We were able to go visit my parents this weekend. God blessed us all with good health so we were able to be around my mom without worrying about getting her sick. The girls had so much fun. They really enjoyed sitting in their "Pop's" lap and reading lots, and lots of books...and watching college football on TV all day Saturday. My aunt and cousin came to visit that weekend as well, so it was nice to see her. The girls played with my cousin, who is an 8th grader now, but he's so good with kids. They were really interested in his ipod. Grammie and Pop have my old piano in their living room and the girls love to "play" songs and sing. It is so cute when they do that--usually it's ABC song or Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, but this weekend they sang Oh Susanna. I have it on video, so I hope their singing is audible once we play it back.
My mom is scheduled for another chemo treatment tomorrow. Her hair started falling out last week, and over the weekend, I shaved the remaining hair off so she wouldn't have to go have it done in public at a salon. She was really emotional about it, I knew she would be. I think she was also worrying that it would be really hard for me to do it (emotionally). I was fine until she started crying after the first few snips of hair. I had to just focus on getting the hair off so I wouldn't start crying. My aunt was there with us and so that was really good. I took a picture of my mom totally bald, and one with her wearing one of her wigs. She does look quite a bit different without any hair. It does change the way your face appears too. One day we will look back on this and can hopefully laugh. I know my mom will go through a rough adjustment to having no hair. She already said she felt ugly. I told her she was still pretty and that everyone would feel the same. My Dad is being so good about the whole thing. He is what will keep her feeling good until her hair comes back in.
Monday, September 29, 2008
Friday, September 19, 2008
Getting Back On Track
For the last month or so I just haven't felt like writing. Just too many things going on and I'm finding it just hard to sit down and actually get my thoughts out. Things are looking up since my last post. My mom's pathology reports came back with good news, no cancer cells in the lymphnodes and her recurrence scores were low so with the chemo treatments and possibly radiation she most likely will not have to worry about the cancer coming back, God willing. She just had her first chemo treatment on September 9th. So far she's handling it well, no major nausea (thanks to all the meds they gave her) and after a week the pain from her Nulasta (not sure if that is spelled correctly) injection has subsided. The purpose of that is to boost her bone marrow production to keep her blood count up and the side effect of it gives her achy feeling in her bones--not too fun to endure I can imagine. She's feeling better this week, so we may go visit her soon as long as we are all healthy.
Update on the twins. Emily and Savannah turned 2 years old a couple weeks ago. They are talking like crazy now, and singing all the time. Emily sings 2/3rds of the day, with her favorite songs being "Make New Friends", "ABC's", "I Know A Chicken" by the Laurie Burkner Band, and a few others I can't think of right now. Savannah likes to sing "We Are The Dinosaurs" also by the Laurie Burkner Band, "ABC's", "The Goldfish" by Laurie Burkner, and a few others. They are starting to play with each other quite a bit now, although the fighting seems to occur often and makes my days difficult at times. They like to play with the Lego Duplo blocks together, and run up and down the hall. Every now and then I'll hear one of them yell "Ready, Go!" and then they both go running by. Jumping is also high on their list--usually on the floor, thank goodness and not off of something high. In fact it's the most common way they both choose to move around the house when I need them to go from point A to point B. I usually give them a choice of walking, running, jumping, crawling, or dancing...and 9 times out of 10 they jump. As long as it gets them going in the direction I need them to go that's fine with me.
Challenging things at this time in our lives is the "Terrible Two's" behavior. I'm seeing more tantrums these days and they are both just very defiant. I'm having a hard time with it...so hard I've just been angry for the last 2 months. I've started yelling at the girls way more than I ever dreamed I would. It's gotten to a level that is not healthy. I just met with a family therapist through the parents as teachers organization in Olathe. It did help to be able to talk about my frustrations and to get a handle on what I need to do to change my interactions with the girls when they are being really resistant. I know not all of my anger is from the girls' behavior, part of it is stress of my mom's cancer situation, part of it is lack of time to myself, lack of quality time with Seth, and other little things that have just added up over time. I can say the past few days have been much happier than I can remember in the past few months.
