Moving On

Sick of Being Sick

2012-01-21T12:16:00.001-05:00

Shayna's been sick, I've been sick, Nahum's been sick, both kids have been sick, I've been sick again twice, both kids have been sick again, and Nahum went to Austin, TX for a week. We've had 3 types of cold/flu, Shayna's had 3 ear infections, and Elijah's getting over a viral pink-eye. We're all finally starting to get better. Shayna and I are well and will go to a birthday party today while Nahum stays home with Elijah as his eyes were just slightly gunky this morning.

Needless to say, I've been exhausted and, while many amazing things have happened, I've only had to energy to watch in amazement and wish I had the energy to write. Here's a video of the most amazing thing of all: Elijah learning to walk during his 11th month of life on his own.

I hope to do a real update in the next week once I've recovered from caring for sick kids.

Watching Elijah

2011-12-04T09:18:00.001-05:00

It is an absolute joy to watch Elijah and I have been fascinated by him these last three months more than I am normally. He is learning and doing so many new things each day. He picks up a new skill one day, practices it and the next day has incorporated it smoothly into his repertoire of play.

12/25/09

When Shayna was Elijah's age (9m 4w), it was Christmas day and our 2nd full day home from the hospital post transplant. I was finally feeling like we had a normal child but I was still terrified of medicine time. When I recall that time, this is the picture I think of. I had just collected the clean laundry from the basement with Shayna, carrying them both upstairs in the basket. I never noticed before but that yellow piece of paper on the floor is her daily medicine schedule that'd I'd been discharged from the hospital with. At the time, just that smile was an amazing miracle to see.

With Elijah, I've been able to watch a baby who can solely focus on discovering his world because his daily needs are always being met and there is little question of survival. Learning to feed himself at 7-months to now refusing to let me feed him at all. He figured out how to tip a sippy cup up to get more water in only 2-3 days. Scooting to crawling to crawling away and getting stuck under things. He crawled under a friend's coffee table to get a toy and got stuck. He crawled under his crib to explore a box and got stuck. Most recently, he crawled down the grassy hill in front of our house to our neighbors' yard and under their car just to see what was was there and got stuck.

10/22/11

12/4/11 (car noted above is not in this picture)

10/21/11

I like it when he tries to take toys from his sister because he's so passive when she takes things from him. I can only remember 2 times when he's yelled about toy taking. Usually, he just finds something else with which to play. He longs to be fast enough to play with her. I can easily see them chasing each other around the house in a couple months as he already tries so hard to run after her. They recently found a game they can play together: crawling between the couches chasing each other. The carpet keeps thing from getting too slip and the crawling slows her down a bit.

10/9/11

We finally had to put the plants up high because he had taken to crawling over to them, looking one of us in the eye as we said, "no", then digging a fist full of dirt out of the pot and stuffing it into his mouth. He likes to do this outside too except he's a little pickier as he'll dig out a pile of loose dirt before selecting the tastiest looking specimen. My favorite is when he finds dirt clods to chew on. I'll have turned my back for two seconds and the next thing I know he has a clay-coated mouth and smile.

His walking has progressed from wanting both hands held to only one. Last Tuesday he took his first steps on his own but still prefers to hold our hands to walk. What he really wants to do is run and as he just can't on his own he flatly refuses to walk without assistance by sitting and yelling in protest.

10/28/11

He loves the water and shows no fear. A recent trip to the pool which has a wide ramp entrance had him crawling into the water up to his eyes when I would fish him out and put him back at the top only to watch him do it again. If I run a bath in either house bathtub, he stops whatever he's doing, listens, scrambles to the side of the tub, and squawks in delight at the great treat we have obviously created for him.

Most of all I like his smile. It lights up his whole face and lights up the room. It's one more way I can see how he enjoys everything in his life and it's a joy to watch him live.

11/26/11

Happy 2nd Liver-versary

2011-12-01T15:30:00.001-05:00

It's actually the 3rd Liver Day for Shayna since it seems like one should count transplant day as the first. Last year it was easy to remember that night I spent holding my feverish (due to meds) baby girl before her father and her would be linked in the most unusual way: a shared liver. This year so many good things have happened that the memory is starting to take on the fog of time. She's also growing up as each day makes it harder the see the baby and more evident of the beautiful little girl coming into her own.

Here's this year's liver postcard. I sent the first batch out Tuesday and will be sending more tomorrow. If you don't get one in the next week and want one let me know.

The back says:

"December 1st marks 2 years since transplant and Shayna is doing wonderfully well. This latest year of healthy living has brought many new things to Shayna's life. In February, she got a baby brother whom she adores. In the spring, she went to Israel to meet Saba, Savta, and the rest of her Israeli family for the first time. She spent many happy hours at the park with Saba and the beach with Aba and still talks about playing with her cousin Ben. This summer she learned how to peddle a bike and now enjoys riding in circles in our garage. She stated pre-school in the fall and is making many new friends.

Some things have stated the same. Shayna still loves to swing, the higher the better. On warm fall afternoons we still like to feed the ducks at the duck pond. Saturdays still bring our ritual farmers market visit with running, playing, climbing, and tasty treats.

Life continues to be good for Shayna and the rest of her family. We hope this celebratory note finds you near the end of another beautiful, healthy year as well.

Much love,
Shayna, Patricia, Elijah, and Nahum"

Facebook has some fun Thanksgiving pictures and here's a great video to show you just how much life explodes from Shayna.

