Category: Xandra

Some Catching Up

I’ve got a bunch of pictures that I want to put up here and some stories that got lost in the chaos of the two weeks in the hospital and the subsequent 1 terrible, horrible, no good week that I’ve not blogged about yet….so I’m gonna try to catch up and update all at the same time.  It’ll either be brilliant or a massive verbal diarrhea – We’ll see, eh?

I’ve received a few requests for our address and also a few offers to help out and while I am so appreciative and thankful – this “humbly accepting help” and not just “telling everyone that it’s no big deal, that you can do it all on your own“……this is difficult.  I’ve wanted to respond and say “No, really, we’re fine.  We’re totally okay. We can do this.  Don’t worry about it.”  and yet, it’s not true and so I swallow and breathe and say “thank you” and it feels so wrong and yet I need the help so badly.  What a totally messed up head trip this all is.  Man!

I also wanted to mention that I in no way am belittling the help that we have already received in meals, and gifts and finances and help, especially from our family who have helped so much.  Everyone who has given has made a huge impact and again…..I’m so SO Thankful.  We would not have made it this far without each and everyone of you.

……………

Lets go back…..Way back, before all the crazy hospital time.  Actually, “the crazy” started way before this, but we’re just gonna go back to the day before my birthday….well, there’s a little lead up and then we’re going back to the 17th of September.

Geli had been feeling “off” for quite a while.  It’s been about 9-10 weeks now, but she had been on oral antibiotics for about 6 weeks to try to combat some infection as a result of some ingrown toe nails.  In the 2 weeks before she was hospitalized, she’d been doing REALLY poorly.  The nausea and vomiting was horrid and she was on 3 different anti-nausea meds and was still barfing.  She was not eating a lot and right before they admitted her, she had pretty much stopped eating because she’d been feeling sick and or barfing for over a month and she couldn’t handle the thought of barfing anymore.  Not eating made her feel worse but the fear of barfing was overwhelming her.

We were trying with everything in our power to convince her to eat, mouthful, by mouthful and at the same time we were attempting to get her to drink the recommended 2Litres of water per day.  Trying to gauge how much she was drinking versus how much she was throwing up versus how much she might have actually kept down while at the same time “encouraging” her to drink while she was fighting putting anything inside of her……this whole scenario felt like it was slowly destroying both her and me.

All this time, Xani kept asking about having a birthday party to celebrate her birthday.  Her actual birthday is June 30th.  That would be 14 days from Geli’s diagnosis, and 4 days from Judah’s birth. It was such an insane time.  We had vaguely tried to throw something together over the summer but it didn’t happen and we didn’t try so hard to “force” it to happen.  I just promised her that we’d do something after school started in the fall and we thought that the weekend of the 17, 18, 19 would be good for Geli and her counts too. HA!

As the date got closer, Xani kept asking about it and I very wearily attempted to put something together that would be fun and easy and be a special celebration of her 12th Birthday with her friends.

Angelica helped me to decorate the house on that day and the distraction of it all was good for her. 

We made her a hat just for fun and also made flag streamers.  I dunno if we even got any pictures of the streamers?

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Here they are….you can see them peeking out of the top of the photo…..as I’m going through these pictures and talking about this event…it honestly feels like it was a life time ago and not just under a month ago.  My life has some bizarre “time warp thingy” going on right now.  Everything feels like it happened a million life times ago or like it was yesterday and there is no rhyme or reason to it.

She had asked about having an ice cream cake from Dairy Queen.  We typically don’t eat dairy and ice cream would definitely fall under the “dairy” category.  In the past, I’ve baked a cake that Siah (with a dairy and egg allergy) could eat or else I’ve just bought a cake and gotten something else similar that Siah could eat.  The reason why the rest of us don’t eat dairy, is not because we are allergic to it, but the rest of us have sensitivities to it and it makes us feel pretty nasty if we eat it.

In the middle of all that was happening, I had the bright or maybe insane idea to “make” an ice cream cake.

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I ran out to the store and bought  3 tubs of soy ice cream – one chocolate, one vanilla, and one strawberry – and a bag of Oreo cookies.

