Rowdy Rowdy Eleanor Goudie

I started this post this morning and it was titled "Simply Having a Wonderful Christmastime" and was basically just photos from the past month. I didn't get a chance to finish it because Eleanor woke from her nap a little off and we have spent the last 5 hours watching her like hawks. The last four days have been very busy. We stretched our girls pretty far and had them out late and going all day. Penelope was pretty obvious when she got fed up. She would cry and cling tightly to me or Kris and not make eye contact with any admirers. Eleanor, however, was the centre of attention. She was bossing everyone around ("more Jingle Bell Rock?") and was the life of every party. She loves the spotlight and turns into a little Energizer bunny. She just keeps going and going and going and going...

Bossing her beloved Jack

But it seems that today she really hit the wall. She woke up groggy and played a little bit, but then was content snuggling and watching Winnie the Pooh. She nearly sat through the entire thing, which is unheard of for her. Kris made her favourite yummy dinner (yummy chicken - everything is yummy at the moment) and she wouldn't touch it. Her temperature was high, but not quite a fever. We gave her some Tylenol and another dose of cortef and waited an hour. Nothing changed, so we gave her another dose of cortef. That seemed to do the trick and about an hour later she started eating and drinking again. Her temperature came back down to normal and she perked back up. Kris and I had a moment of "what the fuck?" because seriously? Too much Christmas sends this kid into adrenal crisis? She has had an incredible year and has been in such good health, I feel totally overwhelmed when something like this happens. I hope when she wakes up tomorrow she is back to her regular self. We are cancelling the rest of our holiday parties, though! Girlfriend likes to pretend she can keep up with the big boys, and she is such a good little actress I thought she could.

***

I've spent a good deal of time over the holidays thinking about the ghosts of Christmases past. We have had four with Eleanor, FOUR. That feels like so many for such a tiny girl. The first she was only two weeks old, and I spent most of it lying on the hide-a-bed in the tv/playroom at my parents house, watching episode after episode of Mad Men and nursing Eleanor. It was pretty awesome. The second was awful. We were discharged from Children's with the intent of having a quiet Christmas and instead ended up in the PICU at Vic General and watched a young man die. We got out just in time to celebrate, but ended up back in the hospital on Christmas Eve when she pulled her NG tube out. Last year everything was good, but we had no family around, so it felt a little lonely. This is the first Christmas she has been healthy and I guess I got a little carried away with how much she could handle. It doesn't help that this holiday season came right on the tail end of a very busy month of hospital visits.

Anyway, here are some of the lovely photos of our very special Christmas - our first with Penelope!

Who eats, and eats, and eats...

The carousel at Butchart Gardens

 The Festival of Trees at the Empress

Gingerbread!

Playing til the breaka breaka dawn at our old friend's Christmas Eve party (well, til 9:30 but it might as well have been the break of dawn)

 Oh, speaking of... this was the sunrise on Christmas morning. You can almost hear the angels singing :-)

These dolls will be the death of me...

Happy Holidays!

All snow and all play make Eleanor something something

Go crazy?

Don't mind if I do!!!!

Like with hippies, you should never go with a toddler to a second location. Stuff gets weird. Running around in the snow after play group with the cute German boy? Fun! Continuing the fun at the beach with the dog? Disaster!

We go NOW!

Kris showed his Russian hairdresser some photos of the girls and she quickly quipped "That one (Eleanor) Irish. That one (Penelope) Baltic." It's true that Penny looks more like Kris and Eleanor looks more like me, but I have never seen it more clearly than when it starts to snow. 

Have you ever seen anyone so peaceful? Tiny girlfriend was made for snow. She was absolutely serene today. Eleanor stayed true to her mad Irish ways and only settled down from complete hysterics when we came home and had hot chocolate. 

(Emphatically signing "good")

Oh lord. Never a dull moment with that girl!

Christmas Pondering...

Christmas is in full swing at the Goudie house. Christmas tunes blast all day long with singalongs and impromptu dance parties. I feel deeply connected to all the songs written during WW2 that are rife with longing and hope. I still bawl my eyes out every time I hear Judy Garland sing "Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas". Her voice is heartbreaking and I turn into a hot mess when she sings,

"Through the years we all will be together

If the fates allow

Until then we'll have to muddle through somehow..."

