balloon

dear bunky,

this morning we went shopping at trader joe's, first thing. one of the employees gave a balloon to the little girl next to us, but not to you--so i went to the customer service desk after we checked out and asked for yours.

"what color?"

"yellow"

i had to tell you to look--you didn't know to watch the man inflate it for you. when you saw the balloon expanding with helium, your eyes and mouth opened wide. a full body smile. you accepted your first helium balloon with joyous awe, as if you could not believe you were receiving something so wonderful.

after seeing many pictures of balloons in books, seeing them at the supermarket, at Walgreen's, after pointing them out to me always, here was a balloon for you, at last.

all day you have played with your balloon. running around the house yelling "a-loo! a-loo!", balloon in tow, pulling the balloon down toward you, letting it go, batting it with your hand, teasing the cat with it, panicking when it drifted out of sight...

when i brought daddy home from the hospital in the afternoon (he'd been there for 4 days recovering from a minor operation, his ostomy takedown, which was a cakewalk for him after everything he's been through), you were quick to show him your wonderful treasure.

you had missed him, that daddy of yours, missed him with all your might. you were brave and persevered in his absence, and when he came home, you held out your very best offering. "a-loo!"

a period of rest

dear monkey puzzle,

i have a picture of you on my cell phone. you are wearing your red baseball hat and green jacket and you look awfully grown up. i look at that picture of you throughout the day when we're apart and i feel connected to you.

daddy finished with his chemo last week. at least, we are pretty sure he is done--when his oncologist comes back from vacation we'll know for sure. daddy has another ct scan scheduled for monday, so next week will tell us a lot about what we might expect over the next few months: more treatment or a period of rest? based on daddy's last scan, we are both expecting another clean scan and a few months off, a period of semi-normalcy. you will be happy when daddy feels well enough every morning to get out of bed early and play with you while i brush my teeth and get dressed for work.

you continue to learn many new words each day. i was keeping a list until it became too difficult to keep up. at last count you had over 75 words. by now you have well over 100, i would guess.

you have also started combining words. you did this once a couple of months ago when i left you at daycare. "bye mommy" you said, and surprised your teachers. but you hadn't done it again until recently, when one morning when daddy did not get up to see you you said, "daddy tired." then you saw the cat sleeping and you said "kitty tired". you've had a number of other combinations since then, with "yellow turtle" being my favorite. you are also repeating multisyllabic words and multi word phrases like crazy. and you seem to understand just about everything i say.

you've also started to have some tantrums, and they're really no fun at all. you're usually so much fun and so easy to be around (active and exhausting, yes, but not difficult) that it's a shock when we're suddenly on opposite sides. most of the tantrums seem to happen when you are tired and you want to do something for yourself that i can't let you do (play with the latch on the safety gate on the stairs, for example). as you seek more independence, we will probably see more of these unwelcome flare-ups. one thing about you is that you are dramatic and expressive, and have been since the day you took your first breath.

i had hoped with these letters to write more often and to paint a clearer picture of your early life. but as daddy gets better, i am getting more and more burned out and i don't have the energy to think very well anymore. i use up my mental energy at work, and at home i do my long list of chores at night and finally collapse into bed.

i do give you lot of love when we're together. and you are very attached to me, so i must be doing a few things right. if i am unable to tell you your story in the detail i had intended, i hope you will understand.

fever, mr. clean, and 12 other things

dear rumplehead,

you are asleep in your crib, finally at rest after battling all afternoon with fever. you roasted and parched with heat and when the tylenol didn't work i consoled you as best i could until it was time to try again--with motrin.

about life. other people seem to make progress, but for the past couple of years i have only been moving in reverse, so i took this last week off from work to catch up. (my sudden vacation was triggered by me almost burning the house down a couple of weeks ago while you slept in your crib. it was nearly midnight and i was multitasking so i could get some sleep. i put something on the stove and left the kitchen for minute, completely forgot about the stove stuff and 40 minutes later, "what's that burning?" i ran to the kitchen to find 2 foot flames licking out of the pan, managed to get the fire out while wondering why the smoke alarms--batteries still good--did not alert me. still haven't figured this part out. scared the bubblegum out of me and i realized i HAD to find a way to get some control of things.) anyway, my to-do list for my week off was much too long and i knew i would not get to everything, but i did my best.

things i accomplished:

