Life is a rollercoaster...

So things have been kind of topsy turvy in the last few weeks. Forgive me if I jump all over the place tonight.

The minivan - the letter of employment I was promised fell through. So I tried a bunch of different ways, and didn't get one by the end of last week, so I went and got my deposit back from the dealership. On Tuesday, Glen, the girls and I were at one of our fave restaurants, and the manager there said she'd help me out. So I got the letter late Thursday night, and emailed it direct to the dealership. They sent it to the bank, and I'm still waiting to hear back from them. I'm so nervous because the dealership updated the van listing to "Deal Pending" and haven't gotten back to me, so I don't know if that's MY deal, or if someone else is buying it.... I'm going to cry if we don't get it.

The lease - our landlord's giving us the option of going lease, month to month or no lease at all, and we've been debating it ever since. I don't think we've come to a decision yet.

Glen's been laid off for over a week. It sucks. He needs to find another job. Not just that - my mat leave's been cut off, thanks to the gov't saying I checked off some box I never would have checked. They say they're fixing it, but we'll see in a few weeks. Ugh.

Dad's not been doing too great. Lots of dental surgery's been keeping him pretty low, so the transfusions aren't really doing anything for him.

The last week's been pretty different for us, too... we got called out to do a computer repair job on Monday night. Glen, Emily and I were out at their place from just after 8pm until 7am!! It's times like that that I'm glad Em's breastfed. No worrying about not having bottles on hand or anything. Mom took care of McKenzie for us. Well, Glen didn't finish the job... so we ended up going back Wednesday AND Thursday nights, and were out until around 2am both nights. It's been a very tiring week.. What's worse is that we had McKenzie with us on Thursday night. We made friends with the family whose computer we fixed, so we went back last night for a couple hours just to hang out. They're really nice people, and she has a couple boys, who are 3 and 6. It's nice to have another Mommy friend.

It's been a busy week!

The tranny on one of the cars went on Friday night... soooooooo, instead of spending the money to get it fixed (however much that'd be), I decided the time was right to get a minivan. Kinda been needing one, what with 4 adults and 2 kids in this house! So Monday afternoon was spent at the car dealership, test driving a minivan and trying to figure out how to get financing. The last few days have been a slew of phone calls between the car dealership, the bank, my employment agency... *sigh* I'm hoping that once they get the letter of employment, everything just goes through and I can pick up my van. Glen's started a new placement today, so hopefully this one lasts a while longer.

Ouch, Agony, Pain!

Aside from being one of Dad's favourite sayings (such a lovely sarcastic sense of humour he has), that's exactly what I'm feeling today! I've worked at one of the booths at the BabyTime Show for the last two days, and bending over so much and walking so much is really taking a toll on my body. McKenzie did pretty good yesterday - surprisingly she had a good hour and a half - two hour nap!! Emily did well yesterday, too... she gave me about an hour and a half between each feeding, which was great! Today we left McKenzie at home, as I didn't think it was fair on her to be stuck at the show and trapped in a stroller for the majority of the day, and Emily seemed to want to eat a LOT today! Tomorrow I work the last shift at the booth, and the plan is to take both girls with us. Mom will be coming with me for the full day, unlike the last two days, so we'll be able to tag team with the kids.

I bought a wrap today, which is something I've been thinking about trying with Emily for a while now. Surprisingly she seemed to like it! I'm hoping she continues to enjoy the wrap, because I found it easy to use, and really great to be able to take her out of the wrap, and nurse her without taking it off!

Big day tomorrow, and a busy weekend

So tomorrow is a big day. Dad's got a blood transfusion (his hemoglobin levels on Wednesday were 78!), which he's taking my recently-unemployed brother Charlie to, and Mom and I are going to the BabyTime Show. We're actually going to be working at one of the booths at the show, which is pretty awesome because not only do we get in for free, but we get PAID!! Woohoo! Yeah, it's less than minimum wage, but who cares? It's tax-free!

So, Dad's gonna be spending a good 5 hours at the hospital with Charlie, and I'm going to be spending 8 1/2 hours at a baby show getting free stuff, and hanging out with lil miss McKenzie and wee Emily.