I opened up all the cookies and scraped out the insides and then crushed the cookies into crumble.  I let the ice cream soften and then started building.

I put a layer of Chocolate into a pan, and then smooshed the cookie crumble in on top of it.  I, then, added a layer of the strawberry and then the layer of vanilla.  I sprinkled the remainder of the cookie crumble on top  of the cake and added gum balls all around the edges.

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It looked fabulous and tasted great and the best part……..it didn’t make anyone feel icky because of the dairy.

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Xandra had a great party and enjoyed herself.  I was just so glad when it was all over.  How sad is that?

High Tide and Low Tide

It’s been almost a week since my last post and we’re still trucking along.

The chaos hasn’t really settled down as much as it’s just shifted or changed direction.

Geli has completed the first two weeks (out of 8 weeks) in this second stage of treatment. She was in the hospital yesterday for another lumbar puncture (with accompanying chemo into the spinal fluid) and then received one chemo drug through her IV and another chemo drug that gets given by two shots, one into each thigh.

She walks away from the day with a sore back, a headache, two thighs that feel like they’ve been kicked by steel toed boots, an upset tummy and some serious fatigue. She woke up this morning feeling really off and has spent the day on the couch or hunched over a bright shiny silver bowl. I’ve given her a substantial dose of Codeine and she is sleeping right now.

She’s doing well considering what she’s dealing with, but it’s not all sunshine and lollipops over here.

I had a really bad day on Sunday. It started out okay and somewhere along the line I ended up feeling completely overwhelmed by everything and then spent the rest of the afternoon/evening crying. If all of “this”, the emotions swirling around everything comes in waves, then Sunday was definitely a low tide day for me. I managed to wake up on Monday morning and things were a bit better, but when the evening rolled around and I needed to decide if I were going to my exercise class or not……I forced myself to go as I need to go for emotional and mental reasons as much as I need to go for physical reasons.

I find that if I can go and work so hard that I can’t really think or focus or concentrate on anything else…..it gives me a break from everything and then I feel so much more able to jump back into the thick of everything and deal with it all from a position of strength…..and so I went. And….surprise, surprise! I felt a lot better when I was finished.

We have a quiet week ahead of us.

This second stage of Chemo is a total of 8 weeks. There are 2 weeks of intensive everyday treatments, and that’s followed by 2 weeks where she’s only scheduled to be in at the hospital for 1 day per week. This week is the first of those 2 weeks. Then we do two more intensive every day weeks and then 2 more weeks of 1 day per week.

Here are the most current prayer needs and praise reports.

Angelica has done amazingly well as far as side effects go and we are so thankful for your prayers. Some of the most common side effects from the drugs she’s currently on are mouth sores, nausea and vomiting, fever and low blood counts. Geli has had very little nausea and has only had one real episode of vomiting. She’s had no mouth sores, or fever, no real other side effects and although her blood counts are low – they are not as low as they could be.

These are amazing things because she could be feeling SO. MUCH. WORSE. than she currently is.

We would love prayer that she would stay physically and emotionally strong, and that her tummy would stop hurting. She says that she doesn’t feel sick and nauseous most of the time, but her tummy hurts or aches and it would be nice if that would go away. Also, we would love prayer that she would recover quickly from her big day yesterday and that the headache that is bothering her would go away.

Jon and I could use prayer that we would stay emotionally and physically healthy and strong. It is tough to deal with everything that is on our plates right now. Also that we would have time and opportunity for each other in the middle of all this craziness. It’s difficult to find the time, and resources to be able to invest in each other at times like this and yet even if everything lines up well….often we are so exhausted that it feels like too much effort to go anywhere and do anything.

Xani is struggling with all the emotions that she is feeling. She tends to feel extremes when it comes to emotions and has been swinging between stuffing her emotions and exploding with her emotions…..both extremely unhealthy ways of dealing with her emotions and so we are trying to walk her through sharing her emotions in a healthy way and at the same time dealing with the fall-out of the stuffing/exploding cycles.

Jeremy is Jeremy! He has so many thoughts and ideas racing through his head and often it is exhausting trying to keep up with him. Alternately, he is frustrated with us that we don’t seem to get or understand or that we just don’t have the time and energy to put ALL of his ideas into practice. It feels like we are in a constant tug of war with him mentally and verbally. It’s hard for him and us.