-removing everything from the shed and installing shelving
-putting most everything back in the shed, in a more organized fashion
-cleaning a bunch of unused junk out of the kitchen cupboards
-organizing the two kitchen "junk drawers" (w/bamboo organizing inserts from bed, bath, and beyond) and learning they are not full of junk after all
-cleaning off the top of the desk (look at all those crumbs and dust bunnies!)
-cleaning out the desk drawers (more bamboo organizers) and finding the title to the purple car that i've been wanting to sell for more than a year
-taking out the trash and recycling
-grocery shopping
-getting some non-toxic nuby sippy cups for you
-taking daddy lunch at the hospital on chemo day
-taking 6 months of mail and other personally identifying whatnot to the paper shredding place where you drive in and they shred it while you watch

still on my list:

-sleep (since it's almost 11:00 on sunday night, i'm running out of time on this most important of tasks)
-get rid of all the shed stuff that didn't go back in and is just sitting around our yard for our neighbors' viewing pleasure from their upstairs windows
-get the cleaning people in for a thorough cleaning (especially the 4x vomited-on floors)
-call scott about carpeting the stairs to lessen the chance that if you accidentally fall down them you will die or be seriously injured
-call blue cross to see if the outstanding claims for $10,000 from the hospital have been resolved
-call the hospital to be sure they are providing blue cross with the needed information (blue cross said they had asked and asked but not received)
-find that other bill for $2000 from ?? and figure out why we have to pay that much
-find that several month old bill for $250 that i paid (even though i didn't think i should) and triple check with blue cross
-double check that your dad qualifies for social security disability and figure out how to apply
-fax in the medical and dependent care account claims so we don't lose that money
-find 5 or so slow cooker recipes to make during the week so we can eat well and at a reasonable hour, enabling me to go to bed earlier and not be so sleep deprived
-make a shopping list from those recipes
-make a chart of the dates my monthly bills are due so i won't continue to forget one or more bills a month
-call at&t and be sure they got my payment sent wednesday and won't disconnect my service like they threatened to in that mailing they sent me, and in the automated phone call they sicked on me on friday
-find out from the credit union why my at&t bill stopped coming through my bill pay account three months ago
-take the car in to get the window fixed, finally, so it will close
-make an appointment for a mammogram
-clean all the clothes out of my dresser that i don't wear or that look awful on me
-get a few new things to wear that don't have to be ironed all the time
-find an appropriate place for a downstairs smoke alarm and get it installed
-weed the yard before the mammoth interlopers squeeze the life out of every other living thing
-tell you about everything you are doing: walking very well; talking the ear off of anyone who'll listen; saying "no" or shaking your head no; reading and reading and reading (can't get enough of the books!); taking the same book first to one parent and then to the other to get a different interpretation; rolling/bouncing/throwing various balls (your favorite); pointing out balls in books, in other people's yards, etc.; napping well and sleeping well at night (when you're not sick); trying to feed the cat little pieces of whatever you're eating; telling me about the bird you hear outside; imitating me when i say "caw, caw"; trying to imitate me when i say "cock-a-doodle-doo"...
-and about 12 other things i can't think of right now

but here's some good news: daddy had a ct scan this week and it's clear. no evidence of growth. this is 5 months out from his surgery, and halfway through his chemo. something seems to be working. we are not celebratory. there's too much uncertainty for that. but truly truly truly, we are grateful.

the momentum of love

dear snuggles,

i want you to know that i write you letters in my head all the time. while i'm cooking, cleaning the kitchen, filling your bottles and packing your food for daycare, brushing my teeth. but it's hard to find the time to sit at the computer long enough to get it down for you to read one day.

daddy started chemo yesterday. i went with him, just for the first time to see how it will be for him. we were at the hospital for seven hours in a small, drab room with no windows and an overly chatty woman in the 2nd chemo chair nosing into our business. daddy is doing okay so far with the folfiri. he only had a half dose of the irinotecan this time--the oncologist is starting cautiously and will increase it each time until he finds the limit of daddy's tolerance for the drug.

