Kids these days have way too much stuff. My kids are no exception. They have Nintendo DS, Game boy Advance SP, Game boy Micro, Game boy Advance, PSP, PS2 (two of them), Xbox, three computers, three mp3 players and I think that's it. The funny thing is they are ALWAYS complaining that they are bored. There's nothing to do. I tell them go play your video games, go read a book, go see if your friends want to play. Nope, they are still bored.

My mom made a comment that really struck me this evening, while we were making dinner. The kids are bored because they have too much. They are overindulged. They don't know how to entertain themselves. So I'm gonna try something. This weekend, Monday not included, we're going to live completely unplugged. Friday night, before bed, I will go through the house and unplug every electrical thing, with the exception of the fridge. I will tape down all the light switches and we will use only candles at night. Good thing it doesn't get dark until the kids' bedtime. We won't even be using the stove, we will be using the BBQ grill. These kids will have to either read a book, play games or, God forbid, play with their toys. GASP! Let's see how bored they are come Monday when they can use everything again.

Many people know that I've been dealing with acid reflux for a while now. Earlier this month I went in for an upper endoscopy. Today was my follow up appointment to that procedure.

My appointment was pretty short. The doctor confirmed that I have some mild irritation from esophogitis. He also said I have a lazy stomach and that it doesn't empty as quickly as it should. He then proceeds to tell me this is because I'm so overweight. Now I know I'm overweight, it's not by much but I still am. He tells me I have to eat 5-6 small meals a day. Now when I say small I mean TINY, microscopic portions. Okay maybe not microscopic but pretty close. My means have to be HALF the size of my fist. I'm starving just thinking about it. How am I gonna last eating so little? I'm used to eating whatever I want when ever I want. Now I not only have to eat ONLY healthy foods but hardly anything. UGH!!!

So tomorrow I'm starting a new leaf. I have to start working out three times a week. I used to do this but got lax. And I'm eating healthy and hardly anything at all. Wish me luck.

p.s. Anyone have any ideas on how to keep my mind off the fact that I'm STARVING?

You know when you're out shopping and you hear that little kid who is yelling at his mom and calling her a bitch? Or the kid who acts like he runs the house? You know how you feel sorry for that mom but at the same time you're thinking " geeze lady learn how to control your kid"?

I have more and more empathy for those parents every day. Have you ever wondered how those families get to that point? Right now I'm wondering that very thing, hence my writing about it.

R was a very good little boy when he was younger. He was an easy baby, a fun loving toddler who very rarely threw tantrums. Honestly I never knew what the terrible 2's were until I had K. But somewhere after three and now R changed. Yeah I know kids grow up. But for R it's like some sort of switch was flipped; Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Only Dr. Jekyll was back when R was young and sweet and innocent. It seems these days Mr. Hyde is living in my house 24/7.

R has developed this hatred for me. I can see it in his eyes when ever he looks at me. I've even found drawings in his room that show a gun shooting "mommy" and saying "kill mommy", "I hate you". These drawings were stashed where no one would ever be able to find them. The only reason I found them was because one day I decided to clean out his room and had to go through all of his drawers to get rid of all his accumulated trash. I'd like to think this hatred is only towards me but that's not realistic. I see him acting out towards K and A all the time too. He jumps on them and pounds on them like a wild animal going in for the kill. Then when I intervene he goes ballistic on me.

How did my sweet baby turn into this, this monster? I know many people are gonna say he has issues and needs counseling. He is in counseling. But counseling will only work if you are honest about everything. R, after one meeting, decided he doesn't like his counselor and refuses to open up to him. Right now I'm continuing to take him there. They are doing some neuropsych testing at the moment. Not even trying to delve into his "issues" yet. I don't know what else to do.

He doesn't care where we are when he lashes out at me. How do I instill some RESPECT in this boy?

Today was K's oncology appointment. It's her first appointment after taking the extra high dose of chemo. The doctor had blood drawn to check her counts. I'm not complaining but I totally don't understand how her counts can be so much higher than they were 10 days ago, at her last appointment. At the last appointment she had been of treatment for over a month. It makes absolutely no sense to me. I guess this is one thing I'm gonna just have to let go and realize there is no answer. I know that's not how I work. I NEED answers. I NEED control. Not know makes me feel like I have no control. Ah...

What do you do when your family pet turns on your kids?