Josiah….well, lets just say that Josiah turned 3 on August 4th and I still haven’t written odes of love and adoration to him as I reflect back on the last three years of his life. That may or may not have something to do with the fact that currently……on any given day……I’m about ready to strangle the little bugger. He is my love, my darling, my miracle baby and yet…..

The whining, yelling, screaming, constant arguing, climbing, getting into things…..well, it can all be summed up by saying that he is testing his boundaries in a BIG WAY. Normally, this would be okay and we’d just set the boundaries and enforce them repeatedly until he figured out what was acceptable and what was unacceptable…..with everything else going on and the exhaustion that is a result of everything else going on…….lets just say that our consistency is not as it should be. I honestly think that he senses that things are not “right” that they are not as peaceful, calm and consistent as they have been and the chaos is affecting him negatively much in the same way that it’s affecting everyone else.

We will all get through this, and we keep telling ourselves that its just a season, but if you are wanting to pray….this is what we need prayer for right now…

To everyone who is praying…… We appreciate every single prayer.

Summertime Fun

This summer has been unusual, abnormal or atypical, to say the least!

We are trying to keep things as normal moving along in a fun and relaxed way while at the same time taking the necessary precautions to keep things as safe and healthy as possible.

Knowing that we are heading into a period of time where Geli’s infection fighting ability is at a low (to non-existent) point, I was trying to figure out something fun that we could do to celebrate the long weekend. We need to be away from gatherings and crowds, and so that make everything a little more difficult and limits some of our regular “go to” family activities.

I figured that we could have a picnic. The kids ALWAYS want to pack a picnic, a blanket and some games and spend an afternoon together, and unknown to the children – that is what we planned.

When we woke up that morning, the weather looked yucky and worse, IT WAS FREEZING!

And so my brain went into overdrive to try to figure out how we could still do something fun, but indoors…..

We have a large shag rug that I figured would be perfect for a little indoor mini Bocce Ball Game. We had a small whiffle ball for the target and 3 pairs of hard rubber bouncy balls in blue, yellow and orange. Then I was going to set up bowling with a bunch of empty water bottles, and a tennis ball. Our hallway is the perfect spot for that. Then I figured that we could pack our lunch basket and put a blanket on the living room floor and I was even thinking of different ways to make smores either in the oven or over the bar-b-que.

I figured that even if the weather didn’t co-operate that we could still have a great and fun adventure of a day.

Fortunately……by lunch time, it was warm and the sun was trying desperately to peer through the hazy clouds. So, we packed everything up, told the kids that we were headed to Derby Reach, got in the van and headed off.

We got there and headed out onto the grassy field to lay our blankets down, and sat down and ate.

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We get KFC about once a year and that’s enough to remind us that it’s SO DISGUSTING and then it takes us about a year to forget just how gross it really is and then we order it again….

Nana and Papa came down to join us and then it felt like a party and not just a picnic…

Jon sat and held Judah in the shade….

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And Judah was fine for a while but very quickly decided that he didn’t really want to just sit and he informed us of that quite loudly….

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Geli, Xani, Nana and myself decided to play a rousing game of rummy…

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Jeremy told Papa all about his creations and inventions and tried to talk Papa into building an electric chair on a track that would go from the top of our house all the way down to the basement for Judah to ride on so that it would be easy for him to get around…..

Papa seemed quite amused by Jeremy’s ideas……

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but then HONESTLY…who isn’t amused by Jer’s ideas…my sweet, SWEET boy!

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Judah finally chilled out when we laid him down on the blanket….I think he liked looking up at the giant tree that we were sitting under.

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We played about 10 rounds of rummy, but Xani got bored and dropped out of the game…..

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Nana had a good attitude throughout the whole game even though, I whooped her’s and Geli’s butts…..

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Isn’t she pretty?

We found this little guy crawling on our blanket…..cute little pink lady bug!