you are happy as ever. your favorite foods right now are hard boiled egg yolk, sweet potato (chunks of home cooked), banana chunks, and plain yogurt. you love feeding yourself, and now that you have mastered putting food in your mouth, you have started to put other things in your mouth, too. last week you found a small mystery object on the living room floor and popped it in before i could intervene. i stuck my finger in your mouth to get it out, but came out with nothing. you didn't choke, so the identity of the particle you ate will remain one of life's mysteries. today i had to fish two things out of your mouth: soggy paper from a magazine ad (you tore out the page while playing) and some orange peel (daddy gave it to you to hold, but you decided to eat it). so we're at that stage now. i hope we both live through it.

i have been thinking a lot about what kind of mom i want to be for you. what thoughts and behaviors do i want to model for you as you're growing up? what ways of seeing the world could i help you adopt that would be beneficial to you in your life? how can i help you see yourself as a strong person, a helper, a contributor, a speaker of truth, an upstanding human being?

i don't have a word for my religious beliefs. other people might call me an atheist, but that doesn't feel right and i don't use it as a label for myself. agnostic is wrong, too. i can tell you that i don't believe in "personal" god that thinks like we do and plays us like puppets. what i do believe is that the laws of nature are the ultimate truth. physics, biology, chemistry, mathematics, compassion, empathy, love. i am telling you this because it occurred to me this week as i was standing at the stove that the idea of god that so many people have, a god that listens to and answers the prayers of human beings, though farfetched in my opinion, is no more farfetched than the idea of you being born from nothing but will, biology, and luck. no more farfetched than the experiential arc of a single human life, the bewilderment of existence, the purposelessness of it, the joy of it, the suffering that sits on the sidelines for some and for others dominates the game from the very beginning.

i still don't believe in a personal god.

i do believe in getting up every day and doing the best i can.

i believe in the thrill of small beauty.

in the growth potential of hardship.

and most of all, in the momentum of love.

friendly faces

dear little muffin,

yesterday morning when i dropped you at daycare, you saw a little girl getting out of another car and you waved at her and very brightly said "hi!". that's something i really like about you: you have always been a friendly guy.

today, i stopped at the grocery store on my way to pick you up and felt myself surrounded by friendly faces. everywhere i looked i saw people who looked like potential friends--kind, fun, and funny souls. i don't feel like that very often, but when i do it's a great feeling, like the world is an open, safe place, rich and welcoming. i hope you will see the world that way as you get older. good things just waiting to happen.

you are changing constantly, transforming right before my eyes.

you now have the beginnings of two teeth. one is about half arrived, and it's neighbor has shown up fashionably late and is just sticking it's foot through the door.

you can stand by yourself now, entirely unsupported, for a surprising number of seconds before you teeter and drop onto your cushiony bottom. but only when you feel like it; never on demand.

you are very chatty. you have mastered mama, dada, nana, baba, and are now working on your g's. gaga and goo goo, etc. you can say ball ("ba"), you try to say diaper ("di"), and one day even tried to repeat after me when i said tylenol ("ty-o"). you say kitty ("ditty"). you say hi. you say yeah. and i'm pretty sure you've started shaking your head no and nodding yes, and that those motions in response to questions are not just coincidence.

you continue to be a wet and sloppy kisser, and when you kiss (sweetly suck/slobber on) my chin (always giggling) you seem to enjoy exercising your new teeth.

so much has happened since i last wrote. it's too much to begin to tell.

yesterday daddy had a liter of fluid drained from around his right lung. he seems to feel better now that he has more breathing room. he said the fluid looked like iced tea, and i'm glad i no longer drink iced tea or i'd probably just have had that pleasure permanently spoiled. we are waiting for the lab report now to find out if the fluid shows signs of infection or cancer.

it has been a long and difficult month for daddy and me. daddy rests when he's tired, but i've discovered a new kind of fatigue, a kind of tiredness that sees no end in sight. the words "no rest for the weary" often come to mind as i go about my days.

even still, i feel a remarkable amount of friendliness in the world much of the time. it leaves me hopeful. and i hope that hopefulness is something i can impart to you. or better, i hope your hopefulness comes from within, like a bubbling spring, requiring no effort from you, for all of your days.

turning corners

dear snooky,

well, daddy didn't have his surgery. it got rescheduled for october 4 because the cancer is growing again and the doctors decided to do a bigger operation. they are going to take out the whole right side of his liver and a little bit of the left side, too. daddy will be in the hospital for at least a week, and it will take about two months before he feels like himself again. after daddy has recovered, he will start chemo again for six months. so we have some hard times ahead.

