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Category: Parenting

Posted
December 20, 2016
Category
Cancer, Christmas, Family, Fear, Grace, Gratitude, Growth, Happiness, harmony, Hope, Joy, Kindness, Love, Parenting, Peace, Pediatric Brain Cancer, Perseverance, Positivity
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Gifts Before Christmas 

Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow.

-Melody Beattie

It’s almost Christmas, and our driveway is now properly trimmed with my new Crafting for a Cure Peace Sign.

And with only four days to go, of course there are cookies:

A year ago, Abram was approaching nadir of his 3rd chemo cycle. He was able to leave the hospital for a couple days before the fever kicked in, and this is the moment we arrived home:He didn’t even take off his coat and hat before curling up in his recliner to sleep.

Days are still hard sometimes. Simply sending our recovering little boy to school this week after his pediatrician alerted us to active Influenza A in the area makes me want to pack my family into a sterile safety bubble. Every ache and pain -especially phone calls from school about “weird” headaches like this afternoon- sends shocks of panic back to the surface.

Despite the forever unknowns, I’m keeping busy and focusing on the positive. Tonight, in between checking his beautiful eyes, precious head and general wellbeing, I packed up some of his warm, small clothes to donate. His chubby little belly has the elastic band of his favorite Minion PJs stretched to the max. What a beautiful, happy site that is after seeing him critically underweight for so many months.

Abraham’s headache has lessened a bit and I am grateful to spend this evening with my husband, our recently-turned teenager, and a sweet little boy who has outgrown his clothes. What gifts!

Peace, love, and joy…

Posted
December 11, 2016
Category
Cancer, Christmas, Compassion, Family, Grace, Gratitude, Growth, Happiness, harmony, Hope, Integrity, Joy, Kindness, Love, Parenting, Peace, Positivity, Selflessness, Unity
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Speaking to Santa

Christmas is the spirit of giving without a thought of getting. It is happiness because we see joy in people. It is forgetting self and finding time for others. It is discarding the meaningless and stressing the true values. 

-Thomas S. Monson

Abraham has never been at a loss for words, yet when it comes to Santa, crickets. Not a single word spoken until prodded by Dad, he finally asked Santa for Granny to have flowers for Christmas.
Peace, love, and joy…

Posted
December 4, 2016
Category
Compassion, Family, Forgiveness, Grace, Gratitude, Happiness, harmony, Hope, Integrity, Kindness, Love, Parenting, Peace, Perseverance, Poetry, Positivity, Tolerance, Unity
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Render Joy

rend·er  /rendər/  verb

  1. provide or give (a service, help, etc.)
  2. cause to be or become; make
  3. furnish for consideration
  4. transmit to a clearer form

If you are happy and I am happy – that makes two.
If I am also happy for you, and you are also happy for me – that’s four.

Why just add to the joy of the season when we can plainly multiply it?

Shared Routes

Render a plot of life unique

No other trek will do.

Judge others not

What they begot

Admeasure all paths as true.

Peace on Earth.

Posted
November 16, 2016
Category
Anthony Rizzo, Anxiety, Cancer, Cubs, Family, Fear, Grace, Gratitude, Growth, Happiness, harmony, Hope, Kindness, Parenting, Pediatric Brain Cancer, Perseverance, Positivity, Wellness
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Shifting the Burden

Do not free a camel of the burden of his hump; you may be freeing him from being a camel. -Gilbert K. Chesterton

Freeing ourselves from our burdens is not always possible. That does not mean we are doomed to break under the pressures of family, occupation, or self.

Today, my sister and I brought Abraham to the hospital to flush the port in his chest, to be examined by the radiation oncologist for side effects or signs of regression, and to confirm the route we will take to amplify his decreased hearing due to the ototoxicity of chemotherapy.

All of those things are difficult.

Yet, all of those things are who we are.

Here is Abraham in the Chicago Sports Room waiting for the nurse to come with her tray full of needles and syringes. With all the pains and discomforts and inconveniences and exclusions that cancer has thrown at my little boy, needle pokes are the toughest part for him.

Yet, there he stands proud of his hat, and although he was definitely afraid, when the time came, he took his seat and allowed Nurse Jessica to do what she needed to do – because that’s just who he is.


Sometimes, recognizing our responsibilities as part of what makes us whole and unique shifts the weight of what we must carry to what we are made of; thereby adding substance to our sense of self and reducing the pressure from our sense of duty.

Peace, love, and shifting perspectives…

Posted
November 1, 2016
Category
Cancer, Charles M. Schulz, Cubs, Family, Garfield, Grace, Gratitude, Growth, Happiness, Hope, Kindness, Parenting, Pediatric Brain Cancer, Positivity, Snoopy
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Snoopy Time

It doesn’t matter what you believe just so long as you’re sincere. -Charles M. Schulz

Not everyone celebrates Halloween.

Not everyone eats candy.

And that’s ok.

Us? We have two young sons who enjoyed both yesterday.

In the last two years, Abraham’s health has made conventional Halloween fun a challenge. In 2014, he was recovering on October 31st from brain surgery the day before at the age of six.

He, Tommy, and their cousins celebrated early that year at a trunk-or-treat. Our little Minion didn’t feel well, but he made it through.

Two years ago today, I updated friends and family post-craniotomy:

‘Intense day yesterday, but turned a little corner last night. Ate a tiny bit; talking more. Doctor very pleased with the surgery results.

Line of the day:

Nurse: That was a good idea, Abraham!

Abe: You can call me smarty pants if you want to, even though I got no pants on!’

Always a jokester, even when he is recovering from brain surgery and hooked up to monitors galore.

In 2015, Abram was seven and battling infection and the effects of chemotherapy. He and I celebrated together quietly in the hospital.


This year, we are eating up every aspect of the season together as a family.


Abraham has to be one of the biggest eight-year-old Charles M. Schulz fans around. He has vintage Peanuts books, memorabilia, encyclopedias; you name it.   It is also his dream to be a comedian or cartoonist one day.

It’s the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown started our family weekend rolling. Like the Peanuts gang, his old soul is straight out of the past where kids were kids and the world was a welcome playground. To be hospitalized on a sweet, spooky and silly holiday two-years in-a-row was unfortunate. So this year on Halloween, Abraham and his brother Tom were able to just be together and have some fun.

Times have changed and so has trick-or-treating. We only went to houses we knew, but we made the rounds, because this pup needed to ring some doorbells!

With each achievement, we celebrate. We celebrate childhood. We celebrate mobility and stamina. We celebrate family and friends. We celebrate happiness.

We celebrate life.


Peace.

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