Andy & Jessica

Last night, Jude, Levi and I were laying down all in a row on a queen bed in Jude and Levi’s room for our nightly prayer and much-anticipated funny story.  After I finished praying, I said, “Amen.”  Jude said, “Why don’t you say ‘A girl’ instead of ‘A men?'”

When deciding whether to radiate, I did my homework and met with many different specialists. But, the potential parade of horrible side effects was long and varied and never consistent between any 2 practitioners. So, we never really knew what we were getting into (except that we were hopefully getting out of another recurrence). Until last night, I thought Jude had made it through radiation unscathed (except for the hair loss, which is correcting itself). However, after I watched Jude fail to earn his karate white belt for the 6th time or so and realized how surprised the karate school manager was that Jude couldn’t remember the meaning of the 5 karate words necessary to earn the belt, I realized that Jude has a memory problem. Jude has never had a memory problem before. In fact, his memory pre-radiation was remarkable. He knew all 50 states and all the U.S. Presidents by the time he was 3. He was truly a whiz kid and would soak up anything we threw at him. But, I’ve been working with him daily for weeks now on the meaning of these 5 karate words and he just can’t get it. I looked back at his neuropsychological evaluation from a year ago (pre-radiation) and his memory was superior in all categories. His neuropsychological evaluation was repeated post-radiation and the results were fairly deplorable. In one memory category, he actually improved, from superior to 2 points more superior, but in all the other categories his memory had fallen from superior to average and in one case from superior to “borderline impaired.” It took me 3 months to realize this probably because Jude was so high functioning pre-radiation. Thank God for that! So, even though he’s in first grade, he still doing just review work and hasn’t really been required to learn new things. I have an appointment set up with the Ph.D. who did Jude’s testing to figure out what we can do about this. I’m hoping that maybe his brain will re-wire itself and this will just be a temporary problem. So sad to see.

Asher (aka “Bobo”) really gets into everything. He loves to be in the mix and often makes a mess. If we leave the computer chair pulled out, he’ll jump up and take control of the mouse and start banging on the keyboard and within seconds he’ll mess the computer up so badly that even Andy will struggle to fix it. Lately, we find him scrambling up the tall kitchen chairs and onto the kitchen table so he can sneak some bites of the gingerbread train and train station that the boys and I built. The other day I left the boys alone for not too long and returned to find that Asher was playing with the bathroom plunger and toilet bowl brush. Yuck! I’m sure I blurted out an animated, “No, no, Bobo!”

The boys and I have been racing around the main floor of the house at full speed lately.  I move the coffee table and kitchen table a bit, but it’s definitely not risk free.  It is, however, good exercise for me and they have a ton of fun.  So, it’s a win, win.  Little Bobo though is often knocked to the ground by Jude or even just the breeze as Jude flies by him.  When Jude accidentally smacked Bobo to the ground tonight during one of our high speed laps and Bobo broke out with tears, Levi stroked him and kissed him and said, “Sorry, Bobo” repeatedly.  What a sweet big brother little Levi is!

I got an absolutely hilarious email from Andy while at work today.  Well, hilarious for me, but not for him.  Here’s what he said:

“Today is a day you can be glad to be a working mom, not a stay-at-home one.  Jude plugged the toilet this morning.  He told me it plugged, but didn’t bother to tell me it was still running.  I was busy at the moment, and by the time I remembered, the entry way and mud room were flooded. Then I went out to get the shop vac and Asher decided to stroll through it all.  The shop vac filter was so plugged it wouldn’t suck, and we don’t own a mop.  We have a couple sticks with sponges at the ends, but no real mops.  I want to go back to bed!”

Note to self — Get Andy a mop for Christmas and try to wipe off this grin before Andy sees it.

Here’s a recent picture we took of our family.  The boys are all looking at a lady wearing googly glasses that we handed her to try to get some grins.  It worked!

 

Jude’s first report card from his virtual academy arrived today. I was planning on not sharing it with Jude because I expected it to be stellar and don’t want him getting too complacent and thinking he doesn’t have to work hard. But, it’s really nothing to brag about. There are 4 number grades, with 4 meaning exceeding standards, 3 meaning meeting standards, 2 meaning progressing towards stands and 1 meaning not progresing towards standards. He was graded in both his kindergarten courses that he was in for a month and in the first grade classes that he has been in since then. He got straight 3’s, meaning meeting standards, even in the kindergarten category of “identifies letters of the alphabet,” which he has done since he was 1-1/2 years old. I’m not sure what it takes to get a 4, but this is like straight B’s, which will not be acceptable for any child of mine after it starts to matter. Hopefully this is the worst report card the kid will ever get.

Andy has a rule that the Christmas tree cannot go up before Thanksgiving.  So, I like to get it set up on the day after Thanksgiving.  The boys always have a lot of fun seeing the ornaments, playing with them and breaking them before they can even get them up on the tree.  Jude was a big helper this year and put up at least a third of the ornaments.  I had a pile of fragile ornaments that I wanted him to put up high (so Asher couldn’t grab them) and non-fragile ornaments that could go on the bottom.  Jude grabbed an ornament and before he could even finish asking if it was fragile, he managed to break it.

Well, we sort of pulled an eat and run at my parents’ house.  We arrived last night and spent the night and were planning to stay until mid to late afternoon today, but our stay was cut short.  At about 5 a.m., I got a cell phone call.  I checked it and noticed it was from a 1-800 number but didn’t think anything of it and went back to bed since I had missed the call.  It turns out it was our home security company.  About 4 hours later, Andy called to check on things and learned that at 5:12 a.m., the back door triggered the alarm and the police were called when we didn’t respond.  15 minutes later, the inside motion detector and the front door were both triggered.  Growing up, we had our home burglarized so I’m more paranoid than the average person.  I immediately thought that someone had entered the back door and then burst out the front door when the police arrived.  Andy offered another plausible option — that the back door had somehow blown open and then the police, when searching the house, triggered the motion detector and the front door alarms.  We raced out of my parents’ house and even left Jude behind since when I told him that we had to leave (with no warning), he threw himself on the ground and started sobbing since he didn’t want to quit playing with his cousins.  The whole way home Andy and I were sick to our stomachs thinking about the things we’d never see again like our 2nd car, etc.  Thankfully when we arrived home, all was well.  Somehow the back door must have blown open or its possible that someone did try to break in but got scared off when the alarm triggered (but unlikely), and then the cops searched the house when they saw the door wide open and they triggered the 2 other alarms 15 minutes later.  The cops did a thorough search and I found every closet door open.  The cops were even greated with a “Golden Valley Police Department…Your Friends for Life” sign that Jude had just hung up in his new club house under the steps.  I’m sure they enjoyed seeing that.

I have a fitting song stuck in my head this Thanksgiving weekend:

Give thanks with a grateful heart

Give thanks to the Holy One

Give thanks because He’s given Jesus Christ, His Son

And now let the weak say, “I am strong”

Let the poor say, “I am rich”

“Because of what the Lord has done for us”

Give thanks