Melanie took Cutler to the oncologist yesterday for his monthly appointment and everything went well.  The bloodwork still looks great, but his host percentage is till 8%.  However, Dr. Weinthal said that there is no reason to worry.  Some people take years to get to 100%, so we are just going to sit back and let that happen over time and try not to let it cause us to stress.  We have enough things to stress over instead. 

Otherwise everything is going great.  Mason is playing baseball again, this time a modified coach pitch where they get a few pitches to try and hit and then they hit from the tee.  Unfortunately I, as the pitcher, have hit him three times now causing tears only once.  For some reason he is the only kid I have hit.  Hope to bring the camera to a game one of these days and get some good pictures of him in action, although that would allow you all to see something that you would have never caught me in otherwise…a Cardinals jersey.  Mason is completely enamored by the Cardinals, thanks to his cousin Hunter, and so he have changed from the Raptors to the Cardinals and I have a feeling this will last as long as we have a choice of our team name.  Don’t worry about me, I figured that since the Cardinals collapsed just as hard as the Cubs normally do it was only fitting.  Besides, I am in the midst of a nasty divorce with the Cubs and my new team the Rangers are doing quite well.

Cutler continues to dazzle with his growth.  Eating is no longer a concern and he is all over the house.  With Mason we baby proofed the house, but never needed it.  With Cutler, I am not sure if there is enough baby proofing available.  The boy just loves to explore and open and shut doors and is really starting to love the outdoors.  The only problem with going outside is that he wants to chase his big brother around and do everything that Mason does.  That makes it quite tiring for mom and dad.

That’s it for now.  I apologize for no posts lately, but I have been working some pretty ugly hours.  Once things calm down I promise to get to the brother’s day stories.  In the interim, here are few pictures from us playing outside a few weeks ago.  And before I go, please take some time to check out our Light The Night Page, http://pages.lightthenight.org/ntxok/DallasL10/TeamCutler, as we are raising money for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society.   A donation of any size is greatly appreciated and if you are in the Dallas area on October 24th, please sign up and walk with us.  We would love to grow our team and help the fight against cancer.

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During Cutler’s recovery I often tried to find a reason as to why this was happening to us and one of those answers to me was always that regardless of how things turned out we were going to start a charity.  While I haven’t made any progress in starting a charity, we have decided to at least start giving back to those that helped us and that is starting with our participation in the Light The Night walk in downtown Dallas on October 24th.  Light The Night Walk is The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society’s evening walk and fundraising event.  It is the nation’s night to pay tribute and bring hope to thousands of people battling blood cancers and to commemorate loved ones lost.

If you would like to join us in Dallas for the walk that evening or join us in spirit, you can find more information at our Light The Night Walk team page at http://pages.lightthenight.org/ntxok/DallasL10/TeamCutler.

Thank you for your continued support!

I am working through the photos and videos from Brother’s Day and thought I would share this one before I get around to being fully organized. 

Unfortunately Mason gets his driving habits from his mother.

No, it’s a plane!  NO!  It’s SuperBaby!

You may or may not remember, but we were fortunate enough to hire Melanie’s cousin, Kobi, to come live with us and help take care of Cutler rather than send him to day care.  You also may or may not remember that she promised to provide updates on the blog regularly. 

Here is her “regular” update:

So, apparently the nanny gets a social life and ignores all writing responsibilities.  I guess I can take “freelance writer” off my list of career options.

Cutler continues to do amazingly well.  It’s getting harder and harder to come up with food ideas to take to speech therapy-his appetite and range of “likes” has grown leaps and bounds in the past few weeks.  Some days he eats as much as I do; which Aaron can tell you, is quite a lot.  For dinner the other night, he ate an entire sandwich and a bowl full of strawberries, in addition to an entire cup of whole milk.  The only things he still seems to not be a giant fan of are pastas and cheeses.  But his speech therapist is sure that it’s not because of the texture or taste, but Cutler testing his manipulation skills.  So we now bribe him with toys.  He’s quick to figure out that to get the toy, macaroni and cheese must first be consumed.  Some days he’ll enjoy the all-American favorite no problem, other days he’s needs to be reminded that he does actually like it.

Physical therapy is coming along nicely as well.  We’ll probably only see our PT for a couple more weeks, as the only thing she can think of to work with Cutler on is bending his knees more.  This will help with jumping/squatting/climbing/any activity that, obviously, requires him to bend his knees.  Our PT is very impressed with his progress over the past several months, and the fact that she can’t think of anything else to work with him on is so great.

