One year later

It was a year ago this month that Michael finished his grueling cancer treatments.  His cancer was so aggressive there were times we wondered if the treatments were even making a difference.  Today he went down to Children's Hospital for another MRI, his fourth since he finished radiation.  We were thrilled to learn it was another clean scan!  It's nothing short of a miracle that his cancer hasn't returned, and that we get to enjoy four more months with him until his next scan!

One year later and I'm still cancer free!

We're in our new house!

The last few months have been absolutely intense!   Here are a couple of highlights.

After Brooklyn was born we spent the next few weeks taking care of our newborn and packing up our house in preparation for our move.  Liz's parents and sister Julie came out to help.  We also celebrated Michael's second birthday on July 2nd.  Last year at this time we didn't know if he would even have another birthday, so it was awesome celebrating another birthday with him!

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We closed on our new house on July 12th and spent the next week with Liz's parents working on a few pre-move-in house projects and doing more packing.  That Saturday a group of friends and neighbors helped us transport two Uhaul truckloads to the new house.  We saved some of the really heavy items such as our piano, some dressers, couches, etc. for the professional movers, who came a few days later.

 

Liz's parents took our three oldest children with them back to Utah on the day of our move.  They enjoyed having a week to play with their Bellamy cousins while we moved to our new house and started the unpacking process.  We drove to Utah the following weekend to pick up our kids and for Brooklyn's baby blessing.  Brooklyn looked like an angel in her blessing dress.

 

One evening while we were in Utah, Michael was playing on Grandma and Grandpa's bed and tumbled off it.  With his poor balance he's already prone to falls.  We protect him the best we can while still letting him explore and develop, and fortunately none of his falls have been serious.  But after this particular fall Michael just wanted to be held all the time, cried a lot, didn't want to sit up, crawl, or do much of anything.  We couldn't figure out what was wrong until a day or two later as we were preparing to drive back to Colorado, we noticed he wouldn't put weight on one of his legs.  That night after arriving home we took him to the ER, and sure enough he had a broken leg!  It's not a bad break, so the ER doctor put a splint on it and referred us to an orthopedic surgeon.  The surgeon, Dr. Baer, happens to be one of our friendly new neighbors we had just recently met, and he put a nice waterproof cast on Michael's leg.

Interestingly enough, Michael's physical therapist has wanted to put weights on Michael's right leg to help him with learning how to walk.  The cast has fit the bill nicely and has been a blessing in disguise in that regard.

My parents drove out to Utah from California for Brooklyn's baby blessing and caravan-ed with us back to Colorado to spend the week with us.  It was great spending time with them and their help was invaluable as we worked on more house projects, unpacking, cleaning out our old house, moving the rest of our stuff over to the new house, taking care of the demands of five young children, and so on.

In the midst of all this moving, Whitney and I celebrated our birthdays as well.  It's a real treat sharing a birthday.  I took Whitney on a special birthday date and asked her where she wanted to go for it.  None of the options I presented sounded all that appealing to her, such as Fort Fun (miniature golf, arcades, etc.), bowling, and the like.  But when I suggested taking her to McDonald's where she could order anything she wanted, her whole face lit up and she was sold!

On August 14 we closed on our old house on Willow Creek Drive.  What a bittersweet moment it was for us.  I bought that house 12 years ago as a single bachelor.  I proposed to Liz in that house and together we brought five children to that beautiful home.  We spent many years making memories and getting the house just the way we wanted it.  But we were bursting at the seams and it was time to find a bigger home.  The family who bought the house from us has two children, a girl and a boy.  When we met the husband and wife on our closing date, they seemed absolutely delightful.  They even brought a baby gift for our little Brooklyn.  As sad as we are to leave our beautiful home, we're so glad that it's going to a wonderful family.

Even though we now live in a new neighborhood, we had originally planned to keep our kids at Liberty Common School.  Liberty is an amazing school and has been so good for our family these last two years.  But as we looked at the logistics of a longer drive to and from school on top of an already packed schedule, we decided to give the local neighborhood school a try.  We've heard a lot of great things about Zach Elementary, and like Liberty it's considered one of the top schools in the Fort Collins area.  The bus stop is on our street, so commuting won't be a problem.  So we're sad to leave Liberty, but hope that Zach will be the right fit for our family at this time.

