Smiling through the pain

This was a tougher week for us. We had a new nurse come over Monday, and she was great - all the kids were home and she gave each of them a prize from her prize box. She is friends with our original nurse Wendi and works at the hospital but is starting to do some home visits to help Wendi while she is home taking care of her son. Zach is doing well, his treatment is really hard, he has to get checked into the hospital for 3 - 4 days at a time to receive his chemo but they are staying very positive. Brooklyn did well with her chemo Tuesday, we took a movie with us and she was glad to watch it, but fell asleep towards the end and I had to carry her out to the car. We started steroids again Tuesday night and it has been hard on her. She is doing much better taking them from the syringe with juice, but it is like she doesn't have control over her emotions and she doesn't feel well. Half the day she wants me to hold her constantly and the other half she is telling me she doesn't like me. She hasn't been waking up at night, thankfully!, but I think it's because she is feeling yucky. She wants to eat, but nothing is sounding (or maybe tasting) good to her. The last two days she has wanted me to tell her, and then show her, everything that is in the pantry, the fridge and the freezer, but then she is not sure what she wants. She has slept a lot the last two days too. It is so sad to see her feeling so bad. I was cleaning today and Braden, Kelsey and Brooklyn were hanging out in the living room and Braden told me to come out and see something - it was a pile of Brooklyn's hair on the carpet. Kelsey had been pulling it out apparently and I don't think it hurts Brooklyn so she didn't say anything. It made me sad because it is really getting thin. It seems like I don't notice it all the time, but there is hair all over our house. We were a little extra stressed this week as well because we had to take Kayla to a cardiologist today. She complains that her heart hurts sometimes, so our pediatrician did an ekg in his office and referred us to a pediatric cardiologist. He was great when we met with him today and he thinks she is fine so we feel a great amount of relief. We are going to do a couple extra tests, but expect them to come back normal. Kelsey has started walking all over the place, so that brings a lot of joy and excitement to our days. Brooklyn loves playing with Kelsey and helping her walk all around, and playing with her seems to be a highlight in her day. We had a lot of fun Wednesday morning when we went to a "mom and me" day at the Rivercats stadium. They had bounce houses and balls and bats and art projects for the kids to do. Brooklyn was once again obsessed with the mascot! She just wanted to hang out with Dinger all morning and even had him sign her hat! Another big highlight for all the kids this week was at Braden's game Wednesday night. We were there longer than normal because it was a playoff game, so all of a sudden the sprinklers came on in the exact area all of the parents on our team were sitting. It was hysterical! You have never seen people move so quickly! Kayla and some of the girls ran around in the sprinklers and thought it was the best night of their lives! It was hard though because I couldn't let Brooklyn run through the sprinklers and get her dressing wet so I had to hold her as she cried and begged to run through them. Our pharmacy hadn't mailed me new supplies when they were supposed to, and I didn't have anything to clean her Broviak site if it got wet. She splashed around in the puddles after the sprinklers went off though and had fun. We have 3 more days of steroids, but no chemo next week, so I am hoping she will start to feel better again. We are looking forward to a fun weekend celebrating the dads in our family. :)