First Parent-Teacher Conference

2011-11-08T19:21:00.002-05:00

We had our first parent-teacher conference for Shayna today. We heard about how Shayna developed from a shy kid with a constant deer-in-the-headlight look to someone who is helping bring out the goofy side of another shy kid who has been there a year longer. The teachers are still working on getting her to stay with tasks to the end (eg. painting for 4-5 minutes instead of 2 brush strokes, putting the "work" back on the shelf exactly as she found it for the next "friend"). One of her favorite things to do is clean so she's dusting the shelves frequently, scrubbing the walls, tables, and chairs, and was even caught polishing her friend's belly. They said she's quite a little ball of energy. They try to get the little ones out early so they can run around the big grassy yard before the big kids are out for recess because, when they don't, Shayna will run laps around their little wood-chipped play yard. We also were told they have never seen a child get dirtier than Shayna. "You guys must think we lay her down in the dirt and roll her around." And she does look like that most days but it's how I measure how much fun her day was. The dirtier she is, the more fun she had. It was nice to just sit with Ms. Elise and Ms. Nancy for half an hour talking about our great girl.

Elijah had his 9-month appointment yesterday. He weighted in at 25.5lbs (98%-ile), is 29" tall (75th-ile), and has a 18.75" sized head (95%-ile). His favorite thing to do it jump on the bed with Shayna (while I hold him around the middle) and walk around the house holding someone's fingers. His crawling is getting much faster and he's even started letting go of things to stand on his own. He only lasts 2 seconds before he falls on his bottom and he's only done it 3 times but I'm so proud of him. My walking bet is for Thanksgiving as he's still quite wobbly.

Halloween was fun. Shayna loved getting candy from everyone but promptly forgot about it once I put her bucket up. Shayna used some of the sugar energy to push Elijah around the house in their little car.

Last week we had a great visit from Grandma Kathy and Grandpa Joe (my dear friends from Pueblo). We all loved having them. They're the easiest people to get along with, helped a ton with the kitchen, and played with the kids all day so the kids worshiped them and I got a mini vacation. I took Elijah over to Kathy after feeding him and he about leaped out of my arms to get to her. Shayna asked for 2 days after their visit, "when is Grandma Kathy coming back?" Here's some pictures from our duck pond outing.

Triathlete

2011-11-05T10:38:00.001-04:00

I finally did my first triathlon since getting married and having kids on October 9th. It was a little sprint down in Richmond, VA that I went to sans family but with the triathlon group I'd been training with. It was an exhausting trip but in a self sufficient way not a mom way and that made for a wonderful change. The event itself was great. 400m outdoor pool, snake swim (my first), 11mi bike over rolling terrain, and a 5k run through neighborhood trails including a little pond and forested area. The swim was wonderful as almost all swims are for me. One person passed me and I passed a few people but didn't knock into anyone and no one knocked into me. The bike was cold in the shade of the tall trees and my hands went numb (need to work on my position) so I pretended I had tri-bars for a mile or so while they regained feeling. It was more painful than anticipated but that helped my run just by making me look forward to it. I had been most intimidated by the 5k but it ended up being enjoyable and I jogged the whole thing. It wound downhill to a trail going around a pond, though a forested area to neighborhood streets back up the hill to the grass field finish. The little hills were painful at first but easy to handle by the end and I made 2 of my major goals for the event: jogging the whole run and doing it in under 1hr30min.

Event Time Rank of 351
Swim 7:58 65
T1 1:15 60
Bike 41:37 204
T2 1:15 178
Run 35:48 314
Total 1:27:50 238

I'd like to find 2 sprints and an olympic to do next summer but have a long way to go to be in that kind of shape to make them fun and to not make the training be a strain on the family. Luckily, I've got all winter to work on it and have already started. I've just been doing weights twice a week for 3 weeks but have already noticed a difference when I rough housed with Shayna this morning. It used to be difficult to throw her around. This morning I was finally able to have fun with it making both of us happy.

The other thing I like about triathlons: It brings out the deeply hidden extrovert in me. I love talking to all the other people around me. I wore my CU tri shorts so met another CU grad who studied Aerospace Engineering at the same time I was in the Civil Engineering program. We even graduated the same year and are both now stay-at-home moms.

I'm in the middle with the gold cap. There were only 3 other adults in our group. The kids were 10-15 years old.

Finishing strong.

Watching the kids come in off the bike with one of the coaches Kelly (the lady who reminds me of Tristen) and her 8yo daughter Molly.

Sept 12 - Oct 8

2011-10-10T20:16:00.001-04:00

We had a little liver excitement last month with high numbers the Monday after my last post (9/12) that prompted a flurry of activity in preparation for a liver biopsy incase they didn’t come down by Thursday. Luckily, they did begin to trend down. However, I was also able to get a biopsy schedule in Roanoke the following week so we wouldn’t have had to drive to Pittsburgh. While we didn’t have to use it, I now know that it can be done in Roanoke and how to make that happen. Her numbers have continued to come down in the following weeks so I’m hopeful we won’t have to make use of that knowledge this year. I also learned to trust my Ima-instincts a bit better again as Shayna had seemed sick to me without having runny nose, fever, etc and fighting a bug can easily make her liver numbers spike. While my observations were written off, I believe I was right as she started acting normal again the Wednesday after the spike and the numbers started coming down on their own.