The war is over and yet the sadness lingers. I wonder if all war vets (whatever their war may be) feel the same way?

Edited to add:

I feel oddly cheated when the lyric is "Hang a shining star upon the highest bough" because we have never put a star or angel or anything at the top of our tree. We can never find the *perfect* tree topper, so we leave it alone. And I think it discredits all those who have "muddled".

Jaws

Ugh. Dental day has come and gone. I was thoroughly terrified about how Eleanor would handle it, and in the end I am so glad we went over to Children's to do it. It's not that Victoria General isn't a wonderful facility with great care, but it's still a GENERAL hospital. Children's specializes in (duh) children and it shows. Nobody thought I was crazy for stressing and re-stressing her needs and in the end it went quite smoothly. 

But let me begin at the beginning. 

We came over early on Monday morning to fully capture a day full of fun before her Tuesday appointment. We went to the aquarium with our fellow cancer survivor, Lina, and her kickass mama. Eleanor and Lina got on like a house on fire. They ran around like banshees, pointing out exciting fish, monkeys, dinosaurs (crocodiles) and only pausing to watch the porpoise show.

Lina thought Penny was pretty cool too.

There is no way these girls remember each other from when they were 9 months old, and yet they had such an affinity for one another. It was fun to see. 

The outing was a huge success. She loved everything, especially those porpoises. 

Super Granny!

It certainly started our trip off on a high note. We reluctantly left our carpet picnic with the beluga whales and went to the hospital for our check in with the anesthesiologist and the nurses in surgical daycare. I think I must have been visibly anxious so we went over the plan for her a couple of times, and the doctor reassured me that we could hold a bed if we needed it. Eleanor was a champ throughout this and soon we were off to the hotel. We had hoped that we could go swimming, but everyone was hungry and tired, so we had dinner with my sister-in-law and relaxed. It was a little tricky to get Penelope to sleep in a hotel room with lots of action, so we pulled the curtain around her pack n' play and hoped for the best! Eleanor wasn't much better. I offered to share a bed with her, but I think Granny loved the snuggles :-)

We woke early Tuesday and we were all a bit under slept as we headed in to the hospital. We did a couple of pokes to check Eleanor's blood sugar level and they were both in a deliciously normal range, so we were good to go. I went with her to the operating room and she was definitely a little scared. I sat her on the bed and gave her a big hug. The nurses used this opportunity to hold her arm and they started her IV in one try. It was so fast. She didn't even cry - well, she didn't cry MORE than the whimpering she had been doing. I couldn't help but think of when we were admitted to VGH a year and a half ago, when they tried and tried to get an IV started but couldn't find a vein and finally had to sedate her. She has come so far! She got quite agitated before she lost consciousness and I was looking for the door the moment she was out. I hate it. She goes limp so fast I always think she is dead. I need a second to breathe and remember she is okay, and that we have her best interest at heart. My mum and I went to grab coffee and they came looking for us pretty soon afterwards. The procedure hadn't taken as long as expected and she was in recovery. They extracted her two top baby molars (I think they needed a *tiny* push. They were so dead-looking) and capped her bottom two baby molars. They cleaned up the rest and there were no complications, no issues.

Great!

And then I saw the faces of the nurses in the recovery room. They were frantically looking for me. Penny had *just* gone to sleep on my chest and a volunteer offered to take her. No, no. I have this. Eleanor was screaming and incoherent. Her lips were swollen from the local anesthetic. She was drooling blood and the sight of two metal teeth in her mouth made my emotions pitch. I quickly passed off my overtired baby for my overwrought one. As I held her, her cries became more intermittent though still quite intense. The anesthesiologist came by and offered a sedative. I thought long and hard. I know that coming out of an aesthetic is tough, but having your mouth frozen when you've never felt that sensation before...that's really tough! Usually eating a lot of food is how she pulls through the weird sensation, but because of that frozen mouth, she didn't want anything to eat. Still, I felt like she would calm down with a little time. Our nurse offered a DVD player, and sure enough, Elmo did the trick (Eleanor is currently obsessed with all things Sesame Street). Who needs Midazolam when you've got Elmo's World?

