Crawling... now with more knees...

Alex has been "crawling" for a while... but now she's crawling!! No quotation marks necessary. This little vid is literally the first time she did it... which explains Michele's amazement...

This is clearly a bad sign for us since we couldn't keep up with her when she was just scooting. She has also made it from her belly to a sitting position on her own a couple times today, but I'm not sure she knows how she did it.

The milestones are coming a bit too quickly for us...

Getting some rays...

Today marks the half way mark in my radiation schedule. So far, things are going according to plan- if I am to believe the doctors. The total schedule for treatment is 35 treatments, 5 days a week. As of today, I have 18 sessions done and 17 to go. This week I started to notice a pink glow on my right breast. Not too painful yet but they tell me it will start to hurt more like a sunburn. When I started this process, the doctors told me not to treat the skin irritation with anything other than what they give me in the office. So I was thinking it was some super special stuff that specifically treats radiation side effects. Nope. What they gave me this week was 100% aloe gel. Just like for a sunburn- nothing special.

I am starting to feel some fatigue issues this week but as my family members have pointed out, it could be more due to Wes's/Alex's sleeping issues. So we will see how the second half of treatment goes. I have alerted work that I may need to work from home some days as this goes on and they are supportive. More nap time for Michele.

Upon further review...

After some sage advice from my mother, who reminded me of my own penchant for getting and trouble kicking ear infections as a wee tot, I took Alex to the doctor today just to be sure she was over it. Both ears look clear are healing very nicely.

The doc did see a little tooth nubbin poking out of the top of her mouth and theorized that was the cause of the hub-bub. That we can deal with... Now I think we'll have a quick bath and another nap... that is she'll have a bath and hopefully we'll have a nap!

A stroll down memory lane...

It has been a while since Alex has had a really bad nights sleep. Even when she was sick, she basically slept through the night but just needed some help dealing with congestion. She has never had a huge problem sleeping in her own bed, but lately it has been like clockwork... in bed at 8ish, up between 5:30 & 7. Last night was a blast from the past...

She started screaming for no good reason for the first time around 11... Michele rocked her for a while and put her back down. No big deal. An hour later, she is screaming bloody murder again. I rocked her for a little while and put her back down. Big deal! Scream... scream... scream. Okay, I says to myself, maybe just a little more rocking. Finally get her to go to sleep, but now I'm wide awake. So I read for a little while and, just as I turn out the light and snuggle in to doze off... scream... scream... scream!

So I did what I haven't had to do for quite a while... I got up and watched TV for a couple hours while I held her. She spent most of this time, half awake, half dreaming, fully slapping me in the face. Smack... smack... smack. Eventually I put her back in bed and she slept until around 4 when she needed a little more comforting from mama... I really hope this isn't the start of a trend.

On top of all this madness... I think I might be dragging Michele grudgingly toward my insanity. More often than I would like to admit, I sleepwalk... that is, half awake and stuck in a dream, I find myself doing the darnedest things. Going through the closet, cleaning dishes, searching for the baby in the sheets... you know, little slices of what the heck am I doing. Last night (I think somewhere between scream sessions one and two) I, half awake mind you, saw our baby slide into our room, wearing a hat, wave at me and crawl back out (kind of a Michigan J Frog deal). I know... I'm nuts. But it was so real to me that I apparently verbalized what I saw and prompted Michele to get out of bed with me and search for our erstwhile, chapeaued offspring. Only after a couple minutes of frantic looking did I wake up enough to peak in her bed and see her sound asleep.

Sorry Michele... I hope my crazy isn't too contagious.

Big movie guy voice...

In a world where parents ruled with an iron fist,

it was only a matter of time before the oppressed found the one who could turn the tide,

by the time mom and dad see it coming... it will be too late...

Baby Monster!!! Terror is on the move!

Normal weekend

This weekend has been quite normal which is a nice change of pace- no allergic reactions, no treatment side effects, no medical issues. We went to Adrian yesterday and had breakfast with Wes's parents- quite nice. We also had ice cream for lunch- what better summertime lunch!!

Alex is totally crawling everywhere these days. It is actually quite funny because she still isn't using her legs to help her too much so she ends up exhausted. Her latest favorite thing to do is to put her lips together and blow out. She must love how it feels when her lips vibrate against each other because she smiles the whole time. We smile at her until some of her spit flies in our face while she is blowing out.

Wes and I are realizing that football starts next weekend!! We are asking ourselves where the summer went. Really where has this year gone? I know that it was spent in the hospital and hoping for time to go faster so that I would be done with cancer....but I have said this before, life is too important not to live in the moment. You loose out on the simple pleasures if you are looking forward to something ahead or wishing you were somewhere in the past. So today is sunny and warm- great day to enjoy outside with the fam.

It's at least medium rare...

Yesterday I went to see the rare/infectious desease doctor in an attempt to break the code on the mystery fevers (they call it "fever of unknown origin", but what is fun about that?). His name is Dr. Otto, and Michele had to talk me out of greeting him with "Domo arigato Dr. Otto"... apparently she thinks it wouldn't set the right tone for the meeting. To each her own.

Unfortunately, more of the same. "Hmm?" "Wierd." Stuff like that. He had some ideas of extremely rare and unlikely and unrelated things that it most likely isn't... but why not test anyway? "Do you have any Mediteranean ancestry... no?... well, we'll do the test anyway."

So, more test, very likely another doctor to see (respiratory specialist), and so the drum beats on. Is anyone interested in illustrating the book I'm writing so that I don't have to explain all of this to more doctors... it should be a page turner!