i wish i could say that daddy and i have been spending a lot of quality time together, but the truth is that i have been working very hard on a project for work and i haven't had much time for anyone but you. as soon as i've put you to bed and have had a bite to eat, i've been going upstairs to the office and working until late at night while daddy watches tv and falls asleep on the couch. but now my project is done and i am going to spend as much time with the two of you as i can. the day before daddy's surgery, we'll drop you at daycare in the morning and then spend the whole day together, just the two of us, for the first time since you were born.

you are sleeping right now, very peacefully. oblivious to what is going on.

you have your own agenda. today you managed to move yourself all the way from the living room to the kitchen. you don't crawl, exactly. a little bit of crawling in reverse, maybe. mostly you scoot and roll, but it seems to be working for you. it seems to be a lot of fun for you to be able to get places on your own now.

this morning it rained. there's been a little nip of fall in the air. we are turning corners, little one. we'll find out together what's around the bend.

a brief history of you, part 1

dear little bear,

long before you were born, daddy and i started talking about you.

should we have a baby? one of us said.

yes, let's have a baby. the other one said.

okay, it didn't happen just exactly like that, but that's the gist of it. i think i was the one who started it. i knew at least seven years before you were born that i wanted to be a mom, but it wasn't until a couple of years later that i felt really ready.

i don't know why it was so hard to get pregnant. we tried and tried. we went to specialists. it was an odyssey. i was constantly peeing on sticks--ovulation tests, pregnancy tests. no matter how well we timed things, the pregnancy tests always showed one line only. when almost four years had passed and still no baby, daddy and i talked about adopting. but daddy wanted to try a little bit longer.

one day i felt like i might be pregnant. at first i didn't trust the feeling, but by the time i got home from work i was pretty sure. it's hard to put the reasons into words. i took a pregnancy test that night and both lines showed up right away, good and strong. i went right in to the bedroom to tell daddy. he was lying in bed reading. he didn't seem surprised, just kept on reading his book. i started thinking about you and how our lives were going to change.

the first time i saw you you were just a flickering heartbeat. you were six weeks into your journey into this world. seeing your little heart beating there inside me, i felt protective of you. i was learning what it meant to be your mom. i would be your shelter.

the second time i saw you was at your eleven week ultrasound. even then you were already beautiful. you were busy busy busy, twisting and turning inside me. i took home some pictures of you and i looked at them every night before i went to bed, admiring you and wondering what you would be like.

it was eight weeks later that we found out daddy had cancer. his diagnosis was like a drive by shooting. when a 37 year old's butt bleeds, you expect hemorrhoids, not cancer.

i remember the last few minutes of our normal, pre-cancer life. i was in the waiting room while daddy was having his colonoscopy. i was reading crib reviews, trying to figure out what kind of crib to get you. i wanted one that was very safe and easy to get you in and out of and modern looking and not too expensive. the test was over very quickly and the nurse came to get me. the doctor came in and told daddy and me that he had a growth and would have to have an operation. he didn't say "cancer," but his tone was serious and he told us to expect the biopsy results in a few days. the very next day while i was at work, he called to tell daddy he had cancer.

in one instant the whole future changed from something stable and predictable to murky and tumultuous. or so it seemed. but of course, what really happened was that one fantasy was replaced with another fantasy. that's all the future is: fantasy. either fantasy or a comlete blank, and a complete blank is something we just can't live with.

daddy believes you came to us for a reason. he believes that your arrival right around his diagnosis, after we waited for you for so long, was not an accident. before you were born, during some of our hardest times, he used to say that you were going to come and cheer us up.

you have cheered us up. cheered us up to spectacular heights. what a view! daddy was so right.

worth it

dear munchkin pants,

i just spent the last two hours glazed over in front of the t.v. trying to pretend that i could avoid my responsibilities. eventually, though, i had to lumber into the kitchen to do a load of wash, scrub your bottles for loading into the dishwasher, and clean the accessories i need to pump breast milk for you, which i am doing right now as you sleep.

today daddy and i saw dr. b. we got to her office just in time for daddy's 10:30 appointment, and then we waited until almost noon to see her. i actually fell asleep with my head on the exam table while we waited, and groggily believed i was in your room (as i so often am, half asleep, in the middle of the night), and that the sound of daddy's book pages rustling was the sound of your window blinds rippling in the wind. waking up in the doctors' office was a bit of a shock.