We took our time and kept offering juice. Eventually she took some from Jen (pictured above) because Jen is obviously the greatest person in the world. Eleanor started to feel better and ate a pot of yogurt. She threw it up pretty quickly, but her spirits were going up and up so we left the hospital around noon. We picked up some soft food for her to eat (pasta, pasta, pasta!) and I got lost on the way back to the hotel. No big deal, right? Except poor Eleanor was throwing up all over herself in the back if the car. Holy heartbreak. We cleaned her up when we got into the room and then Granny took her out for a walk in the stroller. By the time she got back, it was like the whole day had never happened. Girlfriend was on FIRE! You'd never have guessed what she had been through except for her likeness to a certain James Bond super villain. She loved all the attention from our guests and we were much relieved to see her back to normal. 

Bath time fun with everyone!

We had planned to stay in Vancouver that night because I had horrible visions of us getting into trouble on the ferry and the coast guard coming out to save us or helicopters flying in... But in the end we probably could have gone home that night. I'm glad we didn't. I'm even more glad that nothing went wrong! We had leisurely morning eating waffles and swimming in the hotel pool. It was a nice end to a pretty stressful couple of days. We are coming back over for her PET scan in 10 days (on her birthday, no less), so we are making the most of our "down" time, visiting Santa, going to ballet and playing with friends. If this scan comes back clear, we can safely say that she has been cancer-free for a whole year! Wouldn't that be a birthday/Christmas dream come true?

Baile!

I remember going with my sister-in-law to my then 3 year old neice's hip hop class. All the mums sat in the waiting room and chatted while their tiny children boogied in the next room to "Can't Touch This". I was very newly pregnant with Eleanor and it felt like the most surreal thing in the world. Those kids were just babies! Why do we put babies in classes? Why do we sit here and chat like this is a NORMAL thing to do?? Well, because 3 year olds aren't babies and it is pretty normal for kids to do stuff. And it's freaking adorable. 

I signed Eleanor up for this creative dance class at a new dance studio in the neighbourhood. It was partly because I want her to explore her physicality but also because I want to see how she follows direction. I think she's ready for more than I am willing to admit. I have put her on waiting lists at two preschools and after seeing her dance, I think everyone will be ready when the time comes. She's a little rough around the edges, a little bit reluctant to go with the flow...

But she gets there eventually.

And she had so much fun. I can't believe how much fun she had. She even made a friend! We arrived early and there was one other girl there. The two of them played follow the leader and ran around giggling. Then this girl blew a raspberry and Eleanor enthusiastically blew one back. Her mother got all up in arms and tried to stop this "bad" behavior but I was doing cartwheels on the inside. She was communicating with someone her own age! Spontaneously! I think even if the class had been a bust, it would have been worth it for that interaction alone. But it wasn't a bust. It was amazing and don't take my word for it. See for yourself!

Lately

A fellow "momcologist" posted on Facebook that her son had packed his own meds for an overnight stay with a friend. He's 13, and I was surprised and delighted that he was able to do this himself. I have no idea when children take responsibility for their own medication and kind of assumed that I would be putting an oral syringe in Eleanor's mouth til she turned 18. 

Until today. 

I prepped Eleanor's afternoon steroid so I could give it to her right when she woke up from a long nap. It was a little late, so I tried to get it in her as fast as possible. After Eleanor woke up, she waved me away in her cranky, post-nap haze, so I left it on the ottoman and went to get her a snack. When I came back in, I found this:

No big deal, right?? A depressed syringe where there was once medication. The question is, where did the meds go? I tasted the water, and there was no weird taste to it. I asked Eleanor "did you take your meds?" And she enthusiastically responded "meds!" Not super helpful. I'm 99% sure she took them, but what if she didn't? It's much better to err on the side of caution with her meds, so I gave it again. 

