Week of February 21, 2011



Family Photo

 Ella had a good week. We stayed in the house all week to make sure we gave her blood counts a chance to recover. She was so sick of being in the house when we took her for a ride on Saturday, she was begging us not to go home but to just go shopping to look at stuff.  One of her BFF's had her birthday party on Saturday too, so we let her go to the party.

She had fun playing and she got to decorate her own apron, cake and pizza. When I went to pick her up she didn't even see me come in. She was too busy hanging out and watching Morgan open her gifts. I just stood back and watched. When the gift crowd started to disperse, I saw 4 little girls go over to Ella. During the gift opening Ella had taken off her hat. They noticed, and went over to ask her what happened to her hair.  I saw it happening from across the room. I saw the look on Ella's face and knew immediately what they were talking to her about. She looked and me and started crying. She ran over and said "Mommy, I NEED my bandanna!" I carried her out of the room, but by that time we were both crying. The girls followed us out of the room and asked me what happened to her hair.  I panicked a bit, then I thought I would be all funny and try to make light of the situation. I told them her hair was magic and she decided to take it off and grow purple hair. It only took a second to see by their blank stares that they were not buying that answer, and the look Ella gave me said she didn't know what the heck I was talking about. So I told them that she was on a special medicine that made her hair fall out and that it would grow back soon.

It took her all of 2 minutes to recover from that little incident, but it took me 2 hours. We haven't had her in  a situation where she was with new kids that didn't know, we never prepared her to be asked questions because we have always headed those questions off by talking to the parents of her friends. I know I can't protect her from it, but I wish we had done a better job preparing her for questions.

Later on Saturday we had a friend from church come take some family photos for us. One of my favorites is above. We were also lucky enough to have Jesania over for a few days too.  I took this shot of her that I just love.  Ella was so excited that Jes was coming over for the weekend. She really loves her "Fluffy". We all got to go to church together today, and that was a really nice treat. Steve and I have been splitting going to church for the past few months, so actually going together was awesome!


Jesainia

 We have clinic again on Tuesday. Hopefully Ella's counts will be good, and she can start the next phase of her treatment. She gets a spinal and chemo on Tuesday, but then she will get chemo nightly at home and not have to go back to clinic for a month! I hate giving it to her at home, but glad that she will have a little bit of "normalcy" soon. We even saw some super tiny little hairs growing in on her head tonight! YEA!

Blessings~Katie