December

In December we met with the oncologist. Our first visit with him was about 2 hrs. They talked to us about treatment, what the side affects will be and what to expect. They wanted to get a bone marrow biopsy to make sure it hasn't spread and they got an x-ray of his abdomen to make sure that it hasn't spread to other parts of his body. Luckily, his bone marrow is cancer free and his abdomen is also cancer free. So that still put him in Stage 2.

We felt like our world was turned upside down. At first we were very bitter and upset about the whole thing. Mostly I was, Blake was handling it better than I was. Then we felt like "why me?". Then after a looong time I started to finally accept it. They wanted to start the chemo after the holidays so that he would be feeling good.

Ava was 10 months old on Christmas. She took her first steps by herself on Dec. 17! She would only walk when no one was looking and when she didn't realize that she was doing it by herself. When one of us would say for her to walk to us, she would go down to the ground and crawl. What a silly girl. Sorry, no pictures this month. I was lame, and didn't feel like doing anything the whole month. It's a miracle I even got my family anything for Christmas, but just because life sucks doesn't mean that I shouldn't have my family be happy.

November

Ava is 9 months old and she is trying to walk, she will walk along furniture but can't get the courage to walk by herself.

November was the start of the reason why I have not been blogging. In July Blake felt a lump in his neck, he thought it was a swollen gland or an infection or something and so he thought it would go away. He also had a cough and noticed that when the cough would go away so would the lump, but then the lump would come back when the cough came back. He didn't have health insurance at the time so he didn't want to go and have it be nothing. I kept bugging him about it and telling him to go to the doctor and every time I would ask him about it he would say "well, the lump isn't as big anymore".

In November, he came home from work one day and was just not feeling well, so he he finally decided to go the doctor. He said he was tired of feeling sick and tired. The doc wanted him to get some x-rays. Then when we got the results of the x-rays the doc said that something didn't look normal and so he wanted him to get a CT scan, so we waited over the weekend and on Monday he went in to get a CT scan. On Tues, we met with a pulmonologist (lung doc) to get the results. The Tuesday before Thanksgiving he was told that he had Lymphoma. He has a tumor in one of his lymph nodes in his chest and his neck. They wanted a biopsy to determine what type of lymphoma it is. We waited unil the next week to get the biopsy, we found out a few days later that it is Hodgkin Lymphoma, which is the malignant kind and that it was stage 2 cancer. The size of the tumor in his chest was 16cm! We couldn't believe how big it was! They didn't know it was that big until they went in for the biopsy. They said that treatment is chemo and radiation. His symptoms were: night sweats, weight loss, cough, and swollen lymph nodes in the neck. Who would have known?

I know...

It has been an extremely long time since I have written and I have been going through a lot lately so that's been the main reason why I haven't written in a while. This is going to be a long post just so that you have been warned...

Ava was a tiger for halloween. I think she was the cutest tiger ever!

Picture overload!

Here are the pictures that I promised!

This is Ava with a milk mustache. She wanted to hold the camera.

This is her before coming over to me to steal the camera. She has the intent in her eyes!

This is what she has been doing constantly for the past week. Standing up next to furniture.

Huh? Such big beautiful blue eyes!

We call this the "wounded" picture. This is what happens when your kid is learning to walk. I feel like everyone thinks we beat her or something...

Daddy loves his baby girl!

This is a bad quality because it was taken from my phone. We thought this hat looked adorable! She wore this on Sunday and got so many compliments. Her Grammy Connie made this for her and she was finally able to wear it!

This is just plain funny. We think she just gave us a cheesy grin to humor us. Do you like her little fohawk?

Big mouth grin!

Another big mouth grin!

8 months!

Ava is 8 months old and she is getting into everything! She loves to pull herself up to furniture and stand. That's pretty much all that she wants to do when she plays. No matter where she is, she always reaches toward the coffee table or the couch so that she can stand up.
She weighs 17 lbs and 6 oz. and is about 27 inches long. She is still a skinny little thing. We bought her some pants for the colder weather and they are size 6-9 months and when she is wearing them she crawls right out of them! It's so funny! The length is normal, it's just that she is so dang skinny! She has started crawling, but she still prefers to do her army crawl. She has two new teeth! We are so glad they are finally here. She would be kind of crabby when she was cutting her teeth. I'll add pictures later, I'm not able to get them on my computer from my phone right now, maybe I'll do that tomorrow...

7 Months!

Ava is 7 months old! She is so much fun to watch and play with. I'm not sure how much she weighs or how long she is but here are her accomplishments:

• Gets up on her hands and knees
• Scoots all over the place
• Babbles
• Likes to hear her voice and likes to scream when she is excited
• Leans toward a person when she wants them to hold her
• Likes to wave (don't know if she knows that she is waving but we think she is)

We call this picture the "Big Girl!" picture. It shows how big she is getting.

Right after this picture she fell over. I guess babies tend to do that when they look up at something when they are sitting up.

Another "Big Girl" picture

We call this picture "The little lady" picture because she just looks so ladylike and innocent.

6 Months!

I can't believe that Ava is already 6 months old! Here are some things that she has accomplished over the last month. Also, here are her statistics from her last doctors appointment:

-Weight: 15 lbs. 4 oz. (25th %tile)
-Length: 26.5 inches (72nd %tile)
-Head Circumrence: 17 inches (67 %tile)
-Tries to get up on her hands and knees
-Scoots all over the place
-Recognizes mommy and daddy in a crowded room
-Loves to play and laugh
-Likes to sing
-Sits up a lot better
-Holds her bottle all by herself. (which is really nice!)

This is her reaction to seeing herself in front of the mirror.

I snuck in her bedroom to see what she was doing and this was the position that I saw her in. She's so funny! She must have been really tired because the stairs to her room are really sqweaky and everytime I go up there she wakes up. But this time didn't.

This is her concentration face.

We had her pictures taken on Labor Day and when we get them then I will post them on there.
Ava is growing up so fast and we love her so much! She is very curious and into everything that she can get her hands on!