First day of school!

Michael had a multi-disciplinary clinic at Children's Hospital a week or so ago.  That's where doctors and surgeons from many different fields related to Michael's illness meet with him to see how he's progressing and decide on his next steps.  The clinic was long and Michael has a lot of challenges ahead of him, but overall it went about as well as expected.  Michael's next MRI is this Friday.  We're praying for another clean scan!

The last few months have been absolutely exhausting and we sometimes wonder if we're ever going to come up for air!  Our kids have needed a lot of attention to help them get through this transition.  Poor Michael would scream and cry for up to nine hours a day, and who could blame him?  Bringing home a baby from the hospital and moving to a new house completely rocked his two-year old world.  On top of that Brooklyn is going through a really fussy period right now.  The combination of just those two kids has made it tough to get much done, including sleep!  Our three oldest children are adapting to the changes in their own ways, and we try to find the bandwidth to give them as much love and support as we can.  We don't know why we have felt impressed to make so many big changes at this time in our lives.  We feel completely overwhelmed, but we've seen the Lord's hand in our lives a lot lately, helping us, guiding us, and reassuring us.

Brooklyn Renee

Wow, what a week!

The three older kids participated in a soccer camp in the mornings so I could spend my "overdue" week resting and getting a few things done.  There weren't any major signs the baby was coming until Wednesday morning when some mild contractions started.  Wednesday afternoon we had a home inspector coming over so we had spent Tuesday evening and Wednesday morning getting the house spotless. I got up from resting through my contractions in the afternoon and found the kids had gotten bored of the movie they were watching, and had "forgotten" to not mess up the house.  There was powdered sugar all over the floor in the kitchen, toys strewn everywhere, the fridge raided and food left out, and the kids had set up an elaborate pretend play.  Just then, the doorbell rang - the home inspector had arrived 30 minutes early!  Tim just happened to call home to see how everything was going right at that moment.  I was in a bit of a panic  - early home inspector, messy house, sleeping Michael, in labor... thankfully we managed to get everything cleaned up while the inspector was outside.  It was 103 degrees outside so we headed to the library so I wouldn't melt in the heat.  Tim had left work to come help me and met us there and then we took the kids out for pizza afterwards.  During dinner my contractions started coming less that 5 minutes apart, so we headed home, found a babysitter for the night and took off for the hosptial.  The labor and delivery was different from our other four kids and went really well.  The best part was the doctor sprinting into the room and nearly missing the delivery as things at the end went really quickly.  Our little girl was born at 1:41 AM on Thursday, June 27.  She weighed just shy of 8 pounds and is 20 1/2 inches long.  She's our second smallest baby (Sarah still holding the reigns as our smallest) and has a ton of dark hair.  She definitely looks like she belongs to our family!  We named her Brooklyn Renee and call her "Brooke" for short. 

Late Thursday afternoon Tim brought the kids to the hospital to meet their new sister.  Sarah and Whitney immediately were doting on her, Spencer had to feel my belly several times to make sure there wasn't a baby in there anymore, and Michael - well, the minute he saw Tim holding our new little girl, he started crying and screaming.  It was like he was saying, "What?!  Mom and Dad, you traitors!"  He was practically inconsolible the entire time we were there, but we did manage to get a picture with him and Brooke.  I had two dear friends come to the hospital at the same time as the family and one of them had a camera and caught some priceless images of our family.  The noise in the room was deafening - the kids started having a pillow fight, Michael was howling in misery, and the grown-ups were trying to talk.  It was the perfect moment of the pure chaos of our new family.

We are now home from the hospital (oh, there's no place like home!) and spending our time recovering.  The best part when I arrived home was Michael putting his hands on his lips to try and close them and say, "Mmah" for "Mom."  He then saw the baby in Tim's arms and signed "Baby."  He's much more content today with the baby.  The kids are exhausted from finishing up soccer camp and art class.  I think we will be laying low for the next several days. 

Dr. Kozak made it to the delivery room just in time to deliver Brooklyn

Wow...check this place out!

Happy and content

Proud parents

Mom needs a bigger hospital bed

Pillow fight!

