how to get rid of commercial callers

Last night Elsie answered the phone, I heard her talking and after a minute or so she hung up. I went over to her and asked her who it was. She explained;
"the guy just said Jake England, and so I said no this is Elsie, but he kept asking Jake England and I kept saying no, this is Elsie. I kept hearing people noise all around and he said Jake England again and I said, no this is Elsie, then he just hung up." She shrugged her shoulders and walked away from me.

we were dreaming of a white christmas...

and our dreams came true! We had a lot of snow... and we were all a glow...

our grins we did show...

All their piggies in a row

faster, faster don't go slow...
(chloe loves a good jump!)

and man does Addie continue to grow!!

Rhen, well he didn't want to go with the flow.
(he just needed his long winters nap)

Give Elsie 10 minutes in front of the camera and...

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Stacie made Rhen a sweet cake (no pun intended) which he thoroughly enjoyed today. Here's a few pics of the cake and the mess Rhen made of it. He loved the cake, but once he found the sucker thats all he was interested in. He was sticky.

A birthday boy

A first for us, a birthday boy!! What a handsome boy! Such a cute personality and always making us laugh.
Such a sweet boy and loves soft squoosy things to hug and sigh, humm maybe that is why he likes to hug me, haha. He loves to hug you and then grab your face with his nails and pull away really fast and then say ugh. We could all just squeeze him we love him so much.

His birthday breakfast, he is always trying to feed himself because he doesn't like to be feed. So here is his attemt at oatmeal, one of his favorites.

We are so glad this year we can be relaxed and have a great birthday for him. I keep remembering last year at this time and how stressed I was, it will be nice to enjoy the moments of his first birthday. We will have just a small party, but we will try to attempt the birthday hat (which started this summer), cake of a mountain with a cruiser driving up it, and the usual presents. Happy Birthday to our birthday boy!

Clinic 12/16

I'm going to go ahead and add to the blog here because I'm in the Onc. Clinic with Chloe and pretty bored. We left late this morning because I lost track of the time. With the storm I thought for sure we would be late, but the roads weren't too bad and we made it on time. Apparently it took us just as long to get here from Logan as it took our Doc to get from 60th south.

We just got back from getting an xray to check out her chest and organs. They want to make sure there hasn't been damage from the steroids and other meds she has to take. I don't think her bone marrow doc has had a chance to take a look at it yet, but so far everything looks good.

She just started a 2 hour antibody infusion which made her feel very ill with lots of stomach pain. We had to stop the infusion and give her some meds which seemed to work, hopefully when the antibodies start back up in a minute she'll do ok. The infusion is to help build her immune system back up with antibodies that aren't carried over very well with a bone marrow transplant. She gets these every couple of months, but has never felt this bad when getting it.

Soon as the antibodies are done she gets a sack of some kind of bone density increasing drug - sorry I can't remember the name. It's another 2 hr infusion. I think they plan to punchture the bottom of a gallon vitamin D milk with an IV tube (maybe egg nog since it's Christmas) - but I'm probably wrong. She needs this because some patients in the past have had to have joint replacements due to extended use of steroids that bone marrow transplant patients almost always have. So hopefully this infusion will decrease her chances of having joint issues. Seems like by treating a life threatening problem you become susceptible to a bunch of other problems.

Elsieisms

In Elsie's kindergarten class when they do something they aren't suppose to do they have to pull a card. One card is a warning and two cards they have to sit at the time out table, and so forth. I picked her up from school and she said they didn't get a treat today because they were all being loud. I asked, like I do everyday, "Did you have to pull a card?" She said, "No, not today." But then added with a laugh,"I kind of wanted to be bad so I could pull a card." When I asked why she went on to explain, matter of factly, "Well when I was like three (with a click of her tongue), um, I wanted bad to be good and good to be bad."

one tooth wonder

He has a tooth! It was a rough time getting here but there it is. I am glad the tradition of our kids getting all their teeth at 14 month, all at once, is over. One at a time is nice. Atta boy Rhen-man!

Stir Crazy

Chloe had a rough day on thursday, not sick, but emotional. She had a few break downs of crying and saying it is just not fair. Since the weather got cold she can't go outside and play as much, so being couped up here has gotten to her. She complained of having to stay home all the time. So I took her out with Addie and got some ice cream at Caspers, and did a little holiday shopping at a store that isn't so busy. She was able to release some stress through fresh air and some laughter. They are some giggly girls, which made me happy to hear. We had a good time so Jake and I decided that it would be good for her to take at least two days a week where she goes to work with him, since there is only 3 of them there, and do some blogging and what not. I didn't realize how stir crazy she was getting because of the weather. She tries to stay so strong, but I realized that staying coupe up + steriods + Elsie (some days) = not so fun times for chloe. Elsie just pushes hers and Addie's buttons and since Elsie is the only one she can play with a lot of the time, it gets to much sometimes. So she is doing better now that she relieved some stress. Nurse Hillary called yesterday and told us on her next visit she needs an infusion of IVIG, which is antibodies. It will be a longer visit, so I will need to find a good book, any suggestions?

A clinic day

We had our clinic day yesterday and Chloe looks great. Her white blood counts are doing really good. 10.4 compared to some days last year at .5 or lower and her platletts are over 150,000, which they have been as low as 25,000, so that is great! We are excited about that. Getting her new bone marrow, however, has caused a new allergy which can happen with new marrow. Every week or so she breaks out in a major bumpy rash and her chest hurts and it itches a lot. I took a picture of her lastest out break and they seemed concerned and that we need to figure what it is. The rash broke out this weekend two days in a row. I have been racking my brain. So we will be trying to figure out what the allergy is linked to in the next month, she told me she likes to solve mysteries, maybe she will figure it out.


Last night we went driving around to see the christmas lights, Elsie kept saying "holy crap, that is fancy" at every house decorated to the max. Over and over. So at the end of the night she let us know that she has a new word, holy crap. We figured as much.