I have a beautiful 3 yr old Bichon Frise. I also have three children. R is 9, K is 5 and A is 4. Two years ago, when R was starting his BMX racing, Drix (the dog) decided he didn't like R. I bought R some new leathers for his racing and Drix went nuts. Everytime R wore his leathers Drix would growl and snarl at R. Several times he tried to bite R but was never able to. Over these past two years Drix has randomly snapped at R. Hubby always insisted that R did something to provoke Drix. I'd never seen him do anything, but I couldn't say for sure that he hadn't. So I just advised R to be overly cautious around Drix.

Two weeks ago A was sitting on the living room floor eating a snack. Drix was happily laying in his crate. Suddenly he walked out of his crate, walked over to A and bit his leg. I know for a fact that A hadn't done anything to Drix. A was more scared than anything, but still Drix bit my baby.

Fastforward to today. We went to go pick up some lunch so I put Drix in his crate. He's always crated when we leave the house. When we got home K opened Drix's crate to let him out. She struggled for a minute to get the crate door open. I walked over towards her to help her out but she got the door open before I was able to help. As soon as she opened the crate door Drix lunged at her and bit her hand. He ended up breaking the skin on her finger.

I emailed hubby and told him that was the last draw. I saw him bite her for absolutely NO REASON, just like he had done to A. So now I'm trying to decide what I need to do with the dog. I really don't want to put him down unless that's my only option. I'm hoping to place him in a home with no children but I don't know how possible it's going to be. I'm scared to take him to a shelter for fear that he'll end up with another family that has kids.

Please keep your big black dog locked up. It may be a family dog to you, but when it gets out it gets scared. And I don't appreciate having to keep my kids locked up in the house because there is this huge, scared dog that somehow jumped the fence and is now in my back yard. My kids have been taught to stay away from animals but even they don't listen all the time. I don't need to be scared to let my kids out into MY back yard because of YOUR dog. Oh and while I'm at this little letter, I'm not too fond of having your big dog barking and growling at me and my neighbor while we're in my house.

That's not cool. You'd better hope the cops don't find your dog before you. You bet I called them. When your dog poses a threat to me or anyone in my family I don't hesitate to call. You're just lucky your dog decided to jump the fence again. Hopefully he didn't attack any other kids that were out playing today.

I realized this morning that I've been in this brain tumor world too long. Last night I was dreaming that I was in the radiation department at the hospital. I was waiting for K's radiation nurse to come out and get us. I could see her across the room but there were SO MANY people that I couldn't get through the crowd to get to her. I kept hollering her name and she would turn around and motion for me to follow her back. But I could never get there. Then I had this overwhelming feeling that I was in the wrong department. That we really needed to be in the radiology department. That K needed to have an MRI.

This was one of those never ending dreams. I woke up several times throughout the night and yet when I'd go back to sleep I'd start up where I last was. I think it's time to get back out into the real world where it's not all about brain tumors. What do you think?

Last night I shaved K's head completely. Well actually I buzzed it. I wanted to make it slick but realized that I couldn't take a razor to her shunt site because of how bumpy it is. I'm afraid I would cut her. So she is buzzed and it looks SO CUTE! I'll post a pic as soon as I upload it from my camera.

Anyway, now that she's bald I'm trying to find something for her to wear on her head. The weather is changing here and I don't want her getting too cold. She has a ton of hats but she doesn't like to wear them because they don't fit well. I am thinking about getting her a special scarf but can't decide if I should pay the $22.00 and risk her not wanting to wear it. What do you think? She is almost 6 and VERY girlie. I guess I'm leery because she hasn't found anything that she wants to keep on yet.

Man kids sure know how to hit ya right where it hurts. I know they don't mean it but sometimes it just the thing to throw you over the edge. K hasn't been herself today. She's been real laid back and just lounging around on the couch all day. This morning she slept until near 1030, totally not like her. After lunch we were sitting on the couch watching Naruto. K was sitting next to me. She leaned on my shoulder and wrapped her arms around me. Then she looked at me and said "will you always remember me?" I looked at her a bit stunned. I have no idea where this came from. It sounded kind of like something someone would say when they know the end is near. I don't want to think about that but that's what I was reminded of. So I wrapped my arms around her and assured her there is no way I could ever forget her. I love her too much to ever forget her. We laid on the couch together for a little over an hour just cuddling. Something seems off about her today. I'm hoping it's just the chemo.

K got back from her friend's house early this afternoon. She had a blast. She was talking a mile a minute telling me all about her day/night. Once she was all done telling me everything she gave a HUGE sigh and said "it was a good day". That was the sweetest thing ever to come out of her mouth. She was so precious at that very moment. I haven't been able to stop hugging her since she came home. I knew I was gonna miss her but I can't believe just how bad it really was.