Sarah and Brooklyn

Whitney and Brooklyn

Spencer and Brooklyn

Michael and Brooklyn

Poor Mikey is no longer the baby in the family

Slipping schedule

At work we say that our schedule is slipping when we have to push out the date we expect to hit a certain project milestone.  After Liz's due date came and went last Friday with no sign of the baby, our schedule has definitely slipped.  In fact, at her doctor's appointment two days before her due date, the doctor said the baby isn't showing any signs of being anywhere near ready to deliver.  Liz is convinced she'll be the first woman in history to be pregnant forever.  So we're hoping the baby will come this week sometime, otherwise we'll have to induce and the baby could potentially be born on Michael's second birthday, July 2.

The good news this week is that we sold our house in only two hours!  It went on the market Monday afternoon, had five showings within the first two hours, and we accepted a fantastic offer. What a relief we can focus more on getting ready for the baby to come.

Summer "vacation"

Since Memorial Day, our summer break went from being pretty busy to crazy hyper-drive!  We have been swamped boxing and cleaning our house to get it ready to sell, handling some challenging decisions with the new house, hosting lots of family, starting new and intense therapy with Michael, getting the kids in the new summer routine, and keeping Liz's feet from swelling too much.  The baby is due this Friday and Liz is ready for the baby to arrive sooner than later.  A friend recently said to Liz, "I don't know anyone who has ever put their house for sale when they were 39 weeks pregnant."  This is not what we would have imagined for ourselves either.   Our house will be on the MLS Monday morning.

We can hardly believe this is all happening at once.  We also had a big hail storm last night so we've got leaves littering our lawn to clean up in the morning.

Last weekend Tim's sister Emily came to visit us with her husband, Tony and their kids.  The intent was to help us get ready for the baby to come, little did they know what that implied!  They worked hard helping us with landscaping, decluttering, cleaning, moving stuff to storage, and helping to watch our kids.  It was amazing to see what we were able to accomplish in a weekend with their help.  Their timing couldn't have been any better.

Riding the local kid's train with the Bradshaw's

On Saturday just as Tony and Tim were driving away from the house to take a load of our belongings to storage, some of the kids came running out of the house to tell us there was water dripping from our basement ceiling.  Tim went to investigate, and sure enough, one of our water pipes was leaking.  He cut open the drywall and fixed the leaking pipe, but here we were, just days away from listing our house on the market, and our basement ceiling looked like this:

The earliest we could get someone to patch the drywall was on Friday, the same day the real estate photographer was coming to take pictures of our house!  Talk about cutting it close.  The photographer came in the morning with the instructions to use a camera angle that didn't show the hole in our ceiling.  The drywall guy came in the afternoon and did a beautiful job repairing the hole. We are finally ready to go!

Here's some more of our summer fun:

The water table Grandma got for Spencer and Michael's birthdays has been a super hit.  Michael's Real Kids Shades have transformed his life as he can be outside in the sun now without his eyes killing him because he can't squint.

Michael has had several evaluations and therapy appointments in the past couple of weeks too.  We started a new speech therapist in Denver that focuses on oral-motor skills.  She is fantastic!  Here she is working with Michael to teach him how to blow into a whistle, something we wondered if he could ever do.  She is confident Michael will be able to eventually say all vowels and consonants.  We are going to try and see her often as possible during the summer with our busy schedule and then see her weekly when school starts.  She also recommended we see a regular speech therapist once a week locally as well to work on Michael's language acquisition and vocabulary skills so he will eventually have two speech therapy appointments a week.  While he understands just about everything we say to him, he is about 75% speech delayed, so we've got a lot of work to do to help him catch up.

Tim's brother, Scott, and his family stopped by for a day on their drive from California to Nauvoo (Illinois).  He and the older 3 kids spent the day with them at Rocky Mountain National Park.  It was so fun to see them.

We had a great night out with good friends in Fort Collins at the local dinner-theater.  It was great to get together and catch up.  Tim started out with these guys as friends at BYU.  They all eventually married and we now have almost 16 kids between all of us!

The kids just finished up 2 weeks of swim lessons.  On the last day, Sarah had the courage to jump off the diving board for the first time!  She did awesome.  Whitney and Spencer were in the same class and unfortunately still haven't made progress in getting their faces wet.  Whitney is almost too old for the classes offered for her skill level since she hasn't made progress for a few years so we will be looking into a good private teacher to help her.  Any suggestions?

