Happy Sabbath,

It is Friday night and we finally have both tired girls in bed.  It has been a long week.  This week Chantel seems to be sick with some unidentifiable bug.  She had a fever on Tuesday afternoon of 102 degrees F.  I gave her Tylenol that evening and it broke, but when she woke up at 4:30 in the morning it was back again.  That fever was gone by mid morning and she hasn’t had one since but I can tell that she still isn’t feeling good.  Last night during supper she threw-up everything that was in her little tummy.  And this afternoon when we were shopping she sat in her car seat dazed and the sales clerk asked if she was always this mellow or if she wasn’t felling well.  On top of that she has a huge infected sore on her bottom and red bumps all over her body which I am hoping is just heat rash.  That was the healthy kid. 

Sharmi has had a high and low week.  The first day after her chemos her skin was very yellow and she had black circles around her eyes.  This evening she was holding her head and complaining of a headache, which is not a common complaint from her at all.  And several times this week she has asked to take a nap.  The poor girl.  When she feels awful her attitude is worse, (like everyone) and my biggest struggle is how to discipline bad behavior with such a sick girl.  She is learning that hard way that life is not fair!  But good news, “egg noddles always makes thing better.”  :)

Other than the sickness I am really enjoying the girls stages right now.  Chantel is cruising around furniture, holding onto walls, and she took her first step between things last night.  She went from holding onto the chair to letting go and stepping over to my knee.  Sharmi’s brillance of the week was this morning, we were doing a sound puzzle of the United States.  She is better than me at knowing where they go, but she only knows about 4 states.  She knows, we live in Washington, Guyah (her former nanny) lives in Michigan, the Bahamas is in the water below Florida, and she says, “California is my favorite.”  However what surprised me today is when we began putting the pieces in she said, “Alaka capital Juneau.”  I don’t even think she knows what a capital is, but she memorized, “Alaska capital Juneau.”  I told her that capitals are the cities in each state that make the rules, like mommy and daddy do.  I am trying to teach her that everyone has rules they have to obey.

Well, I should get to bed because I never know who is going to wake up, for what and for how long.

Goodnight,

Cheris

Good Morning,

The baby is up and so I am trying to get out a quick update before Sharmi wakes up.  Sharmi did not sleep very well because I told her last night that we were going to the hospital again today, and I also told her we were going to the dentist.  She seemed to have bad dreams all night.  I had also put her to bed in her own bed instead of her mickey mouse bed on the floor in our room.  Unfortunately at about 11:00 she fell all the way out of bed.  She fell off of her bed and off of the half pulled out trundle.  She wasn’t sound asleep again until 12:30 AM.

To update you on her limp.  It has gotten better and the lab results from last week did not show any signs of relapse.  I am trying to believe that she is OK,  and I am trying to ignore the urge to think, ” I have heard that before.”  We are grateful that she is feeling better. 

Today we start another series of steroids so it will be a rough week again.  She will also have her first dentist visit.  I personally hate going to the dentist so I was anxious all last night and didn’t fall asleep until 2:00 AM myself. 

Last week Sharmi spent some time at Grandma and Grandpa’s house all by herself.  This was her first night to sleep over at someone else’s house. 

A cute story about Sharmi was that last week I was making capellini pomodoro for dinner and she was helping me chop up the tomatoes with an little hand blender.  That night we were talking to grandma on the phone and she said, ” Grandma I made supper tonight, I made capalini mamadora.”  It was very sweet. 

Chantel is very busy now and she it starting to talk quite a bit.  At Grandma’s house I was trying to put her down for a nap and she kept pointing to a picture of a little girl saying prayer with her dog and kitten. She would point and say, “Kiti, kiti… doow doow.”  She is also showing some strong will, imagine that.  :)  I think she will be able to hold her again against her sister soon.

It is a sunny day in Seattle so we are going to have a great day. 