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Papa took Jeremy and Xani for an adventure walk through the trails and Jon took Siah down to throw rocks into the water. Siah managed to get soaking wet, and then in true Siah like fashion…..he came back to where we were sitting and a HUGE mole hill sucked him directly into it’s core…

He just threw himself face first directly into a pile of dirt!

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I could complain, but it kept him entertained…..

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and captivated…..

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for ever…..

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I think that this was the best part of the whole outing as far as he was concerned. And then……oh, AND THEN..

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Then he decided that he was not quite dirty enough…

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Oh baby! I think he just wanted another dunk in the river….which we gladly obliged and then we packed up and went home……The End!

Actually, it was the end of that particular adventure but little did we know that it wasn’t the end of the day….there was another exciting adventure waiting for us, but I’ll save that for another post……..

It was a great day and we have some great memories of a fun and special day.

Edited to say: You can click here to see the whole set from our Derby Reach Adventure

The First Cut is the Deepest

Well, yesterday was a momentous day in our house.

We had the first ever head shaving party.

When Geli was diagnosed with Leukemia, the Doctors and Nurses had mentioned that Angelica might lose her hair as a side effect of the chemotherapy. She seemed to be okay with that, but then…it hadn’t happened yet and so we figured that we’d just deal with it, if and when it happened.

Well, Geli managed to make it all the way through the first month before her hair started to thin and then….it started to thin quite rapidly.

The biggest issue was the hair falling out and sticking to her body. You know that feeling when you’ve got a stray hair stuck to your back and you can’t quite get it off….now imagine 50 hairs all over your arms and back and neck and inside your shirt….not fun eh?

And so, yesterday I asked Angelica if she’d like to shave my head so that she could see what it would look like, if she were to shave her head…and she said yes!

So, we grabbed the buzzers, took a picture to show the “before”……

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….then we cut the pony tail off….

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……and then started shaving….

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We had lots of help…..

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Lots and LOTS of help….probably more than we really needed,but hey! Gotta pay attention to the details, right?

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And then we moved on to Angelica….

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And Siah decided that he wanted to get in on the action…

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But trying to shaving a moving target……

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Well, lets jut say that his head shave is a little less than perfect…

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We finally remembered to take a good shot of Momma and Geli…

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Xani came home after dinner and decided she wanted in on the action…

So, here was the before shot…

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And here we are after it’s all done…

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And later on, Papa came over to join in…

Here we are listening to him ask for just a little off the edges…

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We figured while we were at it, we might as well see what Papa would look like with a little male pattern baldness…

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We needed to rock star it out a little…..

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Here is the official Head Shot…

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But…..the best part of the whole day AND night was when Pap put on this wig….

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And watching him do the head shake and hand flick made it apparently obvious that he’s had long hair in the past….

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He looked like he’d just stepped out of the Coast Capital Banking Commercial….it was AWESOME!

We had a good day with lots of laughter and although it could have been a tough day….I think it turned out okay.

We will be adding pictures of Nana Karen, and Aunty Chelle as soon as download them off the camera….they came over this morning to add their beauty to the mix……

Everyone looks so beautiful……its amazing how much stock you put in things like hair, but to see that hair only adds to your beauty…it doesn’t make or define you as beautiful…..Beauty is who you are!

Happy Birthday Alexandra

In the middle of all this other chaos, it is very important to me that this very important day doesn’t get forgotten about.

It is with great pleasure and many gushing happy feelings, that I wish my sweet Alexandra Janelle Culley a happy 12th birthday.

Alexandra Culley

My Sweet Xani
Happy 12th Birthday

Alexandra is having to miss out on a family birthday dinner and having me there to hug her today, so feel free to leave birthday wishes with her here so that she can “fell the love”.

Jon

Edited to include Xani’s comment:

Well apparently I’ll be celebrating most of the summer. One tonight with Geli, Tomorrow with Amy, one with school friends, and some time with Nana Culley. But thanks for all the happy B-days.

love Xan

Day 6 – Facing Realities

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We had the two older siblings come in today to meet with the doctor and team and to address their questions. Those two have not really handled this well for a variety of reasons. The plan is to tackle their questions, perceptions and misunderstandings head-on.

