12/31/07...

New Year's Eve 2007... one of the hardest times of our lives. The year that had brought so much joy, so much promise had turned on us. The year ahead was swimming in the murky depths of the unknown. We were no longer able to say that it was "baby time", to close our eyes so tight that tomorrow didn't exist.

So we cried. We cried, Alex wailed, and it snowed. The rest of the world toasted the New Year, and we toasted the unfairness of it all with a sad little bottle of champagne in a tiny little recovery room.

And then tomorrow came. 2008 came. Doctors came, diagnosis came... chemo, radiation, and poopy diapers.

Now here we are. We moved past the treachery of 2007. We kicked the shit out of all that 2008 could muster. Rock n' Roll! We are a family and we are whole...

I have said it and written it enough times that I am already embarrassed, but we could not have done it without our families, our friends, and the random six degree people who anonymously read this blog. So thank you, thank you, thank you. We could not have made it through the murky water without you...

Happy New Year... life, as we know it, has a bright future.

12/30/07...

One year ago we spent the day in hospital trying to recover and scared out of our gourds. What in the bloody hell are we going to do with this little thing? Do these people really think we can keep it alive? Where is the off switch?

12/30/07 was a learning experience to say the least. Lots of visitors... and lots of new experiences. The first few newborn poops... an experience. Dressing the tiny, fragile little thing... an experience. Learning that c-section babies still have fluid in their lungs and need to be quickly flipped over and patted on the back when they randomly start to choke... an experience.

Other than that, and trying to get some sleep, I don't remember much about that day... but I did find a couple pics that made me say, "Awwwww...",and will you too unless you are a robot...

12/29/07... What a difference a year makes...

So we rested... Michele better than me because she was dosed. A couple hours, and then it was back at it. The doctor on duty (I think our third at this point) said that she was making good progress. Dilated to 8cm. 10 is the goal. The doctor almost just pulled the trigger on the C-section, but the nurse who had been with us, fighting, the whole night convinced her to give us a couple more hours to do it naturally.

Nurses change shifts.
The sun rises.
Doctors change shifts.

New doctor checks Michele's progress. Dilated 7cm. What? Huh? We are moving in the wrong direction. He suggests that we just go for the Caesarean and be through it. We take a few minutes to discuss it and decide to just get the baby out and finally meet him/her. I ask the doctor when this will all happen... and he says, "Umm, now. We have already started prepping her." I run to the waiting room to tell everybody and run back. Michele is locked and loaded and I am suddenly putting on scrubs.

I'll spare some of the details.

Operating room. The doctor asks us for the twentieth time if we already know the sex... nope. "Well we're about to find out." We tell him that everybody thinks it's a girl. "Well... everybody is right!"

Brief pause and then... "Waaaaaaa!!!!" We see her quickly before she goes for tests across the room. So happy. So happy. Oh crap, what is her name going to be? We weren't 100% decided. The doctor suggests that I go and take a few photos with the digital camera so that Michele (still trussed up and being worked on) can see her. And then it is so obvious...

Alexandra Sabina.

This story continues tomorrow... but...

Fast forward to yesterday... what a difference. She walks. She says mama. She's working on some signing. And she'll eat most anything you put in front of her... apparently even birthday cake:



It took her a little while, but eventually she dove right in and make a mess just like we wanted.

Happy birthday baby!!

12/28/07...

So while labor technically started at 6pm, things didn't really start rocking till after midnight. The contractions started coming and our training kicked in. Breath... breath... breath. A minute of pain (for Michele of course) and then a few minutes of frivolity. Everybody was in good spirit and the nursing staff was fantastic.

That's pretty much how the night passed... light contractions, visitors, bleep-bleep-bleep. Michele was not allowed to eat anything other than ice chips and started to get pretty hungry as morning came... but it shouldn't be much longer (dun, dun, dun). Nurses changed shifts. Doctors changed shifts. We got comfortable with the layout. Contraction... laughter... contraction.