Next post:  hopefully about a new arrival or a house sale!

We're Moving!

It's been a very eventful last few weeks.  For this post we'll talk about the house.  We've known for years that we'd eventually outgrow our starter home and need to get something bigger.  So we've been looking off and on for the last few years but never found anything we liked well enough to justify a move.  And with Michael's illness, any thoughts about moving have been put completely on hold for the last year and a half.

About a month ago Liz and I had a conversation to see if wanted to start looking at houses again.  We're starting to feel awfully scrunched with another baby joining our family in a few short weeks.  She's literally going to be sleeping in a bassinet in our upstairs hallway when we bring her home from the hospital.  But we decided there's no way we'd want to move this year, with a baby being born in June and how intense Michael's therapies have been.  We decided that if the right house came along we'd wouldn't turn it down, but we wouldn't be actively looking and we'd plan to stay in our current house at least another year.

Within a week of making that decision, we put an offer on a house.  It was a great house, in a great neighborhood, had everything we needed except a yard.  The next day we decided the lack of a yard was enough of a deal breaker and withdrew our offer (it hadn't been accepted yet).

A few weeks later we saw another great house in another great neighborhood and ended up putting an offer on that house.  Our offer was accepted!  So now we have to get our current house ready to sell, and we're going to be moving, and we're having a baby in a few weeks.  Are we insane?! :-)

Family Portrait

My sister Emily drew this wonderful family portrait for us in honor of Michael's brave battle with cancer.  The portrait of Michael is based off of one of the last pictures we have of his charming smile.  The rest of the portrait is based off a family picture we took last summer shortly after Michael completed his cancer treatments.  We are so grateful he's still with us and thriving!

Sarah, Whitney and Spencer finished school last week, so summer vacation has officially begun!  We're enjoying our Memorial Day weekend with Liz's parents here in town.  They were originally planning to come last month for Liz's birthday but at the last minute they had to change their plans.  They've been a tremendous help around the house and with a couple of home projects.

My brother ate my homework!

This is the last week of school for our kids.  Sarah has a big report due on Monday about sea turtles and we've been trying to encourage her to get it done early so she doesn't have to worry about it.  She managed to get it done a week ago, but the other day Michael found it on the floor.  In a blink of an eye he managed to rip it to shreds and start eating it!

It's a hand written report, so it's not a matter of simply printing off a new copy of it.  What's Sarah going to say to her teacher on Monday?  That her brother ate her homework?  We managed to gather together all the pieces Mikey hadn't digested and taped the report back together as best we could.  We emailed the teacher to let her know what happened.  If Sarah was in high school or college she'd probably want to rewrite it, but for a first grade report we're calling it good enough.

Sarah's repaired report...almost as good as new!

Mikey's funny that way when it comes to eating.  He still mostly eats bread, cheese, and milk.  Even in nursery at church they give him all kinds of crackers and raisins and he'll barely touch them.  But when it's coloring time and they bring out the paper and crayons, he quickly starts shredding the paper and stuffs the pieces in his mouth.  Oh well, at least he's getting fiber in his diet.

Spencer turned four on Tuesday.  He loves balls and playing with his indoor basketball hoop, but the indoor hoop was getting to small for him.  We found a great deal on an adjustable outdoor hoop, so he was thrilled to receive it for his birthday. 

Spencer testing out his new hoop

Spencer's gumball cake

"I wish for...more gumballs!"

Happy Birthday Spencer!

 Spencer's been going through a bit of an identity crisis lately.  Whenever we call him Spencer he always corrects us by saying, "I'm not Spencer, I'm Peter Pan."  Or "I'm daddy".  Or "I'm baby".  Or someone else.  Sarah went through the same phase when she was Spencer's age with Disney princesses.  The other day when we asked him to clean up a mess he'd made Spencer told us "I'm not Spencer, I'm a grown up".  When we asked him why he was a grown up he said, "Because grown ups don't have to clean up!"  We got a good laugh about that one!  I wonder what he thinks we do all day and especially at night after he's in bed.

At school last week Whitney got to say the pledge of allegiance over the school's PA system with a few of her classmates.  One of them, a boy who hasn't been very nice to her, showed up late.  The other kids didn't want to make room for him, but Whitney invited him to come stand by her. 

