Li'l Mommy

I am so proud of you! Madrina and Vienna came over today and you were so good with Vienna, walking behind her all the time, ask her what she needed :) Madrina brought 2 more presents for you, that her parents sent you. 
I still think that Daddy and I made the best decision when we chose your God-parents. They are the best God-parents in the world! They love you and they show it every time they get a chance. They really care about you, with all their hearts. 

Merry Christmas.

Merry Christmas!
What a nice Christmas we had. I was a bit concerned, because on Thu evening you had a fever; you got a cold again! Got a fever Thu night, and another one Friday night. I am happy it went away, because we wouldn't want to spend Christmas in the hospital. But, this was the perfect time to get a cold, the neuts on Thursday were 7.4!
On Christmas Eve, we put a lot of cookies on a plate for Santa :) and you said that the cookies have to stay on the fire place, because that's what Max & Ruby do. You and Daddy decided that in the morning you go and wake Daddy up to see if Santa left presents. I woke up around 7 am and 15 minutes later you woke up and asked me if Daddy's coffee is ready and went to wake him up. There were so many presents from Santa! You must have been really good this year! You got a Kinnect and Mommy and Daddy had a blast! You sat on the couch cheering us on and laughing of us :) Man! Am I sore! The most successful toys were the stroller, the camera and the truck. And today Mommy bought you a video camera :) Now maybe you'll stop playing with my cameras. 
We love you very much and we want the best of everything for you.

Victoria and Bob the Builder.

Silent night.

Dec. 14, 2011
Silent night? Hmmm. Hopefully by the time you're old enough to read this, you'll know that night is for sleeping, not for watching cartoons and America's Funniest Home Videos! You woke up last night at 11, after 3 hours of sleep and stayed up 'till 1am! I fell asleep at midnight, sometime. And then you woke up at 6:30am! 

Tired and all, we still had a good day, Madrina came  over for my birthday, brought a cake and we had a nice lunch, just the 3 of us, followed by cake! 

Around 3pm, we went for a rest and you laid on your small couch beside Mommy's couch and fell asleep. I think now we'll be up until 10pm or so... probably. Oh, it doesn't matter, really, as long as you are healthy and happy, that's all that matters. 

We made Christmas cards today, we'll bring them at the clinic tomorrow. You wrote them yourself! I'm so proud of you!

Dec. 24, 2011
Yesterday you had your first shower! After only baths, you had a shower and kept telling me that now you're a big girl! :) Yes, you are such a big girl.
We went to clinic on Thu and Bob the builder was there :) and being before Christmas, you got presents: a Fifi Doll from Bob and a Mickey Mouse in a tartan dress. The nurses were very pleased to get the cards you wrote yourself. The counts were really good, neuts 7.4! But that evening you got a fever. I called Dr. Barr who advised me to give you Tylenol and 2 hours later Advil, then 2 hours later Tylenol and so on, all night! Yeah, right! I did give you 2 chewing tablets of Tylenol and the fever went down and you were fever free until last  night, when before bed I gave you another 2 tablets. This morning you wanted shrimp for break-fest! :) We are sooo looking forward to Santa! You said to me yesterday that I am on Santa's naughty list, but you'll share your toys with me. Last night you fell asleep and about an hour later you woke up, looked at me and started laughing! I asked you what's so funny, you said nothing, but kept laughing. I think you were still asleep!  You are in the living room, want me to come and play, so I will write more tomorrow or Monday.
We love you very, very much!

Memoirs for my daughter, Part 10

Last time I wrote, I said, I'll tell you what happened with the hips pain that you were complaining about. We told the Doctors about it, but we said that we were not sure if they really hurt you, or you were just copying what Madrina was saying about her hips hurting. But, any way, the Dr. ordered an MRI and the results were not happy. Apparently you had some lesions in the sacroiliac bone, even though none on the hip bone. They told us to give you 500 mg. of Calcium daily. So you are taking the Tums. I was so concerned that you might not like them, but what a surprise I had. You are asking for more! Oh, is hard to remember everything that happened. It's been months since it all happened. I am glad I wrote down the first year of treatment, so then when you grow up if you decide to know what happened, then here it is, you can read it all. I will try and write a bit more often.

