Lucky Six

Yesterday was indeed another day. And a good one at that. Started with an early morning Dunkie’s run by Mark (nothing like junk food at 8am to get the kids up and at ’em). Then off to school, with an end-of-Friday visit by Mommy and Braedan, complete with frosted zucchini muffins (not too junky, those) […]

Another Day …

… another hospital.  A new hospital this time, too. Don’t worry — nothing bad happened. I just finally got around to making appointments for the non-essential, non-emergency, non-cancer-related issues that have been bothering Austin for the past six months. First, those pesky tonsils. Which don’t actually bother Austin at all. I mean, he snores, loudly, […]

Bulldozers

About this time last year, I wrote a couple of posts about helicopter versus free-range parenting, found here , here and here.  There must be something about the start of the school year and the intense focus on rules and safety that brings these issues to the forefront each fall, because I’m at it again. […]

Green, Salmon, Goldenrod

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. […]

Against All Odds

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 […]

The Ninth Man

I love the Olympics. Love, love, love. I love the cheesy emotional pre-stories, focused on hardships real and imagined in the athletes’ lives. I love the over-the-top attention on America’s sweethearts, like the women’s gymnastics team, or on America’s heroes, like Micheal Phelps. I can still remember the feeling I had in the winter of […]

My Shirt

This is what I have felt for all of you since Austin’s first diagnosis with cancer, five years ago yesterday: On July 30, 2007, our near-perfect world was flipped on its head with the discovery of five tumors on the kidneys of our ten-month-old Austin. There are so many analogies we’ve used to describe our […]

Understanding

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 […]

Back from the Brink

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 […]

Aaaaahhhh

Well, I made it to June. Not quite sure how, but I did. Funny, when I wrote that May Madness post on April 30, I had no idea the degree of madness that would ensue. But, here we are, on a cold and rainy June 1. Aaaaaahhhhhhh. The Young Authors Conference at Fairfax went very […]