Good Evening,

Wow, I am tired.  Dean brought a nasty cold home from work last week.  He went into hiding this weekend (he slept that lucky dog) to try to keep from getting the kids sick.  Luckily we were at my parents house for the weekend so I had some help taking care of the girls.  This week has been hard doing nights alone still and unfortunately Sharmi got sick a couple of days ago and I started fighting it today.  So far Sharmi doesn’t seem to be feeling to terrible and I am pleading with the Lord that I will be able to beat this thing before I really get it.  As a mom, I don’t have the option of going to bed and letting someone else take care of the kids.

Sharmi is doing pretty well right now.  She had her weekly heavy day of chemo yesterday.  As a result she had a rough night with lots of tossing and turning and nightmares.  It breaks my heart when she has bad dreams that seem related to her treatments, but their is nothing better then her saying, “Mommy, hold baby please,” and having her cuddle up next to me.  That is certainly better than her hitting me in the middle of the night because I am trying to calm her down and she is still dreaming.  It seems that everything comes with the good and the bad. 

She had labs drawn this week to see how she is responding to this regimen.  All of her blood counts were good so they didn’t make any adjustments to her Chemo at this time.  I don’t remember if I told you previously or not, but she is only taking half of the dose of all of her chemo meds so I am sure that will increase those shortly.  “yuck.”

Sharmi is doing quite well at playing independently.  I am starting to see what a “normal” two year old is like.  This helps a lot with my sanity and trying to take care of Chantel.  This is good because Chantel has been fussy the last few days and nights.  Right now however, she is sleeping peacefully on my lap.  I wish she would sleep like this at night.

I have to share a cute thing that Sharmi said last weekend to her papa (my dad).  We have been trying to teach her to share to help with the jealousy, so at worship we have been singing “I have to bears and I am glad, you have no bears and that’s to bad, I’ll share my bears because I love you, and that’s what Jesus wants me to do.”  We sing this with many different objects.  Well, on Sabbath My dad noticed that Sharmi had two of her favorite blankets (she has 3 total that I rotate through the wash).  So, my dad said, “Sharmi you have two blankets and papa doesn’t have any.  Will you share one of your blankets with papa?” She responded with sympathy and said, “Oh, I’m sorry papa.  You need to go buy one.”     I guess we still have some work to do in teaching sharing. 

I hope you and your families are all doing well. Good night.

With love,

Cheris