On another note--I am stressing over separating the girls into two different bedrooms. We have been separating them for naps for the last 6-8 months and I've really noticed a difference in Emily's need for sleep vs. Savannah's need for sleep. Savannah just doesn't seem to need as much as Emily and poor Emily is suffering because of it. I talked with our pediatrician about it and described her behavior the last two months (laying on the floor sucking her thumb all morning long, very grouchy, telling me she's sleepy), and he strongly recommended separating them during all sleep situations. When they are older they can probably share a room again if they choose, but for now it will be better for Emily to have her own room. So, this weekend we get to clean out our guest/storage room and move Emily's bed in. I've been fixated on the whole decorating problem--all I have is for one room...and I don't want to do a lot to the 2nd room because we will probably re-decorate once we move them into big-kid beds in the next year. Silly thing to become obsessed over, I know, but my mind just does that sometimes. I guess I want to make sure we find coordinating bedding that could work well in the same room later on if they decide to share a room again. It's not so easy to find as you might think, especially if you don't want to spend a lot of money on it. Oh well, I guess I should just find something cute and then put it on their Christmas list for the rest of our family.
Okay, it's late. I need sleep.
Update on the twins. Emily and Savannah turned 2 years old a couple weeks ago. They are talking like crazy now, and singing all the time. Emily sings 2/3rds of the day, with her favorite songs being "Make New Friends", "ABC's", "I Know A Chicken" by the Laurie Burkner Band, and a few others I can't think of right now. Savannah likes to sing "We Are The Dinosaurs" also by the Laurie Burkner Band, "ABC's", "The Goldfish" by Laurie Burkner, and a few others. They are starting to play with each other quite a bit now, although the fighting seems to occur often and makes my days difficult at times. They like to play with the Lego Duplo blocks together, and run up and down the hall. Every now and then I'll hear one of them yell "Ready, Go!" and then they both go running by. Jumping is also high on their list--usually on the floor, thank goodness and not off of something high. In fact it's the most common way they both choose to move around the house when I need them to go from point A to point B. I usually give them a choice of walking, running, jumping, crawling, or dancing...and 9 times out of 10 they jump. As long as it gets them going in the direction I need them to go that's fine with me.
Challenging things at this time in our lives is the "Terrible Two's" behavior. I'm seeing more tantrums these days and they are both just very defiant. I'm having a hard time with it...so hard I've just been angry for the last 2 months. I've started yelling at the girls way more than I ever dreamed I would. It's gotten to a level that is not healthy. I just met with a family therapist through the parents as teachers organization in Olathe. It did help to be able to talk about my frustrations and to get a handle on what I need to do to change my interactions with the girls when they are being really resistant. I know not all of my anger is from the girls' behavior, part of it is stress of my mom's cancer situation, part of it is lack of time to myself, lack of quality time with Seth, and other little things that have just added up over time. I can say the past few days have been much happier than I can remember in the past few months.
On another note--I am stressing over separating the girls into two different bedrooms. We have been separating them for naps for the last 6-8 months and I've really noticed a difference in Emily's need for sleep vs. Savannah's need for sleep. Savannah just doesn't seem to need as much as Emily and poor Emily is suffering because of it. I talked with our pediatrician about it and described her behavior the last two months (laying on the floor sucking her thumb all morning long, very grouchy, telling me she's sleepy), and he strongly recommended separating them during all sleep situations. When they are older they can probably share a room again if they choose, but for now it will be better for Emily to have her own room. So, this weekend we get to clean out our guest/storage room and move Emily's bed in. I've been fixated on the whole decorating problem--all I have is for one room...and I don't want to do a lot to the 2nd room because we will probably re-decorate once we move them into big-kid beds in the next year. Silly thing to become obsessed over, I know, but my mind just does that sometimes. I guess I want to make sure we find coordinating bedding that could work well in the same room later on if they decide to share a room again. It's not so easy to find as you might think, especially if you don't want to spend a lot of money on it. Oh well, I guess I should just find something cute and then put it on their Christmas list for the rest of our family.
Okay, it's late. I need sleep.
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