I was surprised to find out that my brother was unemployed... poor guy got cut because his company lost a contract, and they just axed everyone who had less than 2 years employment. Sucks, but that's life. I'm trying to help him out the best I can, by helping him file for unemployment, understand his severence package, reduce his cable bill, and telling him about places he might be able to find employment. I just don't feel like it's enough, and yet I KNOW it's more than a lot of other sisters may do for their brothers...

I have so much I need to do tonight, and it feels like I have no time to do it all. Like buy gas.. it's going up to over $1.31/L tomorrow!

Sometimes Mommy wants a break!

Woke up this morning around 10:30... as per usual, Glen had McKenzie downstairs playing, and fed, and I was sleeping in with Emily, since she likes to feed a lot through the night. Well, I got antsy soon after breakfast, so I packed the girls up in the stroller, and walked to Walmart. Took me around half an hour! Not the closest place to walk to. Mom took the car, and met us there. Emily slept the whole way there, then through lunch, and then for a while after we started wandering around. McKenzie was getting bored of the stroller since before lunch, so I had pulled her out for lunch (which she didn't eat a whole lot of), and she played around in the booth.. then I let her run around walmart for a while.

Well, after a while, Emily woke up, so I figured it'd be a good idea to stop in the family bathroom and nurse her before she got cranky. McKenzie was already pretty darn cranky! She was tired, so she refused to hold my hand, or walk where I wanted her to go... she's a pretty active, independent little girl! So I changed Emily, and nursed her while McKenzie was running around the family bathroom. Mom was in there with us, and watched McKenzie to make sure she didn't hurt herself while I was busy nursing. After I was done that, however, I had to deal with wrestling my not-quite-18 month old into the stroller, and boy was she putting up one heck of a fight! Even bribery wasn't working! Finally got her in, and after about 10 minutes, she finally fell asleep! Thank goodness! Buuuut soon after that, Emily decided to be cranky. So we went for a car ride, which settled both girls for the most part. Until I got to my chiropractor's office... then they both woke up.

After we got home, McKenzie's like a lil wild child, running all over, and trying to climb all over everything... and Emily's at her eat off and on all evening stage. Mommy wants a break! And dinner!

One kid happy, one kid not so much.. *sigh*

Today Mom, McKenzie, Emily and I went to my BFF's baby shower. Her lil girl is not quite a month younger than Emily, but they held the shower late due to weather restrictions. Yay snow and living in the middle of nowhere (them, not me! LOL!). Well, both girls slept all the way up (it's an hour and a half drive), and they were pretty good while we were there.. but McKenzie didn't want to sleep on the way back, and now Emily's all cranky. Time to call it an "early" night (by half an hour.. hehe!) I hope everyone out there had a good Sunday!

My Beautiful Girls

Oh, and here's a pic of my lil babes, before I log off.

So let me introduce myself (and the rest of the family)

I'll let ya'll know first off that since this is the interwebz, I'm going to change names (except mine)... you know, to protect peoples identies, and all that jazz (and because my parents are paranoid about it, so... yeah). Anyway, I'm Mercedes, and this blog is to chronicle my journey through life - mostly motherhood and dealing with my dad's cancer.

I'm married to a brit (we'll call him Glen), and we have two absolutely gorgeous little girls (yes, I'm biased. I'm allowed, so there :P). My oldest, McKenzie, is currently about 17 1/2 months old. And my youngest, Emily, is not quite 4 months. If anybody from the mommy forums I'm on read this, these are actually their names... their THIRD names... so please don't post their first names on here! McKenzie's a pretty active lil toddler, and she's into EVERYTHING!! She drives me crazy sometimes, but she flashes that cheeky grin of hers, and I just love her all the more. Emily's a very vocal lil 4 month old. She "talks" to us a lot. I sometimes feel she's behind in physical development, though, since I'm almost always holding her. This isn't my intention, but she's constantly nursing, and wakes up when she's not in my lap (and yes, she's in my lap right now...). I'm hoping she'll let me put her down more in the next few months...