Love, Cheris and the girls

Good Afternoon Everyone,

This week has had some highs and lows.  I noticed Sharmi was limping last Sunday when we were shopping at Costco.  I successfully dismissed the worry until Wednesday.  Wednesday morning my parents drove over in the morning and came to Sharmi’s gymnastic class.  Everyone had a wonderful time!  Sharmi has become very strong.  She can do the rope swing by herself now, she can hang from the bar and bend her legs up and touch the bar with her feet and of course her favorite is the giant trampoline.  It was a small class that day so we got Grandma and Grandpa and sissy up on the trampoline with us as well.  It was a blast.  Sharmi also made sure that sissy got her turn at all of the slides and she faithfully stood at the bottom to catch her.  Grandma and Grandpa were very impressed and a good time was had by all. 

That afternoon, we drove up to Bellingham to see her Aunt Darla, Uncle Doug and her cousin Crystal.  We had a picnic by their pond and feed the ducks and geese.  They were very hungry birds and Sharmi was even able to feed them out of her hand.  After lunch they took us to “Build-A-Bear” in the mall.   For those of you who don’t know it is a place where you pick an un-stuffed animal, you watch them fill it with stuffing, you kiss a soft cloth heart and put it in their chest before they sew it up, and then you dress them.  It is important for animals to be fashionable too now.  :)  When we first got there we spent about ten minutes trying to get Sharmi to pick an animal.  There were lots of bears and there were also bunnies, cats, dogs, monkeys, frogs, etc.  Finally someone suggested that I pick one for her and so, I encourage her again to pick one. She walked back over to the animals and very decidedlypicked up a teddy bear named Champ hugged it and said, “I want this one.”  We picked a bunny for Chantel and went to the stuffing station.  Sharmi handed the gentleman her bear, he said, “Oh, you picked Champ.  He is my favorite too.  Champ is a very special bear.”  We asked why, but before he answered I knew what he was going to say.  He responded, “Champ is special because when you buy Champ some of the money goes to the kids who are fighting childhood leukemia and cancers. They do this in honor of a little girl who died.”  We then told him that she had leukemia.  He responded, “Wow, this really is a special bear.  Then I think that all of you need to pick a heart, kiss it and put it in her bear.”  It was a very special moment for all of us.

The down side to that day was that when we were walking in the mall, we notice that she had a significant limp again.  It was the exact same limp that started almost two years ago and ultimately was diagnosed as leukemia.  After her fun filled day and meeting her new best friend Crystal, we headed home.  Ten minutes down the freeway she started screaming at the top of her lungs, “I’m tired, I’m tired, I’m tired, I’m tired…. ”  It was different than her normal exhaustion and attitude.  I pulled that car over to the side of the road to just calm her down.  By the time I got both of them in bed that night I had convinced myself that both of them had cancer.  Sharmi is fighting yeast infections again which she had “pre”cancer as well. And Chantel was had been crying out it pain, which was getting more and more common.  That night I just sat in a dark empty room and cried, begging that God wouldn’t make us go through it again. 

Since then, Chantel is acting more normal so I think she is fine, and I am trying to tell myself that Sharmi is fine and that she has just injured her weak knee.  However, the knee is steadily getting worse.  It took several days of me asking Sharmi about her limp before she would finally talk about it.  I would try to simply ask her if she was hurting anywhere and she would either ignore me or she would say, “I don’t want to talk about it.”  Finally after the pain was bad enough that she couldn’t ignore it she told me with a smile on her face,  “I hurt because you remember the other day when my throat hurt and I ate grapefruit and it hurt my mouth..that is where I hurt.”  I told her that she knew she was being silly and I asked her where it really hurt and she pointed to her left knee,  exactly where it hurt her before.  I have placed a call to the clinic and I am still waiting for a return call, but I am praying that is it just an injury and I am afraid to take her in.  In summary, we could all use your prayers.

To end on a couple of fun bits.  Sharmi has taken reading to a new level for a three year old.  She is now playing, “seek and find” with words.  When I read her a story that has a repetitive word on every page like ”baby” she tries to find the word.  She told Grandma on the phone the other day,  ”I can find baby, I look for the one with the tail.”  Chantel also is enjoying reading.  She enjoys turning the page when it is time.  She is only patient for a couple of books, but it is fun reading to her while it lasts. 

