I wonder...

If the people who make the Superman pajamas with the capes get a lot of product safety-related lawsuits...
Because if you give a kid a Superman logo and a cape, he's gonna think he can fly. There's gotta be a correlation between wearing these pajamas and trips to the ER.

Sweet 16...

...and never been kissed? Hardly. This one gets lots of kisses.
Even occasionally getting a kiss from these rowdy boys...

Does Hayden look like he'd rather be throwing a ball or sitting for pictures with Mom?

And Trevalicous? Well, his news at school usually ends with "...and I love mommy." So he still has a little soft spot for me (and I for him).

Miss J. is quite the walker these days. You can't turn your back on her anymore or she's gone.

Here is Hayden and Trevor's attempt to cooperate for a picture together. Hayden is about half a second from rolling over onto Trevor. Boys!

Last, but not least, an attempt to get all three in a picture together. This picture is so worth a thousand words. They're wrestling over a ball, paying no attention to me, Juliette is looking at them as if to say "Can you please just cooperate so we can get this over with?" You're in trouble if your 16 month old is your best listener.

Traditions...

Every year, we visit the Easter Bunny at the mall (see 2008, 2007 ). It's hit or miss, really. Because honestly, when you're a tot, a 6 foot bunny rabbit is a pretty freaky sight. But still, we persevere. Juliette got dressed up in her best dress...
What's that, you can't see the shoes? Here we are wandering over to the Godiva kiosk...

The boys waited patiently for their chance to tell the Easter Bunny what they'd like to find in their baskets. Trevor was really hoping for the movie Bolt and Hayden wanted two movies and two books...

Could they love the bunny just a little more? Could this be any more perfect? Is something missing?

Oh yes, we're missing Juliette. The angel in the pink dress...

In case it needs interpretation, Juliette is screaming at the the sight of the big scary bunny and Trevor is covering his ears because the screaming is SO LOUD. Hayden is just posing away because when you're the oldest, your job is to keep posing on the off chance that the little ones might behave for a second so the picture can be taken.

This last shot is from the mall people. The best they could do under the circumstances. Juliette is still red faced and miserable, but not actually screaming or trying to climb off the bench. Oh well, better luck next year. I'm not holding my breath for the Santa pics this year.

Hope your Easter was a happy one.

Mad Skills...




Here is Miss J, in all her wobbly glory, stepping around the living room. Hopefully we can finally give those dirty knees a rest and start getting some use out of our adorable shoes. Note to self...stop buying baby shoes, really, just stop, enough already.

In other news, I made it through chemo round #4. We added a new drug this time, Avastin, which is one of the newer monoclonal antibodies which is supposed to target the cancer cells and turn off their ability to build new blood supplies. The side effects aren't too bad, my blood pressure is up a little. I did have a reaction to the oxaliplatin this time, just a little itching, but they jacked me up with benadryl and steroids. I don't know what it means yet in terms of my ability to continue taking the drug. I'm hoping we can stick with it a little longer at least.

We met with a surgeon last Monday and came up with a new plan. We're going to do 2 more rounds of chemo and then switch over to chemo/radiation. The chemo will be weekly infusions and daily pills. The radiation will be 5 days/week for 5 weeks. Then I'll get a 4-week break before they'll do surgery to remove the peritoneal implant. Then another 6-weeks recovery before we start back up with the chemo infusions every two weeks for another 6 cycles.

Then we see what happens...the surgeon wasn't overly optimistic...said that in cases like this they rarely see surgery as curative. He said the peritoneal implant won't kill me, but it's an indication of the spread of disease and that's the problem. So we'll do chemo for a while first to try to knock back the microscopic disease and then go after the tumor. He talked us out of pursuing the hot chemo surgery (HIPEC) for now. He said with just a single known implant instead of widespread peritoneal disease, the mortality rate from the HIPEC surgery itself isn't worth the risk.

So I'm excited to have a plan. Chemo, chemo/radiation, surgery, recovery, chemo...then a break. So maybe in November and December we can have some nice time with no treatments. I'm feeling a little worn these days with the cumulative effects of the chemo and working and everything else. But really, more good days than bad.