School continues to go well for Shayna. She always talks about the kids there, can name them all, and point out their parents. She’s taught the other girls how to run then fling themselves to the ground in a pretend fall ensuring that she always comes home covered in dirt from head to toe. (We have to empty her shoes of sand everyday before getting in the car.) I’m glad she plays hard and enjoys herself but I do worry a little that she’ll actually hurt herself one day. Her favorite friends seem to be ZZ and Elijah. It’s fun to hear from the teachers about her activities. She seems to be as much a leader as she is a loner. One minute she’ll be in the thick of things instigating the game they play then she’ll casually drift out by herself to watch some other group play or sit in the sand box for a bit. I hope she can hold onto both talents as she gets older.

I found a 12” girls bike at a yard sale 2 weeks ago (along with a tag-along, baby bike seat attachment, mini-bouncy castle, a little tikes car, and a peddle-less push bike). The closest thing to a bike/trike Shayna’s ever ridden in a little Radio Flier, steerable scooter so peddling was something she’d only seen others do. I introduced the bike to her last week and on day two she’d gotten the hang of it already. She now goes in circles in the garage without needing any help. Here’s a video from day two.

Elijah’s been working on a few things too. He tripled the number of teeth in his mouth in a week. On Tuesday September 20 he got the front left two teeth and on Friday the top right two popped in. We went through a week last week with the least amount of drooling and hand chewing I’ve seen in months; however, he’s started back at it this week and I think I can feel two more lumps on the bottom. Poor baby.

On a happier note, Elijah can now crawl to any room in the house. He’s even disappeared on me a few times. I’ll put him down in the living room and the next thing I know there’s no baby to be seen as he’s gone around the corner into the guest bedroom or something. He can even get across the slippery wood floor to look for food scraps under the table or high chair. (He’ll do this right after I feed him sometimes as if it just needed some “seasoning” to be acceptable.) There’s a nice video of the crawling progression on my youtube site mrsarava (plus a few other newish ones of the kids).

Elijah also LOVES to walk while holding my hands. Every time I go to set him down, he goes stiff as a board and grabs for my hands. He can go from one end of the house to the other like that now; though it takes like 5 minutes. He’s nowhere near being able to walk on his own but that doesn’t keep him from trying. Last week he was pulling himself to standing at the couch, would turn around and let go with both hands only to collapse to the floor each time before he could even get his food raised. It was pretty cute.

Sept 26: Elijah proving that nothing is safe anymore.

Pumpkin fairy Shayna with a swimsuit hat.

Sept 30: Scavenging for crumbs. (Does he look under nourished?)

Shayna loves to pretend to clean.

Oct 1: Playing together on a rainy day.

I’ve put more pictures on facebook under September 2011, Rosh Hashanah, and a couple new ones are under Mobile Uploads also.

Breakfast for Two

2011-09-10T20:55:00.003-04:00

I now have to make breakfast for both my kids as Elijah is up to 2 solid meals a day and has been demanding breakfast be one of them. He's always been a quiet fellow, but his new squawking scream that indicates a demand for something rivals Shayna's volume. He'll play for a few minutes in the morning then announce that breakfast should be served in that manner. I set him in his chair (usually a high chair) and he stuffs his little face (usually cheese on toast and banana pieces for breakfast). It was fun today to put both their cheese on toasts in the toaster together for the first time ever this morning.

Elijah turned 7-months 4 days ago. He can push himself to standing on the edge of the pool, can go from sitting to his belly and back to sitting, and is getting much better at feeding himself (over half the food now makes it into is mouth).

He loves moving and splashing in our little 8" deep, blowup pool so pushing on the side to standing became a favorite game a week ago. Unfortunately, we're still a few weeks away from learning how to go from standing to sitting so I have to rescue him before his feet slide out from under him.

His main mode of transportation is rolling with a very little bit of rocking-crawlposition-slither. 3 days ago he popped back to sitting after getting the toy he was after. I'm still amazed to look over at him and see him sitting 5 feet from where I left him sitting but he's still a little frustrated that he can't actually crawl. He gets a little over ambitious/excited and tries to crawl only to have his hind quarters flip him onto his back which produces one of his lovely squawks in frustration.

A week and a half after Shayna started school, she stopped crying when I had to leave her each morning. She had to give me three separate follow-me-to-the-door hugs the first 3 times, but then she'd turn around to go play in her classroom with the other kids. She's bring home new songs and talking about the kids at school (only good things so far). She and Elijah (2yro at school not brother) have endeared themselves with the office staff as they like to wonder together, checking out all corners of the school. Her first school picture day was Wednesday and I'm a little over excited to see the result. As a result, I'll probably order to many and mail one to everyone I know.

Shayna's liver numbers went down for a while but went back to fluctuating. However, the EBV load in her blood seems to have stabilized so we got to give up the Valcyte. Yay! Valcyte is not a good drug to be on for an extended period (years) and she's been on it for almost 1.5 years. We'll do just liver labs again on Monday and hope for the best.

Elijah has had no more SVT episodes. We continues to increase his Flecanaide dosage as he gets bigger (24lbs now) and we still see that extra delta wave on the EKG. At around 2-2.5 years, as he can communicate verbally more, we'll start weening him from the Flecanaide (allowing him to out grow the dose) and see if anything happens as a lot of these tend to go away on their own.