Around noon, with little progress in the last 18 hours of labor, the doctor decided to break Michele's water. The good news was that she was allowed to eat a sandwich and take a shower, which made her feel a bit more human. The bad news was that the breaking of the sack of water was, umm, reality slapping us in the face, and kicked the contractions in to high gear. I will not describe this actual procedure, but rest assured it was an experience. Then labor really started to ramp up... especially in the pain department. Michele changed positions a lot. Bed. Chair. Yoga ball. Walk. The contractions got longer and more intense. She had to focus to make it through them. I felt helpless. But it shouldn't be long now (dun, dun, dun).

Around 7pm we started discussing the epidural. Our plan going in was to go natural until it no longer seemed like a reasonable idea... reason was out the window. Michele had been up for two and a half days and in active labor for almost a day. Finally around 9pm she got the epidural and, now that she was comfortable, we settled in to try and get some rest.

to be continued...

12/27/07...

One year ago today was a busy day. I would say that we woke up early, but I don't think that either of us slept at all. We went to the bookstore and bought some new Moleskin notebooks... one would be for baby notes, one would be for boobie notes. Then we were home to pack some things up... a change of clothes, PJs, toiletries... because we would have to stay over night once the baby came ("ominous music here).

It was snowy, so we headed off a bit early for our first meeting with the Oncologist. She is a specialist and takes mostly high risk or abnormal cases... her slate was full, but was convince by Michele's OBGYN (a breast cancer survivor), Michele's surgeon (who was nice enough to wait until after Christmas to tell us), and Michele's very, very pregnant state to squeeze us in to her schedule. We met with her and got the big picture, since the smaller picture couldn't be known until test were done post-baby. She was very straight forward and pulled no punches and was still somehow quite comforting. We knew more, felt a little better, and decided that it was baby time and we needed to set the rest aside for now...

Drive back across town, pick up our things that we paked for overnight (here), and right back to the hospital... same building as the Cancer Care Center. We checked in to start the induction process at 6pm and were shown to a very nice, big birthing room. Met the nurses and settled in for what might be a long night (here). They started the Pitocin, which kickstarts labor, and hooked all kinds of wires to Michele's arm, leg, and belly...

"Try to get comfortable, this might take a few hours... maybe even more." (here)

To be continued...

12/26/07...

Almost exactly one year ago this moment, Michele was extremely pregnant and on the phone with a doctor finding out that she had breast cancer. It was, easily, the most devastating day of our lives. The doctor wanted us to induce labor that very night so that we could get going on fully diagnosing and treating the cancer. Thankfully we chose to wait a day to gather ourselves. Instead we spent the day with family moping, crying, and worrying about things we had no idea about and no control over.

When I look back on that day it makes me quite sad. But when I think about it a little more I realize it's fine... we made it... she made it. So I have chosen to be happy today and to take Michele out tonight and try my damnedest to make her happy. Life is everything that I could ask for because she is here to live it with me.

Happy Holidays from the Harringtons...

2007 ended a little rough for the Harrington family. 2008 was ushered in with a new baby and a long list of new doctors to keep track of… both pediatric and oncologic. Now that the Holidays and the end of 2008 are approaching, we feel like we have weathered the storm. Alexandra is healthy and happy. Michele is cancer-free and focused on the future. Wes is done with school and madly in love with both of his girls.

Since we were the recipients of so much goodwill this year, we have decided to take the $100 that we would have spent on paper cards and postage and donate it to Food Gatherers. Hopefully this electronic message can sufficiently convey our holiday spirit.

We never could have made it through this year without the love and assistance of our friends and families. Our thanks, along with our holiday wishes and hopes for a happy new year, go out to all of you. Thanks you for being a part of our lives.

No time like the present...

Are we the only ones who have yet to make significant progress on the gift buying? It turns out that working, celebrating living, and smooching babies takes up almost all of our time. We need to buckle down and get some stuff purchased.

So if you are looking for us this weekend, we will be one of the 14 bagillion people at the mall... desperately looking for the perfect presents for our perfect families while only find things for ourselves. Starbucks is going to make a killing on us in the next week!