Afternoon has become evening, so goodnight to you all.  Love and prayers to you and your families,

Cheris 

At this very moment Sharmi is sitting on her Daddy’s lap showing him pictures of her withWinnie the Pooh at Disney Land.  The Pooh characters were clearly her favorites with Cinderella coming in as a close second.  We had a good time, but is was very hot and Sharmi was completely drained of energy.  She was on steroids and she was scared of half of the rides we went on.  I wasn’t sure whether she was having a good time or not, but she enjoys talking about it now so it must have been a little bit fun.  One wonderful blessing is that when we told customer relations about Sharmi’s health they gave us a card that allowed us to go up the exits.  This made a significant difference in the day.  Sharmi was wiped out as is was,  it would have nearly killed her to stand in line all day.

The reason we went to California was to celebrate Dean’s sister and bother-in-laws surprise 25th wedding anniversary.  It was lovely and we enjoyed catching up with Dean’s family again.

Chantel became very efficient at crawling while we were at Whistler, so when I was packing for our California trip I would look down and she would be gone.  Her favorite things are the cat food, cat water, and a 7 foot artificial ficus tree that she has pulled over on herself three times.  If she can get outside she likes taking the dirt out of the tomato and basil pots.  Chantel has also fallen in love with drawing.  She  doesn’t care if it is a pen, crayon, pencil or doodle pen.  She loves drawing.  Friday she found a purple crayon and drew a picture on Sharmi’s step stool and on the white door frame in the girls bathroom.  As if I didn’t have enough messes to clean up.  :) 

With two vacations, company, vacation bible school and the effects of chemo and steroids Sharmi has been very short on sleep for the last several weeks.  She is very tired and emotionallyfragile.  My goal for the next month is to do nothing and to get them on a good sleep schedule again.  I miss the old days when I could just sing ”Jesus Loves Me” to Sharmi and put her in her crib, and then without a whimper she was off to sleep.  The day after her methotrexate this past week I spent 4 a full hours trying to get Sharmi to fall asleep.  Two hours in the afternoon trying to juggle Chantel and Sharmi, ultimatelyonly resulting in a 1/2 hour nap.  And then from 9:30 to 11:30 in the evening.  This was after Dean layed with her for a half hour and not starting the process until we hoped she was tired enough to go to sleep.  This is a huge challenge in out lives.

I hope you all had a good Sabbath.  I hope all is well with you and your family.

Love Cheris    

Happy Sabbath

Sometimes I think that vacations with children is a misnomer. We have been in Whistler Canada all week. We are having a nice time, but we are very tired. Chantel does not sleep well away from home. She does fine with the activity throughout the days, but at night she is restless and insecure and wants the security and comfort from mommy all night. Waking up every 15 minutes is not unusual for her.

When we got here last Sunday it was extremely hot. I think it was close to 100 degrees. It continued to be hot through Wednesday and we went to the pool everyday. The resort has a water slide that Sharmi has loved. She has gone down it a couple of times by herself but the rest of the time she has wanted Mommy or Daddy to go with her. We have also gone down it with Mommy and the two girls, which took talent to throw Sharmi to Daddy at the bottom in time so that I could hold sister up out of the water. A couple times I wasn’t balanced or coordinated enough and one of the girls went under. They both have been great sports though. The last trip to the pool Sharmi decided that all four of us should go together. There are advantages to not being in the united states. They would never let us all pile up like that in the states. Our first day at the pool Dean asked Sharmi if she was has having a fun time, as they were waiting their turn at the top of the water-slide, Sharmi said, “Uh huh, I think am going to remember Whistler for a long long time.” It is those memories that make sleepless vacations worth it!

It has been much cooler the last couple of days and today it is raining. I have been reminded to be careful what I wish for. We are hoping it clears up a little this afternoon, or we may just embrace the wet and go swimming anyways. We were hoping to take a gondola ride to the top of the mountain but today we would only see a carpet of white clouds.

Sharmi’s health has been OK. I worry about her a little bit though because she has these phantom fevers that come and go out of nowhere. Yesterday while Sharmi was eating dinner I touched her head and she was running a low grade fever. I forgot the thermometer but I think it got to about 99.9 (I am getting pretty good at guessing.) However when I tucked her in bed her head was cool again. It makes me a little nervous that she keeps getting them, but I am of course grateful that they stay low.  She has her next doctors appointment on Tuesday and so that means we get more chemo and we start the steroids again.  We always dread that necessary evil.  And we will be traveling again this weekend, via plane, and I fully expect it to be miserable.  It is kind of hard to make egg noodles on the plane. 