I did my longest jog so far of 31 minutes and it was actually enjoyable too. It's still hard and my birthing muscles can feel the effort but it's lovely to find pleasure in jogging again. I hope to do my first 5K in November. I'm still having Becca (our nanny that went back to Michigan) withdrawal but it's getting better. Most of it is just having another adult around the house 1/2 the time and someone to share daily kid raising stories and questions with. She'd be proud because I'm actually keeping the kitchen relatively tidy in her absence. I'm taking Hebrew III at Tech Tue/Thur afternoons. It's going to be our most challenging semester because 2 of the other students have 1 Israeli parent each and a 3rd has spent a lot of time in Israel. I haven't lived up to the extra push so far but I am enjoying it anyway as I still study more than I did.

Nahum's astronomy class of 640 students is going well and he's still loving it. He'll be in DC next week for a NASA proposal panel. He's been doing great at going to the gym regularly. He notices the regular exercise helps him focus better at work plus he feels better all the time in general.

Tomorrow, my dad Michael is doing 70.3 Championship Triathlon in Henderson, UT and they have athlete tracking! I miss living in Boulder where he dose a few triathlons each year as I could come watch so I'm excited to have the athlete tracking tomorrow. I can almost feel like I'm there with him that way. (http://ironmanllv.com bib#1739)

Follow this link for more Facebook pictures of the kids: August 2011. And if you go to my youtube channel mrsarava you'll find a couple new videos as well.

First Day of School!

2011-08-23T09:42:00.000-04:00

Elijah and I dropped Shayna off at her first official day of preschool at Tall Oaks Montessori. It's only half days so I think it'll be perfect for all of us. I thought I might cry a little but I was actually grinning all the way home. I get so much joy out of every little step she takes in growing up.

Breakfast of Champions: Tomatoes (from Gray and Lynn's garden) and bacon.

Shayna playing with Ms. Elise on her first official day. Elijah's in the background checking things out too.

She's so smart already matching the shape to its slot.

Elijah's news: Teeth! The first one (bottom right) finally broke the surface Sunday and the second (bottom left) broke the surface yesterday. Yesterday was his worst day by far and last night he woke 3 times (usually it's 6pm-5am then back to sleep until 7am). Poor baby. He's also on his way to crawling as he started pulling himself to hands and knees and rocking this weekend. Saturday he could only hold the position for 1-2 seconds before his legs gave out, Sunday it was 2-3 seconds, and yesterday it was a whole 5 seconds. Will I get an early walker too? I hope so as he's not quite 7-months-old but he's closing in on 24lbs!

Elijah enjoys free reign over the toys while Shayna's at school.

Pittsburgh: Part II

2011-07-24T19:37:00.000-04:00

So, we obviously made it home; though, it was after 7pm by the time we pulled into the garage. We bathed the kids and put them to bed. Elijah and I promptly got colds from the endeavor but Shayna was her usual perky self.

We made it to her last day of swim class the next morning. She did so well and we had so much fun that I signed us up for the second session. She's getting more comfortable on her back and is getting more bold when picking stuff up off the bottom of the pool as she'll put her chin and mouth in the water now. It's been great working with her in a learning with teacher introduced games environment.

The following Monday, we fed the ducks at the VT duck pond. Nahum joined us from the office and we both marveled at Elijah's reaction to his first duck feeding session. His eyes were glued to the 30 or so ducks bobbing in the water or waddling near by hoping to catch some crumbs. For half an hour, his little brow was wrinkled and his eyes fixed in concentration. I'm learning this is his usual reaction to new places and things. I moved him from the living room to the breakfast nook so he could watch me make dinner. He didn't touch his toys for 20 minutes while he took in everything from the new vantage point. Today Nahum held him while I put toppings on the pizza and he was fascinated. Life is such a puzzle but he's bound and determined to figure it out.

Elijah and I slept and recovered while I got back into the swing of regular life. I got to the pool 4 times for some short but mentally refreshing workouts. The only one I missed was Wednesday when I got two late message from Shayna's transplant coordinator just as I was driving to swimming. I had to turn around in the parking lot and come home to administer some new meds for Shayna. The final results of the liver biopsy had come in. She's in rejection again. It's extremely mild and only effecting bits of the liver, but nonetheless it is rejection. She gets a small, daily dose of the steroid prednisone to fight the rejection with pecid and nystatin to keep some of the side effects in check. I've finally introduced chocolate milk into her life to help her swallow two extremely bitter prednisone pills. (Michael, do you remember the battle we had to get her to take prednisone after she was first released from CHP?) The first two days she bit them a bit while I encouraged her to drink her juice and swallow not chew. She did this little spastic quiver after each bite. Yesterday I introduced chocolate milk hoping it would coat better. Today I think she actually swallowed the pills without biting. I'm still amazed she let me pop them in her mouth after the first time. She just dutifully opens and tries to swallow as instructed. She's also learned to swish the nystatin around in her mouth before she swallows, per the bottle's instructions. It's pretty cute how into swishing she gets.

On our first stop of the drive home from Pittsburgh. I bribed Shayna to sit still while nursed Elijah with a lolly pop. I was going to the car to get the bobby to nurse under this tree when I looked back to check and saw how cute they were so grabbed the camera too. You can see a bit of Elijah's furrowed brow look here as he tries to figure out what Shayna's eating and how he can best get some too.

Chilling out and watching the umpteenth episode of Curious George to survive the drive. Her dog is under her foot in the cup holder.

Pittsburgh Mad Dash

2011-07-21T21:38:00.000-04:00

Last week, the kids and I drove to Pittsburgh on Tuesday for a Wednesday biopsy then drove back home Thursday. It was an emotionally and mentally draining experience (main reason I haven't written). During medical things like that, I always live in this heighten state to that I can deal with and move smoothly through any situation that might arise.