everything dr. b. told us should be considered good news. she confirmed that daddy's most recent pet scan showed no signs of cancer, and said that neither she nor any of the other members of the tumor board that met to discuss daddy's case could explain this fact. since daddy only had two folfox treatments and three of the cetuximab, she hypothesized that daddy might just be exquisitely sensitive to the cetuximab. "exquisitely" was her word, I am just repeating.

the next step, dr. b. said, is surgery. daddy will have his ostomy reversed by dr. v., and at the same time dr. w. will do an exploratory surgery on daddy's liver. if he finds any cancer there, he can remove it right then as long as it is not extensive. she said that the surgery would probably start out laparoscopic, but could be switched to a bigger incision if their findings indicate a need. so that part is kind of scary. we asked for a consultation with dr. w. so we can get our questions answered. but we will probably have a surgery date scheduled within the week.

one thing i should emphasize is that dr. b. told us that daddy is in the best possible place he could be, in terms of his current status. two months ago he had a large portal vein thrombosis in his liver and a pet/ct scan showing cancer spread to his liver and a possible recurrence in the pelvis. his more recent pet/ct scan shows no portal vein thrombosis and no cancer. and daddy is feeling really good. so there are lots of reasons to feel positive.

truth be told, though, tonight i feel kind of sad. daddy and i have had a month of relative normalcy and it's hard to go back to thinking of him as a cancer patient. i am worrying already about how i will be able to do more around the house while he recovers. he won't be able to lift you for a while after the surgery, so i'll need to take you to and from daycare, bathe and diaper you, etc. of course most of this i do already anyway, but daddy will need extra help, too. just thinking about that makes me tired.

after the doctor today i had to work. i worked from home and picked you up from daycare about an hour later than usual. you were so tired you napped almost until bedtime, then you fussed through your carrots and your bath (which i ended after about 3 minutes). while i put on your pajamas, you cried harder than i've heard you cry in a long time. i felt bad. but then you nursed and went to sleep easily, and in the morning you'll be chipper as ever.

i love going into your room in the morning and seeing you smile at me from your crib. it makes getting up worth it.

fate or luck or god or karma

dear little bear,

it wasn't long ago that you were purely hypothetical. now you are six months old. there is so much i want to remember about this time, so much i want to tell you. i've decided to just start writing it down.

i'd like to start at the beginning, but i don't know what counts as the beginning. i'll just start with today and eventually we’ll get to it all, i'm sure.

a little story i heard from big miss d when i picked you up from daycare tonight: you were sucking away on your binky earlier in the day, very happy, when another baby decided he wanted it and pulled it out of your mouth. instead of complaining, you just grabbed your binky right back, popped it into your mouth for a minute, and then held it up and circled your wrist around as if to say, "see, i have it now." your personality is starting to reveal itself, and you already have a good sense of humor.

tomorrow after we drop you off at daycare, daddy and i are going to see daddy's oncologist. for you it will be like any other day, but for us it will change things in some way. we will hear about some plan for the future, something that the doctors think is the best course of action for keeping daddy alive. not long ago we thought it would be liver surgery, but daddy's last pet/ct scan threw all that into question. now it could be that they want to go straight to chemo, or maybe first they'll do his ostomy takedown. (when you're old enough to read this, i'll explain about that.)

whatever it is, it will probably not be nothing. it will be one more thing we have to adjust to. daddy and i have both gotten pretty good at adjusting to whatever it is that the doctors tell us. we’ve had a lot of practice these last 11 months since the doctors told us daddy had colorectal cancer. the hardest part for me is not speculating: will my little bear grow up with his dad, or without his dad? if you grow up with your dad, will you always be as great together as you are now? if you grow up without your dad, will i be able to give you everything you need?

i hope you know i am not talking about material things. but no matter how many other people love you, and no matter how much, there is no substitute for a father who loves you. and your daddy really loves you. he is gentle with you. he plays guitar for you and sings to you and changes your diaper and gives you baths. he takes you for walks in your stroller so you can nap. he feeds you your bottle and spoons mushy baby food into your mouth and burps you and soothes you when you cry.

that is the love you deserve, and that is the father you deserve, and i hope that fate or luck or god or karma (or whatever you want to call the force that moves the world) gives it to you for keeps.