Jeremy saw Patti crying when we first got the news about Angelica. He didn’t understand what leukemia is. He didn’t even really understand what cancer is. He knows that mom doesn’t cry very often, and he is VERY sensitive to emotions. He sucked up that tension and has let it bounce around inside of him for a bit. He has not been sleeping and has not gone to school for a few days. He did try to get back to school, but it wasn’t productive and coupled with the lack of sleep…

Alexandra has read a lot of books and picks up a lot of information. She heard leukemia, then cancer, then I don’t think she heard much else. She started crying and saying “I don’t want Geli to die.” She has been into the hospital and we have explained that Geli will only be here for a week and that the chances of her being totally healthy are really good. But even yesterday she was still talking about Geli being gone for a long long time and really missing her, and wondering about a bunch of stuff.

The doctor (and we have a very nice, personable doctor, that is really good at putting complicated medical stuff into kid language) set up a meeting for 1:00pm today. Jeremy came with a few random thoughts, rather than questions, but he really needed to see everything calm and moving forward and he needed to know that this time (parents gone and various family members being with them at night) was going to be over soon. Xandra came with a book of questions. She asked why Gel’s hair would fall out, what the chemo actually does, what the best case scenario was… and she really didn’t want to ask but she did, what the worst case scenario was.

The doctor listened and replied to all the questions. He was impressed that jeremy knew that 45 years ago, the survival rate for leukemia was only about 4%. (In case you are wondering, the best case is that Geli responds to treatment, doesn’t get any infections during treatment. The worst case is that she would go through treatment and then have a relapse and have to go through treatment again.) He explained everything that the kids asked and listened to jeremy talk about fishing, guns, shooting birds, and other random stuff.

When that was done, I took those two to Science World and let them burn off some energy doing something completely distracting. I wanted to do something special for them and at the same time get a sense of what they got out of the meeting. My assessment was that they were going to be ok.

The realities are not easy, but in the end Angelica will have a normal life. It will be a change to our normal for a few years, but we will get through it as a family. I am pretty sure now that everyone in the family understands in their own way. And just to prove that, Jeremy and Xandra both went to school this morning and seemed to be happy about it.

Jon

Happy Birthday, Xandra Janelle!

It’s Xandra’s 11th Birthday today.

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Wow! Does time ever fly by? It’s hard to believe that this little girl has grown up so fast.

She was my BABY. I wanted a baby and had Geli and all she wanted to do was to grow up so SO fast. So I got pregnant with Alexandra 6 months after Angelica was born and she was ALL BABY, ALL THE TIME!

In fact, Xandra was still a baby LOOOOONG after Jeremy was born.

She still wanted to be held and carried and packed around like a baby. She did for a long time.

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I remember us talking about how she was in her own little word. I thought that was just her personality….turns out she just couldn’t see and all those hours spent talking to herself as she sat 2 inches away from the mirror were probably her way of connecting with actual people instead of moving and shifting blobs….

I remember the Dr talking to us about how poor her eye sight actually was. It’s amazing she is as well adjusted as she is and now, her eye sight is fairly well…..not perfect, but perfect with glasses and honestly, the Dr wasn’t even sure that we could pull that much off. So we are so thankful for how far she’s come.

The school was even talking to us about autism in Grade One…..got the girl some glasses and turns out that not only is she not autistic, but that she’s above average. Who woulda thunk it?

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She is happy and bubbly and has the most amazing personality. She is soft and gentle followed with a quick wit and acid temper if she is crossed. She is the most amazing set of contradictions and I love her. She makes me laugh and cry and wonder how I was so blessed to have been a part of bringing her into this world.

She is growing up so fast. Faster than Geli is… in some ways…..it’s scarey. I’m not sure if it’s her friends this year or just her inquisitive personality, but she’s so interested in fashion and all things “girly” and even boys…..

One thing we have in our favor is that we can and do talk about so much. She has unending questions and while I might not always have the answers, we can at least go searching for those answers together and hand in hand we will find answers to all the questions she has.

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She is growing up to be a gorgeous woman inside and out and while she still has some time yet…I often catch glimpses of the woman she will become and my heart swells with pride and love and joy…..but mostly love.

Happy 11th Birthday, my sweet bunny!