Wednesday the 6th labs came back with another spike so Thursday afternoon at 10 minutes till 5pm (I was on my way to the swim meet) I got an email from Meredith, Shayna's transplant coordinator, that the doctors want her to have a liver biopsy. I was proud of myself for not freaking out about having to wait until Friday to start making plans when all the offices opened again. We initially tried to schedule it in Roanoke but never could get Interventional Radiology to answer the doctors questions so Monday we made plans for a mad dash trip to Pittsburgh. A couple calls to friends there and we had a place to stay and someone to watch Elijah Wednesday. Yet again, I went into something rough feeling blessed and fortunate.

We left just after 9am on Tuesday and got to the Hertzmans' just after 5pm. (The Hertzmans' were the family that made Pittsburgh home-ish and Shayna's first birthday a party.) Shayna took to Adam right away, following him around and playing with him on the play set in the back yard. She loved all the new toys as Monica and Adam have two older boys, Noah who's 9 and Jonah who's 7. Noah even let Shayna have his room for two nights while he bunked with his brother so I didn't have to share the guest room with both kids.

Wednesday morning, I had both kids at Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh (CHP) at 6:28am, a whole 2 minutes early and I have never even been on time with both kids in tow to anything before that. Our friend from Blacksburg Katie, who moved to Pittsburgh a year ago, showed up at 7am to get Elijah. Her two kids (5yrs and 3yrs) stayed home from summer camp to "help" her take care of "baby Elijah." (It was fun to hear about their learning experiences afterward. (They were shocked to see that Elijah mainly easts milk, where it comes from, and that they once nursed just as Elijah does.)

My time with Shayna went amazingly well. She asked for water a couple times in the morning but didn't complain when I told her she could have any because "it would make it hard for the doctors to look at [her] liver." She talked and played with everyone that came in our door and even got tossed in the air a bit by one of the doctors. We were in the procedure room right on time (another first) and an 1 1/2 hours later I was sitting by her side as she slept in recovery. She whimpered when she eventually woke, asked for milk but was happy to settle for juice, then she climbed into my arms. She whimpered a little again, I said, "you feel weird don't you? It's okay because Ima is going to sit here and hold you until you feel better." The after effects of anesthesia can be quite disorienting for kids which is why Shayna usually screams afterward, but that statement seemed to appease her. For the next 1 1/2 hours, I held here while she drank juice and we watch a movie. Then she was Hungry. She ate French toast, a mango, and 1/2 a cup of blueberries that I had brought and 3 chicken tenders with ranch dressing from the cafeteria and drank lots of water. At the end of our 4 hours of "laying still", Shayna went to the play room and happily played with a volunteer while I pumped. Her friendliness and go-with-the-flow attitude amazed me all day. We had another 2 1/2 hours of waiting around at the hospital before her ultrasound appointment that afternoon so we ran and shrieked and tickled and laughed all over. She even made a little friend. The ultra sound went smoothly and she happily walked out with 5 new stickers. It was a 10 minute drive in but a 30 minute drive home since were were leaving just when rush hour was starting.

It felt so good to just lay in the grass for half an hour while Shayna played on the play set at the Hertzmans'. After Katie brought me Elijah, we got to talk a bit while I flopped around getting the kids to bed. It was wonderful to speak with a normal adult after spending all day with a 2 1/2-year-old and lots of medical staff. I managed to finally get them to sleep late again then got ready for driving the 325 miles back home the next day after our morning clinic visit. The thing that kept me from losing my mind: Adam washed all of our various plastic containers, sippy cups, and bottles.

The next morning we saw Dr. Sindhi who said the ultra sound looked great (no flow issues of bile or blood) and the early results for the biopsy showed no rejection; though, testing would continue for the next few days including looking for viral attacks. We met our new transplant coordinator Meredith who is very nice and shaping up quite nicely to be a good transplant coordinator. She doesn't answer questions as directly and concisely as Alice did but she shows promise there. The other important thing is attitude when reacting to parents' questions, not reacting to our questions like they're silly and juvenile, and she has a Great attitude.

Here's some pictures but I'll have to finish the story another day.

Making friends: She and Ava played for 1/2 an hour while us moms got a break.

Sharing stickers.

Elijah became a sitting baby that week. He was still tippy on Monday, could sit for 10-15 minutes when not tired on Tuesday, and could pick things up without falling over on Wednesday. I was blown away by how quickly his skill improved.

Playing with Katie on the floor at the Hertzmans'.

Listening to Noah play. She loved it. I hope she remembers these things and wants to play a musical instrument some day.

Waiting Out the Storm

2011-07-17T09:45:00.001-04:00

This was written last Thursday July 7^th. I wanted to get it posted so it will be in the blog book I order.

Started: 5:20pm

It’s Thursday night again and I’m at another swim meet. Unfortunately a thunderstorm is also at the meet so we’re on hold and hiding in our cars (it’s an outdoor pool). We can swim in the rain but not the lightning. Best case we’ll still swim but only do 2 events (50yd back and breast) and skip the 3^rd (100yd free). I’m a little sad about it as I miss so much Shayna and Elijah time to come to the meets but I’m still hoping we swim as I’m curious what my times will be since I did both events at the first meet of the season. Did I get any better?