Later that day there was an awards assembly at school.  Sarah won the academic achievement award.  We're so proud of her for working hard in school!  Whitney didn't win any awards and was feeling a little sad about it.  But after witnessing what she had done for that boy in her class, when Whitney got home from school Liz presented her with the "Kindest Kindergartener" award, complete with a certificate and flowers.

Whitney and her classmates reciting the pledge of allegiance

Sarah wins the academic achievement award

During Michael's vision therapy appointment last week the therapist acknowledged that Michael's vision is doing so well that there isn't much left that she can do for him.  Such a tremendous blessing after being mostly blind a year ago!  His vision isn't perfect and never will be, but especially after his eye surgery last December it's doing very well.

We also found a new speech therapist for him down in Denver.  There aren't any speech therapists close to us that have any experience with facial paralysis.  A typical speech therapist gets their face close to Michael's face and repeats syllables over and over (such as as "ba-ba-ba-ba-ba") until he gets the hint and starts repeating them as well.  Well, in Michael's case, that's like a physical therapist walking around and around a paraplegic in a wheelchair until he gets the hint and starts walking.  Michael's facial paralysis renders him physically unable to do certain things, so merely demonstrating those things to him is completely useless.  This therapist in Denver has specific training and tools for facial paralysis, so we're hoping it will make a difference.  It's expensive and it means going to Denver on a regular basis, but if it helps him with his eating, drinking, and speaking, it will be worth it. His first evaluation is in June.

Let's Play Music

Three years ago Sarah started taking music lessons from "Let's Play Music".  It's a great three year program introducing young children to music in fun ways.  Sarah's done very well in it, but there have been times we wondered if she'd ever complete the program.  For example, there's been a lot of driving across town to Miss Emily's house for lessons, so we're grateful to friends who have gone out of their way to take her to lessons when we weren't able to.  Parents have an active role in the program and have to be there for some of the lessons, so we're grateful for babysitters who have watched our other children on days when Liz had to be there with Sarah.  Not to mention the numerous times Sarah got frustrated when she couldn't learn the songs right away and didn't want to practice anymore.  She's such a perfectionist (takes after her parents) and we debated whether it was worth all the backtalk and tears to keep her in music lessons while she's so young and with everything else going on in our lives.

But Sarah stuck with it (as did we), and on Friday night she wrapped up her three years with a recital where she played a song she composed herself to a large gathering of parents and fellow students.  We were so proud of her!

Sarah's recital

Sarah's song is called "Snowflakes".  Sarah's teacher emailed us an mp3 of it a while back so we could hear what it's supposed to sound like.  When Liz played the mp3 for me I didn't know what it was at first and said, "That's a pretty song, who wrote it?"  She gave me this incredulous look and replied, "Sarah did."  "What?! Let me hear that song again!"

Watch Sarah's performance of "Snowflakes"

After the recital we gave Sarah a bouquet of purple flowers--that made her beam!  She also received a song book with all of her fellow classmate's original compositions.  She's trying to learn some of them and is already starting to write more of her own.  Upon seeing the purple flowers Whitney asked Sarah to teach her how to play her song so she can get flowers too!  Unfortunately we don't feel like we have the bandwidth to put Whitney in Let's Play Music, but she is definitely showing an interest in learning to play music and we hope to put her in piano lessons before too long.

Our kids had another snow day on Wednesday, the first day of May.  In the course of one week they went from playing in the snow, to playing in the sprinklers, to playing in the snow again.  That's Colorado for you.

MRI results

Liz took Michael to Children's hospital this morning for his 3-month MRI.  It's clean!  Dr. Foreman was very pleased with the progress Michael is making.  He's actually grown 4 inches since his last MRI 3 months ago.  This is remarkable since there was a good chance radiation was going to wipe out his ability to produce growth hormones.

Also, this last week we've seen him trying to close his eyes!  He mostly does it when he's upset, like when we try to feed him puree's from a spoon.  In the past he could only close them at night when he's asleep, and he's progressed in recent weeks to being able to half-close them when he blinks.  It's great he's still making progress in that department.

He still likes to climb up the stairs whether we're watching or not.  He can do it pretty well for the most part, but he's had a couple of tumbles when he loses his balance.  Fortunately nothing serious.