Guilty Pleasure

It was Xandra and Jeremy’s Sports Day today.

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In the past we have been “those involved parents”. You know…..the ones helping out in the classroom, helping the teachers with photocopying or with crafts or field trips or at the concession stands at sports days or family fun nights.

You need someone to help out. WE ARE HERE TO SERVE.

This has always been our “way” of doing things. And then……

Then I lost Nathaniel and yet I still plowed on. Then we had the other 3 losses and I still plowed on. Then I got pregnant with Siah and still plowed on. Then my brother just about died in a crash with a semi-truck and I took a tiny break but still I plowed on. Are you sensing a theme here??? Then I had Siah and planned on plowing on, but I realized that I needed to take “sometime” to focus on just us…..and I did still end up heading back into the school to help out but during that time off something shifted.

Running HardI realized that my kids were important, and that I wanted to help out and be involved with them and their school, but WHY???

That became the BIG QUESTION for me.

See, I do think that if it’s possible, that it’s a good, and even a GREAT, idea to be somewhat involved in the school that your kids go to.

1. If you are involved then the teachers actually get to “know” you.
2. The “knowing” leads to relationship and SO MUCH BENEFIT comes from relationship.
3. If there are any problems with your child, it is so much easier to navigate those murkey waters from a position of relationship.
4. If your child needs extra help academically, the “relationship” that you have with the teachers means that you will get better treatment than those who are fringe parents….is this a “fair” thing, nope, but it is what it is…

Relationship is everything. So much in the “real world” is in “who you know”….it can make or break you.

BUT….I have found that finding the balance is SO important.

Am I there? No, in fact this past year has been a wicked brutal year for us and I have probably swung way to far to the other end of the spectrum and and am desperately hanging off the threads of the past few years of relationship to carry me through this year.

Jon and I got hired in town (Vancouver) in January of this year and we live out in the Fraser Valley and that means that typically 3-4 days a week we make the hour’s commute in and then again at the end of the day and we have just been basically trying to survive. All of this with one pre-teen (that right there is enough for a crisis all on it’s own) who is also in her first year of late French Immersion. One other pre-teen who’s moods can flail from one end of the spectrum to the other within the space of 5 minutes. A son with ADD/ADHD who is struggling with all that entails, and a baby. It’s been a bit of a wild ride the past 6 months. Add selling off a part of our company and still maintaining the other part of it….and yah, it’s rocked!!!!

Outta Control

One thing that has TOTALLY fallen off the radar is school volunteering.

We walked onto the school yard today and hearing the comments of “it’s been so long since we’ve seen you around here?” and “You’ve been so busy, eh?” and all the other little comments just nailed home to me how brutal it is to live under all that pressure.

It’s amazing how guilt sits like a cloud around the school.

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We attended the Sports Day today. That’s it. We could have offered to help. We could have squeezed some blood out of that stone and given some more of our time and our selves and yet we chose not to.

We chose to focus only on our kids. We went. We cheered them on. We took pics. We bought them junk food from the concession stand to celebrate the day and then we left before it all finished.

It felt HORRIBLE and yet AMAZING.

Siah & Jon

I felt like we were letting the other parents down by not “doing our part”. I realize that if there are no volunteers then a lot of fun things won’t happen, but sometimes you just have to enjoy your kids without the pressure and responsibility of making it all happen for everyone else. And today…..was that day for us. And I determined that I was going to enjoy every minute that I was there. It was so nice to just “be there” for our kids.

I’m already feeling the pressure of having to start all over again and building relationship with the teachers and principals at the kids new school in September. But I’m hoping that I’ll be able to do it for good reasons and within boundaries that work for me and don’t lead me to feel like I’m giving everything that I have or being taken advantage of.

Perception……..Generationally!

It was funny to watch the kids this morning…..

They were sitting at the kitchen table having breakfast. We had made a lovely bowl of hot oatmeal and the little glasses of orange juice looked so lovely and refreshing sitting on the crisp white place mats. The silverware was all polished and it was all so worth the effort that it had taken to prepare. The extra hours worth of sleep that I had given up to prepare a lovely meal for my family was SOOOOOOOO worth it.

