are coming up in the next few months. So I'll try to stop googling nasty cancer-related stuff and regain a bit of balance.

In other news, Jay and I have new callings at church. We were both released from Primary (I was in Nursery and Jay was 11 year old teacher/11 year old Scout leader) and called to teach the 17 year old Sunday School class. We'll be team teaching, which will be fun. Hopefully we can reach a happy medium since I like to start preparing lessons a week or so ahead of time and, well, let's just say Jay doesn't. I think we'll have to compromise.

It'll be quite a change for me. For the past 2 1/2 years I've been in the nursery with the 18 month to 3 year olds. There is something really sweet about Nursery and I'll miss it. And although I'm guessing that the 17 year olds are all potty trained (no more performing the sniff test to ferret out who needs a diaper change) they don't get snacks every week in class either. It's a trade-off, for sure, but one that we're excited about.

In Like a Lion

Henry's followup scans showed what they call "uptake" in his lungs. Basically this means that something in his lungs is absorbing the radioactive iodine that he took two weeks ago. Since thyroid cells are the only cells in the body that absorb iodine, the conclusion is that the cancer has metastasized to his lungs. We'll have a high resolution CT done at Primary Children's to see how involved it is and get a better picture of what we're dealing with. Thyroid cancer in children is typically more aggressive than in adults, so lung mets can occur in 20% of all pediatric thyroid cancer patients. It shouldn't significantly effect his outcome or prognosis.

I know all of that intellectually. I understand that the odds are still great that he'll be fine. But I'm discouraged. Our best case scenario was that the scan showed uptake only in the thyroid bed, meaning that the cancer hadn't spread beyond what we already knew. Now we have an extra layer of worry and concern. It means more tests and scans and monitoring. Henry isn't thrilled to be taking yet another trip to Salt Lake City for yet another scan. But we'll go and go happily and be grateful that we have such good medical facilities available to us.

March is coming in like a lion for us, it seems. Let's hope that it goes out like a lamb. Isn't that the way it's supposed to happen?

Welcome, March!

I love the month of March. It just feels hopeful to me. We start to see temperatures above freezing. The sun begins to make more regular appearances. The snow begins to melt and the grass, as wet and matted as it is, becomes more and more visible as the month goes on. I know it's not technically spring until March 20th or so but something about March just screams, "Hold on! You're almost there. You've almost made it."

This winter has been difficult for us. My faith has been tested in ways that I never thought possible. I prayed for Henry's thyroid nodule to be benign harder than I have ever prayed for anything in my life. I fasted. I cried. Alot. And yet Henry has cancer. I don't understand why and maybe I never will.

But I've learned alot. I've learned that it's OK to accept help when you can't do it all by yourself. I've learned the value of good friends who cried with me and listened to me worry over and over and over again. I've learned that there are a lot of people who care about my family and are willing to help us when we need help. I've learned to be grateful for the blessings that I have because I have so many that I can't name them all. I've learned to focus more fully on the things that are important in life. I've learned that, even when things seem hardest, I am never, ever alone.

Spring is coming. I can feel it. My kids played outside this afternoon after school. Henry organized a basketball game and Tessa rode her trike around the cul-de-sac. I stood in a patch of sunlight and thanked my Heavenly Father that our winter is almost over.