Now one thing that you need to know - Glen, the girls and I all live with my parents (we'll call them Reggie and Jessica) in this small lil 3 bedroom house that we rent. If it were just Glen the girls and I, this house would have lots of room. Two of the 3 bedrooms are HUGE, and the third bedroom is pretty small, but works as a nursery.. for now. And it's got a finished basement. But with 4 adults, a toddler and a baby, and a crapload of stuff... just a wee bit cramped. We're in each others' faces a lot, and we can get pretty loud at times.

So back around New Years, we got some news that totally rocked our world... Dad has cancer. And not the get some radiation treatments, have surgery, get a transplant, go into remission and hope it never comes back type of cancer... he has the non-curable terminal kind with a life expectancy of 3 - 5 years in stage 1 patients... and he's in stage 2 - 3. Great. He has what's called myelofibrosis. It's not super-common, either.. like 1000 people out of the entire population of the United States gets it. Does anyone know the population of the US? I don't.. but I'm Canadian. But let's just say it's rare, anyway. And when I say "non-curable" let me put it this way - the only known "cure" is to get a bone marrow transplant. Well, there's a cure, then, you say, right? Wrong. This only makes the cancer "cured" in about 10% of the patients who get it done. Another 40% about break even after having it done. The other 50% have so many problems from the severe doses of radiation they're exposed to pre-transplant that they're actually worse off than before the transplant, or they die. So really it's a 50/50 chance of being any better, and frankly, we're not willing to risk Dad's life on the toss of a coin, know what I mean? So our remaining options were: do nothing, and just get blood transfusions every 1 - 2 weeks, depending on his blood levels, or go through a clinical trial study with a gene blocking drug, and still get the blood transfusions as needed. We opted for the clinical trial study.
Dad started the study on the first of March. This is nearly unheard of to get a diagnosis and then be in a study within 2 months, but it happened! Good timing. Surprisingly, since he started the drug, his levels have been stabilizing pretty well! He actually went 3 weeks without getting a transfusion after starting it. Before he was getting one every one to two weeks! Progress! We're hoping that he continues to improve. Now let me point out one thing with this drug - this is NOT A CURE!! They say that the drug will only possibly extend his life by another 1 - 5 years. So remember when I said 3 - 5 years in a stage 1 patient? We're topping out at 10 years now. And he has stage 2 - 3... so I guess maybe we're topping out at 7.5 years? I don't know how the stages chop down life expectancy, really. But that's sort of besides the point.
Mom and I have really been talking with Dad lately about his "bucket list"... a list of things he would like to do before he dies. So here's what we know are on his bucket list so far:
Travel to the east coast and drive along the Cabot Trail (that's in Nova Scotia, Canada)
Travel to the west coast
Go to the West Indies Islands (this one was a surprise to me!)
We also talked about going in a plane.. my cousin's a pilot, so this one may actually be doable, but not the plane he was mentioning... he'd LOVE to go up in a CF5, but then he mentioned it blows through $1000 in fuel an hour, and it goes 400mph... my cousin suggested a 172 that goes 125knots per hour. LOL! Poor Dad won't get his dream flight, but that'd still be pretty cool, I think.
And we talked about Dad and Glen going to Mossport sometime (which is a race track not too far away)
Sounds totally doable, right? Welllllllllllll, not so much. I'm on maternity leave, which pays crap. DH's on a job that barely pays more than minimum wage, and is a temp position, so who knows how long that'll last, and mom's on unemployment, which pays about $50 every two weeks less than my mat leave gets, so again... crap. Dad's job is the only real "paying" job, and he's been losing out on a lot of working days thanks to a lot of doctors appointments, so our income's been axed pretty brutally. So the only thing we may be able to pull off is a huge wedding anniversary party (which Mom and I are planning) this year, and the east coast trip next year. Honestly, I'd love to make the west coast or west indies trip a family trip in 2 years, but who knows if that's going to happen. I figure it'll cost around $8k for all of us to go and have a good time. *sigh* Who knows what the future holds in store, right? I mean, I never expected to be told that Dad has blood/bone marrow cancer, and that's happened... and I never expected to have 2 girls so close together, and that's happened, too. But c'est la vie!

Anyways, it's pretty late (almost midnight!) and lil Emily needs her acid reflux meds, so I'm going to log off and get to bed.
Good night interwebz!