Perfect

It's been hard trying to find time to update the blog. My daughter has been holding on to me and refuses to let go. I lay with her to nap, I sit next to her and watch her play - I can't turn my back without her screaming. I get it; she feels lousy. Her counts are in the toilet and she's cranky. It's cool, but it doesn't leave me much time or energy for anything else!

We've had a busy and boring couple of days. We've been back and forth from the clinic, getting transfusions. Eleanor's blood type is O-, which is a much desired type as it is universal. Anyone can receive it, but only O- can receive O-. Last week they had to fly the platelets over from Vancouver as there were none in all of Victoria. This meant we had another day of waiting around for four or five hours.

PLEASE, if you CAN donate blood or blood products, DO SO!!! Eleanor has had 30+ transfusions and she is only ONE of THOUSANDS of cancer patients. Check out www.blood.ca to find out if you are eligible.

It has been dullsville around here. I don't feel comfortable taking the baby out or exposing her to different people, and the snow last week really shut us down. The most interesting thing I did was go for a walk. Seriously. I wrote a couple of blog posts, but they were so incredibly boring, I couldn't bring myself to post them! She had a couple of beautiful moments over the weekend. She is a rolly-polly little monster, which makes diaper changes challenging. Before she would roll up on to one side, but now she goes all the way over... and keeps going! It's nice to see her succeed in something physical, as she has been held back by her body for so long.

Another fun development has been her speech. I have been watching her closely for signs of deafness over the past little while. She was visibly startled by Kris a few weeks ago, and it was the first time I had really seen her hearing loss in action. I was acutely aware of her lack of consanant sounds when she babbled.  After humming all morning on Friday, she suddenly started saying "mumumumum" followed by some "ba ba ba ba"-ing. It was pretty exciting.

Oh, and her hair is starting to grow back. Her eyelashes are visible to eyes that are not just mine and she has a few eyebrows poking through. The hair on her head is starting to come in, but it's very much at the blink-and-you-will-miss-it stage. I guess first to go, first to grow? Her hair only fell out in November, so it might take awhile to come back. But eyelashes!

I'm going to try harder to do more regular updates, especially as my family is away in Hawaii at the moment. Well, not my whole family. Just the semi-retired and semi-retarded ones. Zing! So while the hard-working, motivated members of my family are hanging out on this beach....

... they get to hang out on THIS beach!

Ah, it's not fair. But at least the snow has melted!

Snow is for suckers.