March like a lamb

Sorry for the radio silence here, but my computer is back in the repair shop with some mysterious symptoms. That is the sound of Dave tearing his hair out at my having yet another apple product issue. (Remember when the bus ran over Dave's laptop? Remember when Julia tipped over a water bottle on my computer? Dave remembers these and more.) as such, I'm learning to blog on my iPad.

Spring has come to Mosier, flowers are blooming, peas are planted, seeds are started and growing rather alarmingly fast. Next year I will restrain myself to one seed per cell instead of the three or four I allowed this year, necessitating transplanting and thinning already! I got eager and started pumpkins in peat pots and the tap root busted out in short order! They have been moved outside already under the cover of plastic containers. Our little silky chicken has gone broody, which is when they desperately want to be a momma and sit on a nest all day. Since we have no rooster it's never gonna happen with her eggs, but we do have a friend with a rooster who gets fertilized eggs and I've decided to see if I can't get her to hatch a few of those! I'm building her a little nesting pen out of some scrap wood and when it is done, I'll move her in and hope she takes to the new nest. Then we'll slip some fertilized eggs under her at night and with some luck, in about 20 days we'll have baby chicks and a momma to take care of them!
Julia's been busy playing outside. She runs out by herself which I love and am slightly anxious about all at once. She has a little patch of dirt where she digs and I got hear some little plastic flower and jewel bits to bury, to hopefully stop her from burying the eggs. This has been a big hit so far. She will play by herself for hours on a nice day, climbing the rocks in the yard, then running off to another corner. I can see her mouth moving but can't get close enough to hear the internal dialogue.

We celebrated Julia's third birthday this week by throwing a party for some of her little friends and their parents. It was on Dave's actual birthday, but he didn't sem to mind sharing! Her actual birthday is the 22nd, but that is in the midst of spring break travels. She LOVED her party. It had all the things she loves best: a new pretty dress, her little friends, food, cake, balloons, babies and presents. For being a herd of two and three year olds, the party went quite smoothly. It was from 10 to 12, we served brunch with rainbow fruit skewers, finger sandwiches: egg salad and pbj, I'll smokie hot dogs, cheesy potato bake, salad, mimosas, white cake with raspberry jam filling, raspberry pie and apple cranberry pie. The kids played and played and played and ate and played. The adults schmoozed and ate and played. It was a pretty great time, if I do say so! There were 5 toddlers, two babies, 8 adults and that was plenty!

getting back to normal

Post surgery we've had a revolving door of loved ones coming to help us out with life. Along with my dad and mom, Grandma Gini came, my sister Anna and now, my brother Joe is here. Julia has just basked in the attentions of all these people, and I have basked in letting her soak up attention from someone else. I've felt really physically good the whole recovery. Progressively, I need to spend less and less time laying around resting, but still find that I need at least a little bit of a afternoon rest to get through the evening. It's been especially good to have the help in light of having extra hours that needed for EMT class, with an extra saturday class and 8 hours of ambulance ride-alongs. Auntie Anna did a lot of babysitting to make that all possible. I have noticed that I'm more emotionally unhinged, which I guess shouldn't be a surprise, but in between family members, I had a few days of just Julia and I, and we were both kind of emotional wrecks. She would have a marathon tantrum and I would get just furious at her. It took me a little time to step back and realize that I was handeling her somewhat normal behavior in a pretty poor way. Since then, I've been researching cancer support groups and trying to figure out how to not compartmentalize my emotions about it so much. Not sure if I've figured that out very much, but I have been able to be a lot calmer about Julia's rages.

Loving the Grandma Gini attention.

finding daddy's glasses

putting her new baby inherited from Great Grandma Olive to bed

more packages in the mail! 

Cookies: chocolate and white chocolate and mint chip! She's got a unreal expectation of the post office now, after 2 care packages, dolls from her great grandma, pretty cards for 'julia' (me), and new shoes she doesn't understand why some days there's no mail and that I can't just make there be surprises when there is mail. 

We've been getting out on some walks with Michelle and Louie! I can do short walks pushing Julia and feel fine after. Today we went out for about an hour and that was fine!  

We started letting the chickens out to roam about the yard a bit. They LOVE it! So do I. 

And so does Julia. They are wonderful to watch, and stay somewhat contained to the yard.  

Though less so now that the fence has fallen down. Major bummer. 

It's been beautiful weather around here. 40's and 50's, most days for weeks now. Bulbs are blooming, birds are chirping, the sun is shining occasionally. We've been making some treks down to the river to throw rocks. 

Lots of playing with dolls. putting them to bed has been a major fascination. So has fixing their boo-boos with bandaids.  

More chicken watching. Julia's favorite is the 'baby' silkie, who just started laying little white eggs. Julia adores these eggs!

Hanging out with Auntie Anna

there is a napping house where everyone is sleeping.

 I stopped forcing the idea of nap and instead, after lunch I read her two books and then give her a huge stack and say "quiet time, you don't have to nap but you can if you want. You do need to stay in bed and have quiet reading time" 9 times out of 10, she falls asleep!

We took Auntie Anna to Oregon Museum of Science and Industry. Julia loved the Gemini II shuttle. 

She asks me often when we get to ride on a rocket ship. 

I tell her that when she's a great big girl, if she studies hard in school, then she can go learn to fly rocket ships.

she was also pleased with the flubber, though she didn't want to touch it too much. She's a little prissy like that. 

Also a fan of the water play area. 

but had a meltdown when it was time to go. 

loving on Auntie Anna

After we said goodbye, Julia commented "I way miss Auntie Anna" with the most forlorn expression on her face. 

And opening a present of two pairs of new shoes that came in the mail! She has a bit of a hard time deciding what ones to wear. We have to switch them back and fourth a lot!  

Stage 1A Grade 1 Mucinous Adenocarcinoma

So it's official that I do indeed have ovarian cancer. Stage 1A grade 1 mucinous adenocarcinoma. If you are going to have ovarian cancer, this is a pretty ok diagnosis. It was isolated to the mass of the left ovary which is now gone. There's no traces of it in the right ovary, the fallopian tube or the appendix, which is really good. Survivability at this stage and grade is above 90% so that is good. The gynecologist-oncologist told me that I needed to hurry up with having the kids I want to have, then to call him for a complete hysterectomy, ideally in about 2-6 years. Meanwhile, I'm to follow up with my local doctor every 4 months until I'm ready to call up the specialist. It's good that he's not concerned enough to want me to follow up with him, and it's good that he's not concerned enough to want to do the complete hysterectomy now. I'm having a bit of a time adjusting to the idea of loosing that much of my body to a hysterectomy, not to mention the hormonal trauma of immediate menopause and the rocky road of hormone replacement and long list of side effects and direct negative effects on many other body systems. A friend counseled me to take it one day at a time though. That surgery is several years off, and there's lots of possible changes in treatments in several years. She also reminded me that tons of people walk around with stage 1 cancers and many never learn about it until they are quite old, if at all, so this isn't necessarily something to get too worked up over. I was rather lucky that my tumor was a fast growing type as that made it easily noticeable, saving me from a later staged cancer that would be much more serious. I've chosen to tell this to lots of people I'd normally call via this blog because I think it is much easier to understand this way, so don't feel slighted if I didn't call you!