I’m not going to keep harping on the start of the school year (I’ll have other things to harp about soon, I promise!), but here is the link to an article posted on the St. Baldrick’s site last week. Which contains, as Mark pointed out, the best single line description of Austin’s personality to date. […]
This child’s road to kindergarten has been littered with eight-hour surgeries and the side effects of chemotherapy. Days and weeks in the hospital and a list of medical specialists that would make your head spin. More CT scans in two years than the recommended allowance for an entire childhood. Central lines and blood pressure medications […]
There were many times over the past five years when I was struck by the incredibly kind — and often completely random — outpouring of support we received from our community. Moms I’d never been introduced to would offer me tearful hugs in the hallways of the preschool. People I hadn’t seen in years would […]
Mark said that it took him about ten days before the bad news about Austin really sunk in and he could fully grasp the possibility of what lay ahead. Now it’s taken him another ten days for the good news about Austin to truly sink in so he can fully grasp the possibilities that lie […]
Friday was Austin’s last day of preschool. Ever. So, of course, here’s the obligatory playground photo, along with his previous two Last Day photos: It’s bittersweet to leave St. Paul’s since it’s been such a major part of our lives for the past six years. Braedan’s first official day of preschool (after a good two […]
Austin has fully embraced our fill-every-moment attitude. The other day when we were bouncing on the trampoline, he shouted from mid-air, “Let’s have the most fun ever!” And then proceeded to berate me if I wasn’t laughing loud enough. “Let’s laugh, Mom… you too, Braedan! You’re not laughing enough,” like the drill seargent of joy. […]
Two years ago, on May 3, 2010, Austin and I had an unexpected overnight at the hospital due to high blood pressure, described here in a post aptly titled The wrong side of the window. We were stuck in that god-awful limbo between choosing to remove his kidney and continue with chemo or venturing blindly […]
We definitely played hooky. I let the kids sleep in and even gave in to their request for homemade waffles (not a normal weekday occurrence). We opted out of the zoo since it was a record 92 degrees (and, if you’ve ever been to the Cleveland Zoo, you know it feels about ten degrees hotter […]
And so it begins. Tomorrow is the Kick Off for the Young Authors Conference at Fairfax. I have an author coming in from Columbus who will do three repeat assemblies in the morning, one for kindergarten and 1st graders, one for 2nd and 3rd, and another for 4th and 5th. This will include her interactive […]
In the madness that is springtime (more on that later), I missed two significant anniversaries last week. One was Tuesday, the official date to mark two-years-since-the-end-of-treatment. As you may (or may not) remember, we didn’t know that that day was Austin’s last chemo. We simply finished our three-day hospital stay and went on home, thinking […]