Shayna went to the dentist today for another a-okay check up. As a bonus, she didn’t cry the whole time this time. In fact there was only one moment of tears and a few moments of whimpering. The chair laying back is what freaked her out the most. We found out she’d cut her first two (lower) 2yr molars. They’re each about 2/3 visible.

I went with her to gymnastics class for the first time Saturday morning. (Becca had gone with her twice before.) The main thing she’s learning there is how to follow instructions. There’s different obstacle or balance courses set up, the kids (and parents) have to sit and listen to the instructions, then we go through the assignment together. We started out on the tumble track (a 4’x50’) trampoline that ends at the foam pit. She had to hop down the track (not run like she knew how to do), hop (or get dropped for Shayna) into the foam pit, climb out, step onto a block-pad, hop off the other side (about 6”-8” drop), crawl through a tunnel, get boosted onto a 30” wedge mat, and do a summersault down. I was most impressed with the jumping down as I hadn’t seen her do that before on her own and land on both feet without falling. The summersault is assisted: “hands on the ground, look at your belly button, and over you go.” She seems to enjoy herself and practicing the new challenges so I think it’s okay to keep going.

Elijah celebrated 5 months of breathing air for himself yesterday by being extra cranky. I think he’s finally (after 2 months of drooling) cutting his first teeth. When I put orajel on his gums and give him a dose of acetamenophin, he’s back to my happy baby for the next 4-6 hours. His daytime sleep is finally starting to level out as he’s been preferring to be away for 1 ½-2 hours at a time instead of the 1hr he’d been sticking with since birth. He rolls over like a pro (both ways) these days.

5:40pm: It’s raining but not pouring yet and I can hear thunder.

We started late (6:30) with no warm ups and I only swam the 50 back and breast (there was a 100 free that I skipped). It was fun as usual, both the people and the swimming; though, my times were only so-so. The back was basically the same because I kept stroking under/running into the lane line. The breast event felt good and improved a lot from the beginning of the season.

Elijah loves him some Sophie. He gets so excited when we show him Sophie. His hands and arms flap wildly as he tries to grab her as quickly as possible.

Shayna playing a favorite game: "Where's Shayna?"

Shayna helps Nahum cool off after a workout.

My Daughter the Swimmer

2011-06-30T21:19:00.000-04:00

So that whole swim class thing is kind of fun. We pay attention to the teacher about half the time and work with Shayna on my own or just let her do whatever she wants the other half. We just keep it fun and so far that’s what she’s been having. We received our halfway report cards and Shayna’s “mastered” all the “skills” our teacher Ms. Hannah has taught. Hannah also said she’s going to start looking through the next class’s skills set to see what else we can teach Shayna. We’ve been going back the last two mornings for free swim time after an hour at the park next to the pool. It’s been a lot of fun to play with her in the water, pushing her to the ladder so she can climb out to jump in. She squeals with delight when I push her and let go for half a second before she grabs the ladder, squeals with delight as she contemplates the jump to my arms, and squeals again after I catch her. We do a lot of paddling, kicking, blowing bubbles and grabbing toys from the bottom too. (Since it’s just her and I that’s the best I can do for pictures.) Becca brought Elijah on Monday to join us for free swim. Elijah “swam” for 45min kicking with the cutest little frog kick and hoot/cooing the whole time with pleasure. I’m so happy to have two water babies.

I’ve been swimming a bit myself. I joined the local summer swim league (same one I did last year) so I swim Mon, Tue, Wed & Fri and we have meets on Thursday. Mon-Wed Elijah goes to sleep before I leave, Becca helps on Thursday and Friday, and Nahum puts Shanya to bed each night. I’m pretty exhausted physically and my muscles are still sore everyday (it’s my third week) but it’s wonderful to be doing something again. There is another month of swim team stuff. By then, I hope to be in good enough shape to make doing stuff on my own pleasant. Luckily, if it’s not, I can still do masters swim in the evenings.

Here’s this evening’s riddle: If all my 50yd individual stroke events (fly, free, back, breast) are 3-8 seconds slower than last year, why did I swim the 100IM 3 seconds faster today?

I posted some pictures of the kids on facebook today. Here's my favorite.

Elijah's loves him some sweet potatoes.

He's on the Move...Kind of

2011-06-19T21:26:00.000-04:00

Elijah is rolling back to belly and belly to back. He likes being on both; though, he's been sleeping on his belly for quite some time (I put him there). Here's a video of his latest effort. We also started solids about 3 weeks ago. He likes carrots, banana, prunes, and applesauce. The fruits get him going, "hmmm mmm hmmmm," as he sucks the food into his mouth from the spoon. He does not like green beans or herb chicken. I think the herb was a little much so we're going to try some plain meat tomorrow.

His eyes and actions show more understanding of lauguage because he seems to be responding to things I say like "do you want more?" he'll turn his head and open his mouth if he does. He also knows his name. We also had 3 peepees in the potty today. Each time he got a little fussy so (knowing other things were good) I took his diaper off, popped him on the BBLP and he peed right away. He even grinned at me as I made the cueing noise "psssss" while he went. Most days I'm lucky to be aware enough for one pee so I'm actually proud of both of us.

Nahum is in Germany (Happy Father's Day) so I'm playing almost single mom (thank goodness for Becca). Hannah and Yael came over for an hour this afternoon to help me keep my sanity. Hannah and Shayna played with water both in and out of the pool while Yael and I chatted mom and grown up talk.

