What? Run after the ball?

Mason finally got the opportunity to play soccer outside on the grass this weekend and I think he enjoyed it even more.  Although his play appears to be regressing a bit from his two goal debut in the first game, he is still having a lot of fun.  We need to work on his aggression and getting after the ball a bit more actively, but I blame the passive attitude on his solid Montessori education.  🙂  They have done such a good job of keeping your hands to yourself in school, that Mason sometimes runs with his hands behind his back just like he would when walking in line at school.  It’s a good thing for manners, but something we must break for sports.

Apparently one thing we don’t have to instill, yet, is toughness.  Mason was on a breakaway and took a pretty hard fall forward.  I fully expected tears to follow, but he proudly got up and looked at me and proclaimed, “I didn’t cry!” and started back towards the ball.

Breakaway!

And down goes Mason, down goes Mason

Nonetheless, it was a beautiful day to be outside for some very entertaining four year old soccer followed by a nice tex mex lunch on the patio with Mason, mommy, papa, grandma, grammy, and aunt Ellen.  Aunt Pat was gracious enough to hang at the hospital with Cutler so we could have a big family outing.  I suppose at some point I should introduce all of the players as we are getting a great amount of support and free time as they graciously hang with Cutler at pretty much any time we want.  But that is for another post when I am suffering from writer’s block more than I am right now.  Besides, Curb is on and I need some good comedy.

Tickling his own toes now

We finally met 2 on 1 with Dr. Goldman today, rather than hearing second hand his thoughts and now we may be into an even greater information overload, but in the end it is almost all good news.  First of all, in the last post I mentioned that Cutler’s spinal tap came back clean.  As it turns out, that was just a blood culture and we are still awaiting the results and expect to hear back tomorrow on the results.  This is the only semi bad news.

The good news is that the doctor believes that Cutler is responding better than expected and even offered for us to bring him home for seven to ten days before his next round of chemo.  We were pretty honest that we were frightened of this idea and he mentioned that although he is willing to let us bring him home his preference is that we keep him in the hospital and so we all came to agreement that Cutler will remain for close observation and to continue to hide him from potential infections.  But he is pretty comfortable with the idea that he will come home with us after the second round is complete.

He does want to go ahead and get Mason in for the blood test to see if he is a marrow match this week if possible.  Dr Goldman believes that if Cutler continues to respond the way he is, it is feasible to consider a marrow transplant as early as after the second round of chemo.  They do have someone in their office that does an amazing job of drawing blood from children and so I feel a bit better about it.  Apparently they play with Mason for a bit to get him to relax and rub some type lotion on the arm to help it numb the area before inserting th e needle.  We haven’t told Mason yet, but it is looking like we should go ahead and get this out of the way.  I would love for him to be a match, because I know that he would be so proud that he would have helped save his life by providing a part of him.  He really is an incredible big brother.

Eating solid food is fun

On to more non hospital stuff, we did start feeding Cutler some solid food for the first time today.  Despite it being his first time he did fairly well.  Of course it is hard to tell how much he actually ate, but he appeared to like it and had his usual smile working away.  We are hoping that adding solid food to the diet will help calm the appetite.  Last night with a three hour time frame I believe I fed him close to 20 ounces of milk and formula.  Unfortunately he awoke during the 12:30 am vitals, but fortunately he did sleep through the 4:30 am check in and stealing of blood all the way until 6:30 am when he woke up not screaming for milk but smiling and ready to play. 

Melanie and I did get some quality alone time with him before the family gladly came down and sat with him throughout the day to give us some quality alone time at home as well.  Alone time in that Melanie was alone to nap in her room while I was alone to watch football in the media room while Mason was off on a play date at his good buddy’s Parker.  🙂  Thanks to Karin and Darren for wearing him out for the second Sunday in a row.  He really does enjoy the time over there.

And finally one more picture of Cutler, as we have stored up quite a few over the past few days.  This one is my favorite as Cutler and I were getting some good quality cuddle time together on the air mattress.  It’s almost as good as the mattresses at the W.

Ahhh, the joys of belly time