Big Boy Bed

Serafina climbed out of her crib at 16months and went into her "big girl bed" just a week latter because of how unsafe her climbing out was. Now at 20months Matteo still has not climbed out but he decided on his own that it was time to move to his big bed. Two nights ago when we said it was time for bed instead of going to his crib he ran to his big bed and tucked his self in, so we went with it. He is very happy in his new bed. We had to return him a few times the first and second night but at nap time he doesn't even try once! It is cute to listen to him and Sam over the monitor they whisper and giggle a little before falling asleep.

Here is a picture of him at nap time:

Yes, Uncle Jon, he is on his back and in a nest like cocoon!

Food for thought.

I guess this guy has been very popular on you tube. SO popular that Obama has asked him to the white house for a visit. However he wants to control the press and doesn't want it to get out. Sounds interesting. Hope you enjoy the:

SMVRR Birthday

On July 12 the Santa Maria Valley Railroad celebrated its 98th birthday and as active shareholders we (Matt, Jamie, Sam and Serafina-Matteo was running a fever so mommy and Nana stayed home with him) head down for a little birthday celebration. They all enjoyed a little picnic lunch and some train rides, along with getting a chance to climb around on the engine! They all had a great time.

The great father son walk and talk!




All Aboard!



Serafina tries her hand at bar tending.


Oh yes, Lynn and I had to do cookies for the occasion!

A girls love for trains only goes so far.


All tuckered out on the final ride into the station.

Bleated Birthday Report

As always we have been busy so I haven't had a chance to post about my wonderful daughter turning four! She seems so big now, it was like over night, a bunch of her fears went away, and she is helping out more around the house. She tells me that it is because she is four. When she was three she was scared but now that she is four she is no longer scared. What a crack up. Her favorite thing to do is read, and play doctor. Her and papa read stories together almost ever night. She reads him a few BOB books and then he reads multiple story books. It is to cute. The other night she told him that she is still planning on being a doctor but that she is also going to write books on the body and being a doctor because there are no good kids book about it. She keeps us rolling.

For her birthday she wanted a doctor party, so we through a doctor party with band-aids, skeletons and x-rays! It was a great time and I think everyone had a wonderful time, especially the birthday girl.

As always my dad put the best of the best picture of his website click here.

Happy Bleated Birthday post my sweet angel.

Treatment #2

In her own words:

It’s me again. Today they loaded me up with my second dose of chemo; just think, if all goes well I only have six more chemo treatments to go - life is good! All went well once they got the port working – I seem to have a temperamental port. But, as usual, yesterday’s blood draw took two pricks so I am quite thankful for my port. I was there for three-and-a-half hours for the treatment. My poor nurse had an unbelievably busy day. Her first person of the day had problems that then messed with their usually perfectly scheduled lineup of patients. Tracy and I didn’t really mind we had my laptop for silly games, Tracy was trying to download ring tones to our phones and we had reading to catch up on in Purpose Driven Life. So we were being our usual silly selves when the buzzer went off alerting the nurse that one of my IV bags was empty. She was busy with another patient and called down the hall, “I will be there in a minute.” Jokingly I responded, “OK, I won’t die will I?” Next thing I knew my very calm, very reserved, oncology doctor came running down the hallway!! Whoops, I guess you don’t yell things, like “die” in the office.

I am afraid my family is going to get really tired of me talking about my aches and pains – but they are weird (aches and pains, not my family). I never seemed to know when, where, or what kind of ache or pain I will have until it hits – hopefully as I learn the triggers and all becomes routine I will discover it is predictable. Although tiredness and pain exist, it is manageable. What I am struggling to manage is the fact I can’t be in charge of the world any more. I have to take the back seat, relax, and enjoy the ride. The big question everyone wants to know – yes – I still have my hair, I have been told it will probably go in the next two weeks. Last week we shared with the kids more details about my cancer fight so they won’t be alarmed as things happen including my losing hair. Later Jennifer (Trevor’s wife) came over and asked Serafina if anything exciting was happening this week (Serafina turned 4 so Jen expected to hear about the upcoming party). She answered, “Nana is going to lose her hair!” That’s about all that’s fit to print so I best take a nap! Love, Me

Family Bike Rides

This summer we decided to get bikes for the whole family so we all could go bike riding. Living on a hill gives us very limited space for the kids to ride and I hate walking the trails as they zoom ahead. However having kids at all ages and stages in their riding posed some interesting challenges. Sam wants to go fast, Serafina wants to ride a bike but can not keep up or do the duration of a long ride and well Matteo has to be in some type of seat and I wanted to be able to take all 3 kids by myself during the week. Well with a little research we manged to solve all the problems:


The front seat is made by a company called WeeRide, and Matteo loves it. Most front mounted baby seats attach to the handlebars making turning and balancing very difficult. This seat mounts to a bar that you put between the seat post and the post for the handle bars, so the baby doesn't turn with the handles. The bar stays in place but you can easily remove the seat with the turn of a knob and for a few extra bucks you can get a second bar so the seat can easily move from my bike to Daddy's for weekend rides. The bike Serafina is on is called a trail-a-bike. Pretty self explainable, it hooks to the back of my seat also, where a back baby seat normally hooks (the reason for the front carrier). She can pedal or not pedal and according to multiple sites and reviews it helps kids to get the feel of balancing. Which I believe is true, Serafina is a little unsure about it after our second ride out when we hit a few bumps and went down a hill. She definitely is feels all the balancing aspects but I am ultimately in charge. But slowly she is getting use to it. Amazingly enough it is very easy to balance and pull that full load.