Shayna is continuing with her extra clinginess to Ima. She's also playing more intensely with her own baby dolls. We have one she can take in the pool so she's been washing, drying, feeding and hugging it. My favorite though is when she throws the baby on the ground, says, "Oh, poor baby. The baby bonked its head. Come here baby," and she gives it a hug and pat. Here's a video of Shayna pumping milk.

I did today what I said I wouldn't do until she was 3 or 4 and signed Shayna up for a swim class. I always said I thought it was best if they just got the feel of the water regularly and developed their own comfort and familiarity with the water. It's a parent/child one so I'm not drifting too far from my statement. I wanted something that would force us out of the house and this is at the closer pool that doesn't offer free swim till 11am (too late for my early napper). Plus, I'm curious what a "class" like this is like. We start tomorrow. (Elijah will hang out with Becca.)

They both Enjoy watching PBS's Curious George shows.

Watching George together on the couch. Elijah stays up right fairly well...

...but not perfectly. Luckily his sister loves him.

"Where's my dinner, lady?"

Another Beautiful Day

2011-06-12T20:32:00.000-04:00

We've been enjoying lots of kiddie pool time and friends in the week we've been back in Blacksburg. Today was no exception. Shayna, Elijah, and I went over the our friend's house this morning for some pool time. Hannah (almost 4yrs) and Shayna splashed in Hannah's pool and watered all the trees in the front yard while Yael and I enjoyed enjoyed each other's company and baby boys (Noah is 2 weeks older than Elijah and just as cute). We saw Hannah and her dad Fredrick again in the evening with our other good friends Lynn and Gray. We were going to go to a local pond where there are some boat demos going on to take the kids out in the boats and enjoy a pot luck dinner. The weather had other plans so we invited everyone to our house while the thunder crashed and the rain poured. Hannah and Shayna chased each other around the house and jumped on every bed we have while Elijah entertained us with his stories of the day. (That boy is turning into a little chatterbox.)

The trip back from Israel was long but uneventful. The kids were again angels and slept 9hrs of the 11hr flight over the Atlantic. It was a little rougher adjustment but within 3 nights Elijah was sleeping through the night again. Nahum battled Shayna's virus so probably had the roughest time adjusting.

Next week we've got a visit from Grandpa Michael, 2 playdates, 2 doctor's appointments, and a free day I'm hoping Michael and I can use to take the kids to the zoo in Roanoke. I've never been to that zoo and they have a train I think Shayna would get a kick out of.

Meeting up with some Israeli Blacksburg friends whom we miss a lot, the Alkahers.

Shayna manages to find dirt where ever we go.

Shai used to babysit Shayna when she was a couple months old.

Shayna in the midst of her cousins Dan-Dan, Ben, and Yalka. (Shayna's the little green dress.)

Our last Shabat dinner in Israel. Sofi bought all the kids their own little challahs.

Ben reading to Shayna before bed. Shayna wanted used to take Ben home with us. She still talks about him going on the "big, big airplane to visit Shayna's house."

Nahum showing his kids Donald Duck on youtube.

At home, my incredibly talented son has learned to use his hands to get toys to his mouth. I'm such a proud mother.

Enjoying each others company.

My Sweet Daughter

2011-06-02T13:42:00.000-04:00

"It's time to go to the hospital so Monkey can listen to Elijah's vagina," said Shayna as we headed out the door Wednesday afternoon. I love what 2-yr-olds put together. 1) We were going to the hospital and I had attached Monkey (Shayna's stuffed monkey and favorite toy) to the backpack as a comfort item. 2) We listen to Elijah's heart beat regularly as a precaution in case he has a tachycardia episode. Shayna likes to help and listen as well. 3) We had to take Shayna to our local hospital at home for some unrinary tract tests involving a catheter and radioactive dye. She remembers well the catheter and is still talking about "the lady looked at my vagina." (It was not a pleasant experience for the poor child.)

Nahum and Shayna finally got home just after 5pm after a very long, uneventful day at the hospital. The ultrasound of her liver looked good and the liver numbers had gone down. We'll repeat labs on Monday in Virginia and just enjoy the rest of our visit until then.

I was wrong about the spots on Shayna. They've doubled since yesterday but I'm posting a little video of her in the bath post hospital to show you that she's still in good spirits (It's loading right now but if you go to my youtube channel in 15min it'll be there. www.youtube.com/mrsarava. Just sort my videos by date to find it.). She was quite a trouper today and didn't give her Aba any trouble, just the medical professionals. She knew what was happening from the moment she woke up with, "remember we went to the hospital? We have to go back to the hospital and do more labs." She doesn't seem to let it affect the rest of her life as she enjoyed our evening visitors and their little dog then jumping around with me on the deck/patio like it was a normal, fun, toddler day.

Here some pictures of Shayna and Nahum from the beach trip with Yael and Kobi.

Enjoying Socialism

2011-06-02T02:20:00.000-04:00

Shayna got a fever Tuesday morning (that made us cancel our trip to the north) followed by a sparse, full-body rash that afternoon. The fever went down a little by Wednesday but the rash was spreading so after nap time we went to see a doctor.