The next few months will be very succint, so here it goes: 9 weeks after the first MRI, we did a second one, during the L.P. The results coming back were somewhat pleasing, somewhat concerning; because you complained about your knees, we asked the radiologist to do a knee MRI, as well as the hips. After arguing with him for 20 minutes, he finally agreed. All the lesions that were in the sacroiliac bone had disappeared, but some new ones appeared and lesions in the tibia were found as well, explaining the pain in your knee. After this, the Dr. decided to stop administering the Dexamethasone. It is good for now, because we don't have to worry about bone pain, about mood changes, about all the bad effects of Dex. But we can't hekp it but being concerned about what this will mean in the long run. They don't really know what the Dex does or how it helps, but they have research to prove that it does help. There are a lot of things they don't know about Leukemia, but they do know the most important thing about it: they know how to treat it. This doesn't mean that we still don't have questions... perhaps we'll never have the answer to them. 

We celebrated your 3rd birthday and there were 6 girls there: you, Lauren, Rachel, Vienna, Alex and Kingsley. That was a good day. You had fun playing with all the girls, especially you loved Kingsley. 

During the summer, we went to Marineland in Niagara, but here you were still on Dex and even though you had fun on the rides, you were not very happy that day. Not grumpy, either, just... I don't know. After this, we went to Wonderland in Toronto. That you loved! You had a blast on the rides. Daddy took you on all the rides!  We also went to African Lion Safari. We had a great day. You enjoyed seeing the animals and, of course, the pony ride, Mommy went on the  elephant ride. Oh, those elephants. They have the saddest eyes in the world! I don't think I've ever seen a creature with such sad eyes.  

We went to Lauren's 3rd birthday in Kitchener, which was a very nice day, lots of kids, you helped with the pinnata :) 

We went to Vienna's first birthday and you were kind of wild, but not bad wild, just it looked as if you were really comfortable being there. Kingsley was there, too, but you refused to play with her! You kept saying you didn't want to play with her! 

In August we went to stay overnight in Niagara and we spent the day at the water park. Everything was fine, until the night came and you started crying, saying you didn't like the Hotel and you wanted to come home. So we packed everything and we came home.

On August 19 we went at Michael's to make the signs for the Golf Tournament that Gators organize every year. This year was for a little girl named Piper.  (Par for Piper) You wouldn't get your hands painted, to make hands prints, though, you asked for a brush! :)

On Aug. 21, the day of the tournament, we went at the Vicar's Vice with Daddy for brunch and after that Daddy brought us home and he was going to play golf. But when we got home, there were messages from Allison and Aunt Shirley that Granny fell. She was in the Hospital with a shattered shoulder! Daddy went to the Hospital and Granny sent him to play Golf. The following week, Granny had surgery and had her shoulder replaced. She's doing really well now, shoulder-wise, after she spend weeks in the Hospital and a few more weeks in a rehabilitation center. 
What a scare! I felt so very sad during all this weeks, I couldn't stand losing your Granny. She is my very good friend, I can talk to her about anything in this world and I know she won't judge me, I know she loves me, as I love her, I know she'll understand me. I already lost a mommy, I am not ready to lose another one. She is nothing like a mother-in-law, she is just a mother and a friend. Thank God she recovered! 
After 10 weeks, she went home. As I write this, today, Dec. 13, Granny is in the Hospital again, she can't breath very well and called this morning to say that she'll go at the Hospital. Daddy just called to say that they are waiting for the blood work results, to see if she'll stay or she gets to go home. 

In November, Daddy took two days off and we went to Great Wolf Lodge in Niagara. We would've liked to go down south (Mexico or Cuba), but the nurse, Andrea said that it would be better to just wait until the end of the treatment, just to be safe, so we will wait. You loved the Lodge as much as you hated the other Hotel! :) And because you decided to not have anymore naps in the afternoon, you spent the first afternoon and the whole next day in the pool! You just loved it! We went on one of the big slides and I was worried that you'd be scared, but, oh, my! you are so very brave! You enjoyed every second of it! The day we left, you told me you really liked the Hotel and asked of we could stay longer... unfortunately, Daddy had to go to work. But we'll go again, soon. I think this is pretty much what happened, the treatment is going smoothly, you respond to it very well, Daddy and Mommy are very happy about it. 

We are waiting for Christmas, I'm sure Santa will bring you loads of presents for being so very good all year! 

Mommy and Daddy love you very much and we are very proud of you!