The Christmas Tree came down tonight, January 18th. That’s
the latest ever. My wife’s family is Italian, and by tradition, the
tree stays up until January 6th, which is Epiphany. It
comes down after that, but we were delayed this year due to lots of
little things, and for no main reason. I joked to my wife about
redecorating it with hearts for Valentine’s Day, but no dice. Both
of the boys “helped” with the un-decorating, and we even managed
to get everything done before the evening devolved into J and E
fighting with each-other over who got to sit in the tree box.
December was an okay
month. This year didn’t overly feel like Christmas to me, but I
think that is because we didn’t have any snow in the GTA. Since the
snow wasn’t here for Christmas, it can just f*ck off for the rest
of the winter for all I care. Last year, we had a hospital stay from
the 20th to the 26th, but this year, E had no
fevers, so we were at least at home. We didn’t completely manage to
avoid the sicks, with J catching a cough/fever/sore throat on the
first day of Christmas Break. By December 27th, my wife
had it too, but she had the additional symptom of an ear infection.
There was a day or two the E was flirting with a fever, but his
temperature never reached the threshold where we would have had to
bring him in. With half of the house under the weather, we were a bit
more isolated, and stir-crazy than we would have like to, but at
least we were at home.
By way of the
calendar, E’s lumbar puncture (LP) fell on the 26th of
December, but it was bumped ahead by a week to the 19th,
because the cancer day clinic is not open on Boxing Day. We ended up
needing to reschedule E’s LP o the 18th, because the
19th turned out to be J’s first Christmas Concert, and
we did not want to miss that. My mom was out to get J off ot school
in the morning, so that we could leave early. The procedure was
pretty standard, we carried him in, we snuggled him while they
anaesthetized him, we put him down on the stretcher, and left to wait
the 10 or 15 minutes that the LP usually takes. He slept
approximately the usual amount of time, waking up with about 15 or 20
minutes to go before he was allowed to sit up. Also in December, E
was bumped up from 5 weekly methotrexate pills to 6 weekly
methotrexate pills.
Steroid week with
dexamethasone started the evening of the 18th, when we
returned from SickKids. It ran until the morning of the 23rd,
and it was a bit of a different steroid month. The first couple of
days, E was extra emotional, and was crying, or whining. We were
concerned because the moodiness usually doesn’t hit him that
quickly. Then, it disappeared, but it was replaced with
sleeplessness. He did not want to sleep. He’d have problems falling
asleep, and he’d immediately wake up if you tried to move him, even
when he was in a deep sleep. If we did manage to get him down in his
own bed, he wouldn’t be in there for long. He’d wake and cry, so
he’d end up being brought in to our bed where he’d have an
unquiet rest of the night with plenty of tossing and turning. His
sleeping has improved since then, and he receives melatonin drops
about an hour before bed, but he still wakes between 12AM – 1AM and
ends up sleeping with us.
Jumping further
back, to December 9th, my parents came out for a visit so
we could go out and get a little break. We went out for a quick bite
of lunch, and the plan after was to check out the mall to finish up
some Christmas shopping. While parking at the mall, the shifter cable
on my wife’s car snapped, the car was stuck in neutral, and the
shift lock was engaged so we couldn’t even move the shifter. Being
a Sunday, the dealership was closed, so we had the car towed out of
the busy mall parking lot to a garage to be fixed. I found out
afterward that there was a recall on the car because of this problem
of the shifter cable detaching from the transmission.
In my family,
December is not only a busy time because of the build up to
Christmas, but we also have 2 nephews with December birthdays. We
have 2 other nephews with January birthdays as well, so there is
plenty going on for those two months. We wanted to give an experience
present this year, so in addition to giving a smallish toy, we took 3
cousins, as well as J, E, and a big vat of hand sanitizer to the
Ontario Science Centre. We maybe weren’t thinking clearly because 5
boys with ages 2, 2, 4, 5, and 7 was a whole lot of crazy and chaos.
Overall, they had fun, and us parents didn’t lose our minds too
much. I didn’t live physically close to my cousins growing up, and
I only got to see them every few years. I’m lucky that we’re just
a short car ride away from cousins on both sides of the family, and
it makes me happy to see my boys have the opportunity visit, play,
dance, fight, and eat with their cousins on a regular basis.
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