Our daughter is a goat...

Sure, she's a Capricorn... symbolized by the goat... practical, ambitious, self-reliant. But more to the point, the kid will eat anything (see what I did there? Kid? Ha!).

I know that all babies put stuff in their mouths. Teething, exploring, learning... I get it. But this one? She eats shoes. Wets them to the point of necessitating wringing. She eats books. Literally gnaws chunks off them and tears the pages from the binders with her powerful jaws. Given the option, she would eat a cracker off the floor instead of the one on her tray 10 times out of 10.

Christmas is going to be a hoot... and a storm of wet, chewed, discarded wrapping paper. I love it...

Tha's all folks...

I have taken at least one class every semester, spring and summer included, since winter 2003. Last night I finished the last one. My first attempt to attain an undergraduate degree began in 1992 and was thwarted by work, life, or laziness... depending upon how honest/deprecating I want to be. But, thanks to tons of help from my friends and family, those demons of youthful indiscretion have been exercised... if only to help waylay the embarrassment of not having done it sooner. To everybody who pushed, encouraged, babysat, wifesat, cooked, studied, proofread, and just listened over the past few years I can't thank you enough. To Michele in particular, thank you for telling me every day that I can do it, and that it is worth it, and I'm worth it.

Alex is walking... UPDATED

So I have no video of it to post but there is video evidence. Yesterday, Alex decided that she could walk. I don't know if it because she was watching people at daycare or what but she just got it. She would take a couple steps, then take a couple more. She even stopped in the middle of her walk to smile really BIG- as if she was saying "look at me"!! Then she would start walking again. At the end of her walk, she would dive into Wes and my arms and smile. She totally gets that she is doing something awesome. It is such a trip that we are going to have a walker. So hopefully, my tech savvy husband will post the video to show her in action!!

Typical Thursday...

If you remove the time spent on naps, diaper changes, snacks, meals, bottles, and tantrums Alex and I spent about six hours together today. Roughly one hour was occupied by her using non-walker items (baskets, high chairs, boxes, me, chairs, etc) as a walker. Another hour or so was spent going up and down the stairs. One more hour split between reading (eating) books, dancing, yelling at each other and "one step... two step... dive". The rest of the day was filled with this:

Put it in, dump it out. Put it in, dump it out. How cute is she? It's like you can see her figuring it out.

Upon request...

Alex loves to climb into things. Buckets, baskets, boxes... it doesn't matter. If she can get her little leg up over the edge, she is in it. Apparently she spends most of her day at daycare in the toy box. The other kids come by and she hands out toys... of her choosing of course.

And then at home she climbs into these little wicker baskets that we use for her toys. Six out of ten times it just tips over and she falls... but the other four times are hilarious.

Walk-y-walk...

Alex is getting braver by the day. She can stand on her own for a few seconds... when she is so inclined. Yesterday she was, over and over again, letting go of the chair she was leaning against and "walking" to me. One step... two step... dive for papa. One step... two step... dive for papa. She is hilarious.

I assure you that I was there to catch her at the end of this video...

Birthday wishes, and caviar dreams...

Yesterday was Michele's birthday and I had intended to write a nice blog entry wishing her happiness. I sat down several times to bang out a short nod, and came away with nothing. This years birthday seems like something more...

We spent her last birthday pregnant out to here and with only thoughts of the impending birth on our minds. A month later we were in the hospital more worried than excited... more pensive than joyful. If you had asked me then if I thought Michele would see her next birthday, or Alex's first, I would have said "of course". But I don't know if I would have believed me...

Now here it is... another birthday. I never thought that I could reveille so profoundly in the mundane. Another year, another month, another day... every day that starts with Michele by my side is a blessing, every meal a celebration, every moment a pleasure...

So yesterday I wished her a "Happy Birthday". Today I say "Happy December". Tomorrow, Thursday, the Wednesday of next week... happy, happy, happy.

I love you Michele... thank you for being in my life.