The stairs are on the list of his new favorite things.  As soon as he sees the baby gate open, he’s making a beeline to start climbing before it closes again.  He’s also loving the climbing on our visits to the Little Gym.  This little gymnasium has been really great for Cutler-he gets to be around other kids, and who doesn’t love to play on colorful mats and beams?  The staff love Cutler-I might be biased, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s their favorite; the guys are quick to ask for high fives, and Miss Julie loves to have Cutler demonstrate the skill of the day.

Books, trucks, and, of course, phones are flavors of the month as far as toys go.  If it has wheels, Cutler wants it.  He’s also developed a car noise-it sort of resembles a high-pitched growl.  He still loves to read.  He likes to flip through the books himself, and also loves to crawl into your lap and have you read to him.  Not surprisingly, his favorite book involves cars.  And any time the phone rings, you can be sure Cutler has his hand to his ear in an attempt to be the one to answer.  While chitchatting away on his imaginary conference call, he even pauses to listen to the opinions from the other end of the phone.  And while playing with my Blackberry, he runs it over to me if it alerts him of a text or email, patiently waits for me to look at it, and then continues on after I hand it back.  He’s such a good assistant.  On that note, instead of promising to be better about writing a blog entry (because apparently I’m not good at keeping promises about writing about my life), I’m just going to say that I’ll try my hardest to not let 3 months go between posts.  So-the next nanny diary, coming to a computer near you in 2 and ½ months!

Cutler’s latest fascination is to talk on the phone.  Even if no one else is on the other line, but he is especially happy to talk when someone else is there.  Tonight he spent quite a bit of time talking to Grandma and Papa.  Here is a small sample. 

What’s funny is that Mason does the same thing.  He does laps around the living room while talking away.  So maybe he gets it from his brother more than his mother.

Working on getting together the photos from our incredible Brother’s Day trip.  Mason is already talking about where we will go next year.

Almost to the hour, it has been one year since I made my first heart broken post to this blog.  I just made the mistake of going back and reading it and I can’t even begin to tell you how hard it is to feel those emotions again and sadly it was all too easy to relive it in my mind.  Last night, after we put the boys down, Melanie and were talking about how almost to the hour she was sitting in the hospital room with Cutler scared out of her mind and I was with Mason eating pizza at Amazing Jakes scared out of mind and trying to not show it in front of Mason.  It’s amazing how much everything has changed in the past year.  God has been very good to us and fortunately it has all changed for the better and we have two healthy boys that love to play with each other.  A day doesn’t go by without Mason overdoing it with the hugs and Cutler overdoing it with the pinching, but we will take this over any alternative any day.  We are still out of town celebrating Brother’s day until Tuesday.  So far we sweat our way through Sea World, hung out at the beach, and tomorrow we had to Disney World.  I have way too many pictures and will share when we get home.  Until then, I have found a new favorite picture from today at the beach.  Thank you to everyone that has supported us in so many different ways over the past year.  With you, there is no us. 

Imagine Mason holding his brother in the air as they celebrate his return from the hospital and here comes a reporter and a camera crew.  

Reporter:  “Mason, your brother just got home from a long battle against Leukemia, how are you going to celebrate?”  

Mason:  “We’re going to Disney World!” 

Fade to fireworks. 

Now back to real life…The day after Father’s Day Mason asked me when was Brother’s Day and so we decided we would celebrate “Brother’s Day” on the anniversary of Cutler’s diagnosis.  So this year we are flying off to Orlando for a day at Sea World, a day at the beach, and a day at Disney World.  Should be a blast and we are really looking forward to it.  I’m sure we will have plenty of fun pictures and stories ready upon our return…sure to be posted in the same timely manner as the trip to St. Louis. 

Brotherhood...

On our trip to St. Louis we took the boys to the Magic House and the boys had a ton of fun.  We could have stayed another few hours and both of the boys would have been content to stick around even after having been there for so long.  The best part of the trip for me was getting pictures of the boys touching the electro static ball to make their hair stand up just like I did when I was a boy.  Funny side story is that Mason tried to do it on his own and unfortunately let his hand off the ball and then put it right back on causing quite the shock.  It took at least another 15 minutes before he would let me hold him while touching the ball to get the same effect.  We miss St. Louis!

Below are a few videos of our attempts to get Cutler down a slide.  The first one was an attempt on Mason’s lap, which worked well until his foot got stuck.  The second was an attempt to send Cutler down a more tame slide and as you can see the end result isn’t exactly what we were expecting.  At least he had a smile at first.

And then just a few pictures…

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I know this video looks like Cutler is slipping in the tub, but he really does this on purpose now.  He thinks it’s the funnest thing ever.