I am continually amazed at Sharmi. Last night we were eating sloppy joe’s made with alphabet soup and when she finds a letter she says, “What’s this letter,… for what? And Dean and I try to think of everything that starts with that letter. Last night Dean was putting Chantel to bed and we found the letter “T” I had listed off turtle, tortoise, tongue, teeth, and then Sharmi said, “T for try and T for tent.” I was pretty amazed. These are not your typical children’s T words.

Chantel has really started to notice the outside world. She is really intent on faces. She intensely looks into the faces of her stuffed animals and she also loves dolls. She primarily likes to chew on their hands and feet and bit their heads, but she does truly get excited about seeing and playing with dolls. Sharmi was not into dolls yet at this age.

Oh, one last cool thing about this week. We were eating at a restaurant at the base of the slopes and one of the waitresses came out and yelled, “If anyone wants to see a cinnamon bear follow me.” It was really cool. Chantel kicked and squealed and Sharmi and Dean stayed out and watched him for a long time.

Well the family is in their swim suits waiting for me. We decided that there is no point in trying to go out in the rain and stay dry so we are going to embrace the wet and go swimming. I hope the pool is heated again.

I hope you have all had a happy Sabbath.

Cheris

Good Evening Everyone,

We have had a very fun and busy week.  Monday we ran back down to camp meeting for the morning meetings, since the girls loved them so much, and then we ran back for the first day of swimming lessons.  We have had swimming lessons everyday this week.  Sharmi started out timid and scared on Monday, to the point that I had to get in with her.  But today she climbed into the pool by herself and held onto the sides.  She has also really learned how to kick.  With Sharmi under one arm and Chantel under the other we kicked and swam all over the pool retreiving toys that we threw. It was a blast!

Tonight we are trying again to get Sharmi to go to bed by herself.  She used all of the tricks to postpone it, including “I forgot to give mommy a hug and a kiss”, “I have a boogy”, and “I need sockies, I am going to get burrr cold.”  However, she got funnier and more clever when Dean was finishing up putting her socks on.  I have asked him to tell you the story since I wasn’t there…  (Dean writes)  In an effort to close all opportunities for excuses to get up again, I reviewed with her that she now had, water, given hugs, gotten rid of all boogies, and new sockies on to keep her warm.   I told her there were three good reasons why she should stay in bed, “#1 Mommy Loves you, #2 Daddy Loves you, and if you want to get your surprise from Mommy you can’t come out again.” She Giggled and laughed and said, “If I don’t get the surprise tomorrow can I have it the next day?”   I told her again, “if you come out again you will not get your surprise tomorrow.”  She giggled again, and I could see a big grin behind the binkie.  She then whispered “Two reasons I can get up,  Mommy loves me, Daddy loves me”.”   I wanted to laugh so bad!   I told her that I did love her very much but we need her to stay in bed and go to sleep.    Wow! What a little negotiator!…. Since that time she did negotiate one more potty break and she appears to have finally fallen asleep.

We are finally going to bed ourselves. Good night to you all.

Cheris

Hello Everyone, 

I hope you had a good week.  Ours was better than last, but Sharmi relapsed with her cold and so Chantel hasn’t been able to kick hers and my body eventually gave in and got sick also.  I fortunately haven’t had it bad but the constant headache and other symptoms have slowed me down even more. 

Good news though is that both of the girls slept all the way through the night last night.  Neither of them made a peep.  I think that is a first!  I of course kept waking up wondering if they were OK. 

Sharmi did OK with the steroids last week, but she really bloated up and her tummy looked like she swallowed a beach ball.  This is not uncommon, however she hasn’t been this bad for the past few months.  The one thing that I did differently was that I didn’t make her eat half of a grapefruit every day.  I am suspect that this was part of the problem.  She didn’t have the grapefruit to help cleans her body along the way.  I will definitely try them again next month and see if there is a difference. 