Ha HA HA HA HA HA! That was all just a joke…..I started typing and the part about the kids at the kitchen table and even the oatmeal is true. The rest of it….well, I just got carried away with a lovely picture in my head of what it could have been….had I not slept in. Reality, people. REALITY!!!

Siah picked up a card with a picture of Jeremy that we had just bought as part of a fund raiser at the school.

Card Phone

They come around at the end of the year and take pics of the kids and then the school gets part of the proceeds of whatever sale they make….I have no idea why I told you all that. It must be the 8 THOUSAND gallons of snot that is clogging up my brain right now. I FEEL AWESOME. Like you have never felt more awesomer……I know that’s not a word, but just go with me, people.

Anyhooooo….. Siah picked up this card and pretended to punch buttons and said into the card – “Hello? Hello?” Like he was talking into a phone. Xandra reaches over and picks up a banana off the table and proceeds to have a conversation with Siah on their respective imaginary phones.

Banana Phone

It’s amazing the difference in perception that a few years brings.

To Xandra, the banana looks like a phone….she’s from the generation that had phones around where the handset looked like a banana…or at least similar to it.

For the greater part of Siah’s life, what he would equate as a phone has been a cell phone and the majority of the cell phones that he’s been allowed to hold or touch or that he sees are the small little cell phones.

I think that its really interesting to see how even within just a few short years that our perception can change. What was normal can become old or “not normal”. I wonder what we will consider normal in a few years…..It’s a weird thought.

Okay, now I have to say that I’m giving myself an out here. I am thinking that there is a good chance that this post is interesting to no one by myself. And if that’s the case, then I am totally blaming my lack of funny (or heck, even just interesting) on this cold that is threatening to ooze out of my ears. I feel like crap and am so hoping that I’ll wake up tomorrow and be over the worst of it all…..I can hope, right?

Beware the Vampires

A few weeks ago, it was my niece’s birthday and she had a sleep over.

My two girls went for the party and everything was all fairies and roses and was going along fabulously.

We had some plans that got all re-arranged and we ended up asking my mother-in-law to pick up the girls and she (being the amazing person that she is) agreed. We talked to my sister and all was set up and organized in the exact way that I like it to be. You know, wrapped up with a big red bow and seeming all perfect.

My mother-in-law was actually on her way and had just connected with my sister and mentioned that she’d be there in just a few minutes. That sounded great to everyone and somehow…….someway……in the few minutes between when they chatted on the phone and my mother-inlaw showed up…..everything turned crazily upside down.

Apparently the girls were out in the yard bouncing on the trampoline when my niece went all vampire on Xandra and tried to bite a chunk out of her head.

It, being a good head wound, bled ALL OVER THE FREAKING PLACE and scared the crap outta all the girls. They came running to the house screaming and crying. Xani was holding her head and Bri was holding her chin and…..well….it was not a happy situation.

Chelle got the situation sorted out and Xani was laying on the couch bleeding nicely when Mum arrived…..and after some discussion it was determined that the wound was gaping entirely too much and she should probably have a few stitches.

They got to spend 4 hours in the Maple Ridge ER and came out with this…….

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Pretty, Isn’t it?

Apparently, according to Mum, the ER Doctor was AMAZING. He was so gentle and careful that Xandra didn’t end up with a giant hack mark in her hair. He didn’t have to cut any of the hair around the wound, he just took extra time and stitched carefully and for that I am so grateful.

She was allowed to take a shower that first night to wash all the blood out of her hair, but then she wans’t allowed to wash her hair for the next 4 days – as they were dissolving stiches. Nice!!! And wouldn’t you know that week was the week that she was doing swimming for PE at school. We solved that problem by getting her a swim cap, and by the end of the week, the stitches had dissolved and her head is all better.

She only has the giant nasty scar, but fortunately it is in the scalp and not on her face.

She is such a brave little girl. She didn’t flip out or cry while they were doing the stitches or anything. She told me later that she was just trying to be as calm as she could. What a little cutie.

This evens up the score for the girls. Now both of my girls have had stitches on their heads. I’m hoping that the boys don’t try and even things up on their end.