We are seeing this more and more in her. Her desire to assert herself and show she can do things all by herself. I knew this stage would come, in fact I welcomed it after having her so dependent and babyish for so long, but it is definitely not in the way I expected. We went for a walk with some friends the other day. I brought the double stroller because I was sure she wouldn't last long. She was wearing her rainboots and she struggles to walk in them (don't we all? Just me? Ok.) and she gets very distracted on walks. We trekked around 3km and she had a few moments where she needed to be carried (the tree roots tripped her up a lot), but she REFUSED the stroller. Her two little buddies took quick turns in it but Eleanor didn't want anything to do with it.

Eleanor is also refusing proper outdoor clothing...

And now she won't go in the stroller at all. It's a little frustrating as I need to use the stroller for dog walks! We spent the past two days fighting over it and finally I just went to a dog AND kid friendly park where nobody needed to be contained. 

We are prepping for a couple of trips to Vancouver in the coming weeks. The first is for her dental work, which is filling me with dread. It's just an 'unknown' procedure so I don't know how her body will react. I've planned for an extra night just in case things go sideways. Which they won't. Right? Ugh. The second trip is for her PET scan. It's scheduled for the day after her birthday, which means we will be spending her "happy day" in appointments prepping for the scan. I would have changed it, but it's been six months since her last one and I'm pretty ready to know what's going on inside her. It just means we will have to throw her a little party between trips :-)

Girlfriend loves a party!

It can be pretty hard to say no to this face. Especially when this face says small sentences or exclaims "eye doctor!" when we drive past her ophthalmologist's office. As my parenting ideas and instincts change with this new little big girl, I always wonder how different I would approach things if she hadn't gotten sick. I sometimes feel like my tank of parenting skills is ruptured, and it drains faster than it should. My patience is less and my anxiety runs higher than I would like. Who knows? Maybe I would have been this way anyways. I think about it a lot. Our life is so normal in so many ways, but we are still broken, still damaged. Parenting is hard, but we keep plugging on. Eleanor teaches us so much every day and is plowing forward, urging us all along in her wake!

Super nerd. 

Edited to add:

I'm 99.9% sure she took her meds herself. She was exceptionally sweaty and energetic last night and partied in her crib til 9:30. She is back to normal today :-)

Patch

We've been dealing with two patches. One is wonderful and fun and filled with round orange gourds and has a train with dinosaurs! The other forces my little bear to use her bad eye and makes her so sad and snugly. Let's talk about the former. 

We went to the pumpkin patch last weekend. None of us had ever been, but it seems like something normal families do, and we are a normal family, so we went. We loved it. It's so fun to do seasonal stuff with Eleanor because (like any kid) it's exciting to see things through their eyes and also because of all the new words she can try out! As we traipsed through the pumpkin patch, she kept exclaiming "tangled!" as her feet got caught up in the vines. 

As for her eyes, well, we have to continue to patch for the next six months until she can get corrective surgery. The angle has lessened with the patching and her glasses (when I remember to put them on her - bad mummy), but her vision is pretty horrible in her right eye. She would never let you know, though. 

She's gone through a rough, tantrum period recently. It's been challenging for Kris and me, but we are working through it and it seems to be lessening. A very wise woman once said to me "just because you're experiencing 'normal' problems, it doesn't mean they aren't problems" and we have learned A LOT about ourselves overcoming these parenting woes. I'm holding out hope that the terrible twos won't be followed by terrible threes (or a "threenager") and in two months time I will wake up with a perfectly behaved preschooler. A mum can dream, no?

Happy Day!

Or rather, happy half-year birthday!

Eleanor's "siss-er! Baby siss-er!" is six months old today. I think celebrating month birthdays is a bit silly, but this one is a pretty big deal for us. Eleanor was diagnosed at exactly six months of age, and it marked the end of life as we knew it. Life before cancer, and life after. For Penelope, it is just another wonderfully glorious day of being the fattest, happiest, healthiest baby I know. She has two teeth and is chowing down on all kinds of big-girl food. She sleeps and sits and smiles and laughs. She is joy. 

She is health. 

She is hope.

She is love(d).

Sweet, sweet P.