All Clear

/

My PET scan was totally clear, still in a complete remission.

What a relief!

I feel confident about this remission but a week of waiting for results will play mental games on anyone and this round got me good. I didn't win the mental portion but it doesn't matter.

I hit my low yesterday when I dragged Jaden over there and begged for the results from the girls at the front desk. They denied me and I got to the hallway and crumpled in a heap of tears on the floor. Jaden thought I was crying about Opa and who knows what the little old lady who came out of the office and saw me thought. It must have been a sight, me outside of the oncologist's office crying on the floor with my little boy.

We went outside and sat in the sun and Jaden picked a yellow daisy for me after asking if it was okay to do that. Then he gave it to me and gently touched my face and said, "Mama I love you and I respect you." Which only got me crying more. Then we spent about 15 minutes watching a potato bug groove his way around the sidewalk.

But I digress. My CBC was also all normal, white count was just there at 4 but who cares. Neutrophils are still running low at 1.5 but again, who cares.

My beloved onc. is back to work and it was great to see her. She seemed really happy to see me too and told me at least three times that I look fabulous. Who wouldn't want to hear that?

Three months till my next exam, I haven't gone three months without a CBC in 25 months. This is great!

Also for all the fans out there, I weighed in at 103.7 today! Holy!

Evil Poppit

/

Death to Poppit!

I love and yet loathe you with a deep passion.

I have let you suck away hours of my life away since I discovered you.
You, with your constant pressure to strategize.

And the tokens and jackpot spins!
Gambling is not necessary with addictive balloon popping.

Even the sound is addictive & I only allow myself the delightful "pop" noise a few times per day.

Groups of colored balloons are burned into my eyelids:


This is all I see when I close my eyes now.

This is sick & it's making me a horrible mother! Jaden and I have been home together all afternoon and have spent zero time together. I am earning not the Bad Mommy award..but the WORST MOTHER OF ALL TIME award.

Poppit! I am breaking up with you!
Right after this game.

My boys

/

Here is a super cute picture of my boys from a stage of the Amgen Tour of CA last year.


Okay I think the upcoming 4th birthday is officially getting to me. Time to start searching through iPhoto for the picture dvd, planning the party, making the invites, choosing a gift. All that fun stuff. Looking at all the pictures makes me so weepy. I miss my baby and yet, adore watching him grow. Being a mama is bittersweet business, that's for damn sure.

P.S. Jaden is riding in an Ergo Baby Carrier. The best invention on the parenting planet. We switched when Jaden hit 18 lbs. or so from the Bjorn, the Biggest Back Breaker on the parenting planet.

Through the Fire

/

I have made it through the fire...the fire of last week's 104.9 fever. Definitely stole a week of my life, this last sinus infection/cold/evil virus whatever it is.

But, I made it and was rewarded with a wonderful sunny day with Jaden yesterday. I got him some new spring clothes, and me a little spring dress. We got the car washed (ahhh) and went to Jack Fisher Park.





I really enjoy this park every time we go. It is a lot more manageable than Oak Meadow at Vasona. And yet we don't go there as much as we do the Curtner Park (officially called Lincoln Glen). So it's a nice change of pace.

Jaden is really maturing. I have a really, really good feeling about FOUR. I think it's going to be an amazing year with him. He came up to me yesterday and munched on a chip, then ran off. Then he ran right back and said, "Mama, I just want to let you know I'm going up that hill. But I'll be back!"

I was so amazed and proud of him. It is the first time he's done something like that -- you know, impulse control. I really praised him for that multiple times after and later at dinner in front of Jeff. It seems like a little thing but it is not. It was a huge developmental milestone in my eyes.



I love the noodle so much!

The Vikings

/

I have not been very playful lately but this weekend I thought of something that I wanted to do with Jaden. He has these Vikings and a ship and I asked him about one's name and he said they didn't have names. So I Google'd a list of common Viking names and we were off!

Master Grim, the leader


Sigfus


Gunnlaug


Gudrek


Bergfinn


Annund (L) and Volund (R)


After the big naming ceremony, they had circle time and sang "We are the Vikings" to the tune of Laurie Berkner's We Are the Dinosaurs.



(Okay I made that part up, they didn't actually sing).

Then Master Grim called the group forth to battle!



RAH!

Who says totally structured play is wrong anyway? I say my form of highly structured play is better than no play at all. ;)

P.S. Yes, Gudrek and Bergfinn are twin brothers (sisters?).

Batteries

/

After a terrible evening, and another night of no sleep (4 hours of solid sleep, 2 hours of tossing and turning before that and an hour of broken sleep after) -- I thought I caught a break when Jeff offered to take Jaden to school this morning. It was his first day back after being home sick for a week. Ah...I could feel my tension slipping away as I envisioned a long hot shower in a quiet house, a piping hot cup of coffee and maybe, dare I dream & do, steal 20 minutes from work and do YOGA.

My grand plans were squelched when Jaden went into uncooperative mode. I shouldn't have been surprised really, when he gets out of one routine, it's hard to shift him to the new routine; i.e., getting dressed and off to school. Unfortunately we're the kind of parents who don't make idle threats and so when we said he had one more chance to listen to Daddy and get dressed or Daddy couldn't take him to school, and Jaden didn't listen -- well there went my beautiful morning.

And you know, being a mom, I was okay because I could see that Jaden was sad to go back to school after being home with me all week. I felt sympathetic and even could relate. Even though I'm exhausted, we do really bond and get used to being together all the livelong day.

But then! Then! In the car, I asked him to turn off his video game because I needed to explain something to him. He was very cooperative. I wanted to make an impression on him and I explained in my best 3 y.o. terms how Daddy offering to take him to school was like giving Mommy a big present: the present of time. And when he didn't cooperate, it was like he took my present away from me and I felt sad.