So K finishes her chemo tomorrow night. I can't wait to be done with it. I feel horrible giving it to her. I know it's "good" for her but I feel bad having to poison her little body. I can't wait till this is all behind us. She has been handling things pretty well. She hasn't gotten sick yet. I'm waiting for that to hit. Right now, you'd never know she is sick.

K was invited to her first ever slumber party. It is for the release of High School Musical 2. I didn't think she or her friends would really be interested in the movie considering they are 5 & 6 years old. But she wanted to go anyway. I think it was more because she was having a sleep over at her friend's house. I thought about it a lot and finally decided to let her go. I can't keep her sheltered forever, right? I talked to the friend's mom and told her that K is on her chemo right now. I also told her that if she didn't feel comfortable administering the chemo I totally understood. The big issue is that K has to have her chemo before bed. If she has it any other time of day she spends the rest of the day feeling really sick. And that's definitely not going to be fun at a slumber party now is it. This mom said she was perfectly fine administering the chemo considering it's just giving her five pills ( one for nausea & vomiting and four chemo pills). I made sure to go over every little detail with the mom and even gave her the rubber gloves she needed to be able to touch the pills.

K was SO EXCITED to be going to this sleep over. She'd been counting down the hours since she woke up this morning. She packed up all of her stuff last night before going to bed. It was really cute watching her. When the friend's mom showed up to pick her up K jumped into the car so fast she almost forgot to tell me bye. She definitely didn't take the time to give me a hug and kiss. I know she's okay and I totally trust this family but I still worry. This is my baby girl. The one I want to treasure every precious minute with. And here she is gone, away from home, for one night. This will be the first night I sleep without her since she came home from the hospital in May. My bed feels so empty. My house is so quite. My schedule is completely thrown off. I didn't have to administer any medication tonight. I didn't have to put a puke bucket next to the bed when she went down.

I miss her so much. Tomorrow morning can't come soon enough.

R has a sinus infection. For the last couple of days he's been complaining of a headache. I've given him Motrin and it's been fine afterwards. Then today I ran out of Motrin. He started really complaining about his head hurting so I gave him some children's Tylenol that I had on hand. Well it didn't help. The pain got so bad that he was laying on the floor grabbing onto his head screaming and crying in pain. I called the pediatric clinic and they advised me to take him to urgent care. So we hopped into the car and sped off. Half way there Randee suddenly became very quiet and kinda passed out. When he opened his eyes back up he said he was really tired. I called the clinic back and asked them, with the new circumstances, if I should still go to urgent care or if I should head to the ER. I was thinking ER but they told me to just go to urgent care. When we got there R walked in but was really wobbly. They took us back right away. The doctor suspected sinus infection but wanted to confer with her partner to rule out any other possibilities. She came back and sent R for x-ray to rule out sinus infection. When we got back from x-ray she said there was a little bit of fluid in his right sinus that we need to treat. But she also said she didn't think it was enough to cause the severe pain and other symptoms he was experiencing. So right now we're treating the sinus infection and I have to keep an eye on him. If he ends up with these symptoms again she told me to take him straight to the ER. Nice huh. I feel like it's K all over again.

I am so full of all sorts of emotions today. I have no clue how to sort them out. They're flooding me to the point that all I want to do is sleep it off for a while.

1) I'm elated to see that my baby's tumor has SHURNK so much. I don't know how much shrinkage is from chemo/radiation and how much is because of the resection. But that doesn't matter now. What matters is that it went from the size of an egg to the size of a marble. Yes you read that right. When I drew the measurements on paper yesterday I was in awe. I've been thanking God nonstop since reading the report and seeing the change. HE is so good! HE has ensured that K have wonderful doctors. HE has ensured these doctors have the knowledge needed to take care of her and heal her. HE has given her strength to withstand the toughest of treatments and surgeries.

2) I'm thankful. See #1 to see why.

3) I'm scared. K starts her next round of chemo this evening. This dose is more than double the strength than her last dose. I don't know how she'll react to it this time around. Will she lose more of her hair now? Will she get sick? Will she need more transfusions? Will she recover quickly?

4) I'm nervous. Can I handle taking care of her this time around? Can I be strong enough for the both of us? If she gets sick I will be there to hold her while she's throwing up. I will be there to comfort her while she's weak and tired. Can I be supermom?

5) I'm tired. I can't sleep at night anymore. All I do is lay in bed watching my baby sleep. I'm wondering how much more time we have with her. How can I make each day special? How can I help her brothers draw closer to her so they don't have that resentment? How can I help each child to feel special?

So many questions. So many emotions.