First winter snow storm

We've had a pretty dry winter with very little snow.  Now that we're halfway through April, we got our first "major" snowstorm last week with almost two feet of snow!  I don't mind the spring snow too much, since I know it will melt pretty quickly.

Tim and Whitney clearing the driveway

Sarah having way too much fun clearing snow off the trampoline

We still haven't figured out what the bedroom arrangements will be in June when our baby girl is born. So we tried a couple of experiments over the weekend.  On Friday night we put all 4 kids in Michael's room.  Michael slept in his crib and the other three slept on the floor.  Spencer lasted about ten minutes before he was sent back to his own room for "disturbing the peace" one time too many.  Otherwise the night went pretty well.  On Saturday night we tried having the three older kids sleep in sleeping bags on the floor in the basement rec room.  They've always wanted to go "camping" down there and had a ball.  There are a lot of toys down there, so this was the scene I found when I went to check on them this morning.

This Thursday Michael has an MRI on his brain and spine down at Children's Hospital to check on the status of his tumor.  We're praying for good news!

Hazel's Birthday

Yesterday Michael's friend Hazel celebrated her second birthday.  Hazel is just a few months older than Michael, has the same cancer as Michael, and was diagnosed a few months before Michael.  We met Hazel and her family last year at Children's Hospital while Michael was recovering from his first surgery and Hazel her second.  Hazel is such a sweet little girl and comes from a wonderful family.  We're so grateful to know them.  Sadly, Hazel's cancer has returned, so her birthday party was both a wonderful and a sobering event.  She and her family are always in our prayers.

At the party we visited with two other ependymoma families who are also being treated at Children's Hospital in Denver.  Tanner and Natalie were both diagnosed at a very young age.  Tanner is now a teenager, and the Tanner Seebaum foundation founded by his family has brought millions of dollars into Children's Hospital to help fund pediatric brain cancer research.  Michael is very much a beneficiary of his foundation.  Natalie was diagnosed a few months before Hazel and has made a miraculous recovery thus far.  Watching her play and interact at the party she seemed just about like any other three year old.

Thanks for the birthday wishes, Mikey!

Here's a birthday kiss!

Michael's daily physical therapy is really starting to pay off.  This last week he started crawling on his hands and knees a bit more, rather than his usual army crawl.  He also climbed to the top of our stairs all by himself for the first time!  I have to stay behind him in case he loses his balance and takes a tumble.  But for the first time I didn't have to help him or catch his fall even once.  Today he climbed the stairs again by himself, crawled over to Spencer's toddler bed and climbed onto it, pulled himself up to the foot board, and stood there clapping to himself for several minutes.  "Look dad, I'm king of the mountain!"

Special Needs Kid

This is me and Michael today.

The girls are at school and Spencer is sitting next to us finishing up a game on the Nabi.  It's a snowy April day.  I love the snow, even in April.

Yesterday, Michael astounded us by spending most of the day crawling with his arms extended.  For Michael this is nothing short of extraordinary.  We wonder and hope that maybe one day he will walk.

He's able to stand stable for longer periods of time, long enough for me to snap a picture of the boys waving goodbye to daddy in the front window, our daily morning ritual.

We enjoyed a weekend of General Conference for our church.  We set up a "tent" for the kids and had all sorts of games, activities and treats while we watched the beautiful inspirational messages from the worldwide broadcast on television.  Our kids love this weekend and are always disappointed in only comes every 6 months.

Mikey found a balloon to bounce around and play with

The kids having a relaxing morning

Although Michael is making progress, his needs are still sky-high and each day presents numerous challenges.  He is still on anti-nausea medicine everyday and even with that will vomit every once in a while, like last night at dinner.  He eats poorly and we have to spoon feed him at least a couple of times a day to make sure he gets adequate calories and nutrition.  Several times a day he becomes exhausted or doesn't feel well and needs to rest in our arms.  He is prone to accidents and falls, especially as his interest in things around him increases.  We have to keep a hawk's eye on that little guy.  And as I mentioned last post, communicating with him is very difficult.  His physical challenges make it seem like he is a special-needs 12-month-old, rather than a 21-month-old.  Nevertheless, despite it all, we feel so blessed everyday we have with him.