Sam of course has his own bike, and he is doing great with riding. Every time we go out he gets more and more sure of himself.

A few more pictures of us trying it out in the driveway before we headed out to the trails!

We are absolutely loving biking. I have taken them out during the week and this weekend we all went as a family. What a great time, we are planning another ride tomorrow. For any of you families that want to get out a try something new my I suggest bike riding?!?

Summer

It has been a while since I have posted pictures and what good is a blog without adorable pictures of my kids right?!? In between all the doctors appointment, Nana and I (mostly Nana) have come up with some fun summer activities including a swim party and evening bon-fire on the deck, which included s'mores, Yummmy. The best part was we actually took pictures that day. All these things were new experiences for dear sweat Matteo, which added fun so don't mind that most of the pictures are of him. Bad mother I know.

Splashing was the best part of swimming.

My two fish, and my land lover. (Sam did eventually get wet, but it took awhile)

Matteo trying to help(or drown) his sister!


Yummy the first S'more!

This is a picture from the Paso water park. All the kids had a great time, however me (no hubby), three kids and water meant I never got my camera out. We did go with friends who managed to grab this picture of Matteo.

Aunt LooLoo took Serafina to the beach a couple weeks ago, I think she is dancing!

Papa and Matteo the train guys.

In Her Own Words

So yesterday was mom's first day of Chemo and as she experienced a sleepless night she wrote her own update for the blog! So in her own words, here is Lynn:

Chemo Day 1

As a person who responds strongly to drugs I was curious about how I would handle strong chemo drugs. The administration went smoothly, short of me almost kicking the nurse during the second of pain when she inserted the IV in the port-a-cath (we now have some cream that should deaden the area for next time) . Silly me, I was thinking it was a 30 minute process – it took 2 ½ hours for them to load me up with two chemo chemicals and an anti-nausea drug (plus I had taken an anti-nausea pill that morning). Once at home I felt that I was functioning fairly well, a bit tired so I decided to take out my contact, put on my glasses, and sit and read. Reading was a little difficult because my vision was somewhat blurred (I had read earlier that this could be a side effect) so I watched TV and dozed. Tracy needed to pick up kids and I decided to ride shotgun so ran to take off my glasses & put in my contact (so I could wear my sunglasses, I know it is crazy). I found my contact case empty – my contact was still in my eye, I had been wearing glasses over it! Tracy said, “No driving for me for awhile.” Rest of the day was great, wonderful friends brought pizza, we sat outside and chatted, all was manageable. After they left I started feeling nauseas but was saved when dear Jon brought Starbucks ….. Manna from heaven. By bedtime the nauseas feeling had returned only to be brought under control with my second favorite treat….a Popsicle! During the night I had the strangest dreams…..reminded me of the types of dreams you have when you are pregnant. I had to get up a million times to go to the bathroom because of the ton of water they told me to drink. Navigation was difficult and nothing looked right, the bruise on my arm from Thursday’s IV looked like a giant bug and I didn’t realize it wasn’t until I had slapped my arm a few times. On my way to the bathroom there was this red light near the floor that I didn’t recognize so I tried to stay as far from it as possible until I realized it was the baby monitor Tracy had plugged in so she could keep tabs on me (Jamie is out-of-town). Then I spent the rest of the night trying to resist the urge to speak into the monitor, “Tracy…this is the voice of God, “etc. Now my stomach muscles feel like I threw up all night, but I didn’t at all so that is good. I know things might get a little more intense in the next day or two, but I can manage it (can others manage my goofiness)? My greatest fear is Tracy has to manage a household of eight, run the kids to various activities, and run me to appointments. I have at least one if not two appointments a day for the next 14 days – yikes! Pray for perfect children and no flat tires.

What a week!

Just a quick note before bed to update everyone on Mom and me. I am the easy one, my pain is subsiding, so no surgery!! Yeah, it was definitely a Cyst and it went away by itself. By Wednesday the pain was merely gone and today I was doing back flips (not really).

Mom on the other hand, is good, but through a couple loops into the week. Instead of chemo starting today she had a portacath (sp?) put in. This is basically an IV entrance site placed up on her chest under her skin. Because of the lumphs they can only draw blood, and place IV's on her right arm, well her right arm has veins even then most talented nurse or doctor can't get in without 2 0r 3 pokes! OWE. So this portacath with do all the work, the can draw blood from, give her meds in it, basicly no more pricks until they take it out (which will be after all her chemo treatments are done.) To put it in they did have to put her under a genral, everthing went well. The surgery took under 30mins.

The one thing we were not expecting was the amount of pain she is experincing today. But every hour it seems to lesson and tomorrow she should be good. The funniest thing (yes she is lauhing about it too) is for the next week she is not to lift her right arm above her shoulder and not carry more then 10-15lbs with that arm. Well because of the lymphodema, she cant lift more then 3lbs with her left arm and it is still being stretched out from surgery so it is rather painfull to lift above her head!! We decided that gives her a combine weight of 18lbs, poor Matteo he is 22 or 23lbs and lets not even get into trying to put a shirt on! Oh my gosh, what is a girl to do?!? I am just about ready to hire nurse!!! HAHA.

Hope you all are doing weel, we (the kids and I) are off to the water park tomorrow with some good friends! Hopefully we will get some good pictures!

Oh, yes and Chemo will start on Tuesday now!!