Last Sabbath was a special day for Chantel.  Much of our family came to participate in her baby dedication.  My Dad did a lovely dedication and Mom and Dad sang a song.  The song was really special because mom wrote the second verse just for Chantel.  It was lovely.  However, Sharmi was a little concerned.  Before the dedication mom leaned over to me and said, what are you planning on doing with Sharmi.  Do you want her to stay here or go up with you.  Sharmi overheard us and added.  “Mommy, I don’t want to give Chantel away.  I like her.  I want to keep her!”  We laughed and I assured her that we would keep her.  I thought I had been careful in how I explained it to Sharmi, but apparently she still picked up on “giving her”  to Jesus. 

Wow,  this has been an horendous week.  Sharmi had a doctors appointment on Monday and she did really well.  Her counts are in the 1800’s which is within target.  I haven’t traditionally talked to her about the procedures and the anesthesia because I haven’t been able to tell how she felt about it.  However, she asked me about when they were going to take the sticker off (last time we just did labs so they didn’t put the bandage over the port.)  It hurts her and she crys when they remove it.  I told her that she would have to have the bandage, but this time they would take it off while she was sleeping.  Several hours later when we went into the procedure room she told the nurse, “They are going to take off the sticker while I am sleeping so it won’t hurt.”  I also thought it was interesting that even before they gave her the anesthesia she laid her head back on my shoulder and said, “I’m getting sleepy.” We have never actually told her that they give her medicine to make her sleep.  Kids are amazing.

Monday night was the highlight of the week.  I laid down with Sharma when it was time for bed and we somehow started talking about heaven.  We talked about it for more that a half hour.  I couldn’t believe how many questions she had.  We talked about the fact that all of the animals will be nice, and that there will be no more sickness or medicine.  We had talked about those characteristics of heaven before, but then she kept asking questions. We talked about the mansions we would live in, our wings and how we would get to heaven.  She talked about doing puzzles with Jesus and she demonstrated how they would play ball together.  She was also worried about not coming back to this house, because she would miss bali and foxy, so we determined that they would get wings and fly to heaven also.  She was going to watch me swim with the dolphins.  We talked about Jesus coming in the sky and she looked out her window to the clouds.  She kept asking “what else will be in heaven mommy?”  I told her that she would have a grandpa and great grandpa’s and great grandma’s in heaven.  Then I thought it strange for a little girl, but she asked, will soilders come to try and keep up from getting to heaven.  We discussed this for quite some time.  She was sure that the soilders would come to our house to try to keep us from going to heaven.  I assured her that she would be safe.  She then said, “maybe my angel will come and pick me up and carry me to heaven to take me to Jesus.”  I was amazed at what thoughts went through her little head and I assured her that her angel would keep her safe.  The whole conversation just left me amazed.

The week took a down hill turn on Tuesday.  Sharmi had a low grade fever that morning and seemed especially tired and cranky.  That night she slept poorly and Dean was leaving at 5:00 for Portland that next morning.  In the middle of the night Sharmi woke up complaining of a sore throat.  The next day Sharmi had a full blown cold.  Wednesday and Thursday nights were probably the worst nights the girls have collectively had since Chantel was born.  I literally went from one child to the other all evening and all night long.  Sharmi was high on chemo and steroids with a cold on top. (The only thing worse than being sick is being so wired on steroids that you can’t sleep.)  Chantel has been battling tummy aches, her second tooth, and her sisters cold.  I think I have averaged about three hours of sleep that last two nights. 

I am amazed that I am still functioning at all.  Right now the only way I am getting a chance to write this is that I have the TV baby sitting Sharmi and I put Chantel in her swing so that she would talk a long nap.  Talk about lazy parenting, but I don’t have any strength to do it differently.

This weekend will continue to be busy.  We are going to have a baby dedication for Chantel and all of my family is coming.  I hope her cold is better so that she can enjoy the attention.  She is such a special little girl I hope she will be able to tell that the day is about her and that she is cherished by us.  She is so different from her sister at this age.  She is such a lover.  She wraps her arms around me and gives me the biggest hugs she can give.  Today I took a shower with her and she kept hugging then kissing me on the mouth and then hugging and kissing and hugging and kissing.  She is such a joy!

Well I need to go make food for tomorrow.  I hope you all have a happy Sabbath.

God Bless,

Cheris