He made a sad face, didn't say much other than "OH" and turned his game right back on.

Well now! Now I'm really upset. I said, "I am more important than your video game Jaden. Your video game will always be there, it will always turn on!"

After a pause, Jaden said, "Mamaa, my video game is more powerful than you are. It has batteries."

Well goddamn if that isn't true!

I actually started crying then, not that it would take much. But no, I do not run on batteries.

The things that would have recharged me today after a long, crummy week were the things I lost because he is three and can't see beyond himself and how can we expect him to really? I mean really. If you're not totally self-centered when you are three, then you really never have a chance. Because once you have kids, you definitely lose ALL chance of being self-centered.

Jaden finally conceded this: "I'm sorry you can't be plugged in Mama."

Mama's Gift

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"Mama, I have a present for you. It's just down the hallway."



I don't want to squelsh the budding artist here, and I guess objectively I can see the allure and beauty of the glitter. But how the hell am I supposed to put all that glitter away?!

EEKS!

(For the record, the above was my internal dialogue and externally, I was polite and said thank you and also explained the sadness of growing up and worrying more about cleaning up stuff then the enjoyment of making a beautiful mess).

On Reincarnation

/

Death is the topic du jour around here, actually more like the topic du mois.

This past week, Jeff introduced the concept of reincarnation to Jaden's death repertoire.

Here's a sample of the conversation between Jaden & Nana at dinner last night.

Jaden: Nana, when I die, I want to come back as a boy again.
Nana: Oh really?
Jaden: So I can be with Mama again.

AWWWW! Now finally we have a conversation about death that I can manage.

A Scawn

/



Here's a guy who hooks a scawn (like a hook) onto a swamp and goes down a rope onto a target and then it goes down and heads left, goes north and goes all around, bounces onto the swamp, then back onto the target and the boat. And that's how it works. That's it.

-- Jaden explaining his drawing to me





-- My camera auto-rotated Jaden's drawing after I took the picture of it. It startled me to see it this way because I see a guy now. But this is not the direction that Jaden drew his picture at all. Cool, huh?

On Being Mad

/

I am sick again, barely one week into recovery from the last nasty sickness that came my way. It hit me late yesterday. Jeff takes Jaden to school for me on Wednesdays and told him that Mommy was sick and asked him to take extra special care of me today.

He woke up from nap before I did and here's how I woke up. First I hear his little voice in my ear saying "It's going to be night soon Mama. When are you going to wake up?" I barely heard him and didn't respond.

A few minutes later, I was wide awake to the sounds of Jaden banging away in his room on his toy workbench. Now part of me is proud that he was keeping himself occupied. We work so hard on this issue. But come on, the workbench? Seriously?

I called him back into the bedroom and it was obvious I was less than thrilled. I didn't yell at him or anything like that, but I said, "I can see that you were trying to wake me up because you chose a very loud activity" and, "it is not going to be dark soon, it is only 3 p.m."

Well lately he really falls apart when we are upset with him and today was no exception. He just dissolved into tears, which breaks my heart. He said "please don't be mad at me Mama."

I said, "Baby sometimes if you make a bad choice, people are going to be mad at you for a time. But even when I'm mad at you, I always love you with all my heart."

Then I was quiet and thought about it. I also hate it when people are mad at me. I feel exactly the same inside as Jaden expresses on the outside. I've just learned to hide it.

So I said, "it's a bad feeling when someone is mad at you huh?"

He said through his sniffles, "yes."

I felt so stumped seeing how I haven't really figured this out for my ownself yet in life.

So I asked him, "What do you think we can we do about those bad feelings?"

And my super-wise, natural therapist three-year-old said, "We just get through them Mama."

I smiled so huge and said, "Yes you are absolutely right. We just have to get through them."

And he finished it off by adding, "Or work it out. Just work it out. Right Mama?"

Oh my! How I love him!

Playdoh

/

Like with the calendar awhile ago and suddenly busting out some letters, this morning Jaden busted out some new Playdoh skills.

I was finishing my coffee and checking my email before school. And I turn around and see that Jaden has figured out how to roll out his dough to a uniform thickness, use the cookie cutter and pull away the excess dough.

I was pretty amazed because up till now, he got really frustrated trying to roll out dough and always needed my help. Now quietly and with no fanfare, he just does it on his own.

He looks pretty proud, doesn't he? And rightfully so.

Halloween on My Mind

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All this week, Jaden has been talking about Halloween. Every time, of course, he is going to be something different. And every time, I tell him Halloween is more than 10 months away and he asks me, "is that a long time mama?" and I say yes. And then he says something like, "but two minutes is not a long time." I guess his mind is really working on time right now.

So anyway he was into Batman for a couple of these conversations and wanted stories about Jaden being Batman. Then yesterday morning, he tells me on the way to school, "This Halloween, I want to be a criminal."

Luckily when you are driving a car, your kid can't really see your face, or he'd have seen my jaw hit the brake pedal.

Apparently I was speechless for awhile because he said, "Mama, are you listening to me? I said I want to be a criminal for Halloween."

I said, "oh yes, I was listening." I took a deep breath and mustered up my most supportive mama energy. "What kind of criminal do you think you want to be?"

Jaden replied, "I think I want to be a fieth."

"Oh, a thief. Hmm. Well what do you think a thief looks like?"

"I don't know. I've never seen a fieth."

(Well gee, thank the universe for small miracles.)

And then, you know, the day goes on and by 5:30 p.m. he was ready to be a tiger. Ah, yes, beautiful, a tiger. ROAR. Now that I can handle.