Schneider Childrens Hopsital is 25 minutes from us, is a quality facility, and was our best bet for getting to see a doctor who can evaluate the situation properly. Israel has a lovely national health care system so the emergency room is not crowded with the uninsured, is a nice place for actual emergencies, and is staffed by quality professionals (unlike the crazy ignorance we've encountered in the states). (Shayna had the best IV insertion I've ever seen.) The rash and fever we now know are probably (cultures pending) from a common virus in the enterovirus family. It probably made it's presence know because Shayna is immunosuppressed but since it could be masking other (bacterial) infections we're doing a round of iv antibiotics. Nahum is currently back at the hospital this morning (we're 7hrs ahead of EST) for a 2nd round of labs and the 2nd round of antibiotics. (I'm at home with Elijah.)

We went AMA last night (and are of course very proud of it). They wanted to admit her for observation in the off chance there was some sort of bacterial infection AND the antibiotics administered weren't doing anything. This means pour sleep for Shayna with the night-time prodding and no sleep for Nahum because of something that is highly improbable. With the hospital so close and sleep so essential for recovery (and good descision making), we took her home. What they were worried about in the night didn't happen. Shayna only had a slight fever this morning and the rash is starting to go down.

With the virus resolving, we'll probably still be Pittsburgh bound when we get home since Shayna's liver numbers are worse than they were the week we left for Israel. We're supposed to get into Roanoke Sunday morning.

Beautiful Israel

2011-05-29T06:48:00.000-04:00

Vacation is a lot of work with two small kids but oh so worth it when you see their eyes light up with a new experience. Okay, Shayna does that mainly. (Elijah lights up when people talk to him but that's pare for his age group.)

We've been enjoying lots of Saba and Savta time at Lea and Dov's complex. There's a playground across the street which Dov takes her to and we play in their swimming pool ever other visit. Shayna walks into their aparment and says one of two things. "Oh, there's Saba Dov," or "Where's Saba Dov?" She reaches up to hold his finger when they walk down the cooridor and he melts each time.

We've been to the beach twice and have two more trips planned. The first time her eyes just about popped out of her head when she spotted the Mediteranean water stretching off to the horizon. In her accessable memory it was the first time she'd seen the sea (we went sailing last summer so she saw and enjoyed it then but that's more a memory in pictures). She loved the waves washing over her feet and the feel of her body when I held her in the water letting the waves float her up and down. Nahum and Shayna built sandcastles until it got cold enough that she was shivering as she dug. At which point she cried as Nahum took her away from the beach to go home. Discovering the world with your 2-year-old is such a beautiful, simple thing. Elijah alowed me to play a little with Shayna by taking a beach nap between two towel, other than that it's not the greatest spot for an infant. This afternoon we'll go meet some friends of Nahum's and their 3 kids at another beach. With more arms to hold Elijah, I hope I can swim a bit.

Beach visit 1.

Burrying her foot and building "sand castles" with Aba.

Can anyone guess what this is?

Beach visit 2.

Elijah was mildy interested but reallly looking forward to his sling nap.

We didn't pack her enough food so she got ice cream for dinner of which Elijah sampled and enjoyed.

We took a 1 1/2 hr drive to the south just outside Beer Sheva to Kibutz Hatsarim to visit Nahum's Aunt Edna (Shayna is named after Edna's mother and Elijah's middle name Yaakov is after her father), her husband Uri, and all of their family. Shayna and Elijah were again traveling saints and Shayna continues to fall right in with whoever we're visiting. She adored playing with the kids. Since her Hebrew understanding is improving, she knew a little of what they were saying but she only speaks in English so they new nothing of what she was said. Still they had a blast. The youngest is 6 so being older they doted on Shayna and she ate it up.

Riding with Uri. She loved that little "motorcycle."

She does that everywhere we go. If Nahum and I are relaxed, she just follows suit and treats the new people like old friends. Her attituded has made visiting with Nahum's brothers' families easy and fun. She has 5 cousins there ranging in age from 10 to 17 and she adores playing with all of them.

Running with Ben. He's played with her enthusiastically since we stepped off the plane.

As long as it's after 6am (we have an earlier riser), it's so fun to hear her door open, her little feet pad into our room on the tile floors, and she says, "it's Ima," or "it's Aba," then climbs into bed to lay between us. She finishes with a, "wanna go to the park?" She loves living so close to two little parks here. The parks are more varied that the cookie cutter ones we find in most places at home and also more challenging so she loves it. She'll also just sit on the swing with one of us pushing her for up to 1/2 an hour.

It's been a delight to watch Elijah develope here as time is measured with a vacation start and end date in place. He has become so much more observant of and fascinated by the world around him. He loves being on his belly and lifting his head to look around. Even his vocabulary of baby noises has exploded and I'm starting to catch onto what some of the noises mean. His most obvious is a little squawky yell that says, "i'm awake. come get me." Then he just lays there and waits for someone to get him. I've never seen such a patient baby and he's been like that since the day we brought him home. If he's not 20lbs yet he will be by the time we get home on his 4-month birthday. Luckily, he's also very strong and the increasing head control makes it easier to carry our little "beefcake" around. He continues to shows no interest in rolling but loves to stand and sit on our laps while he tries to control his heavy head long enough to make eye contact and grin. He can scoot from one end of his crib to the other so there's no more leaving him on elevated surfaces unattended anymore. He's still easily overwelmed by toys (the flashier the freakier) but delights in watching people and all things outside (trees swaying in the breaze, flags flapping).

We both find so much joy in our children that every little thing they do makes us smile, even when it shouldn't. (We also have a sweetly mischevious 2-yr-old.)

Shabat dinner.

Our wonderful tiny bathtub we use as an indoor kiddie pool.

Lag Ba'Omer. Some celebration/holiday where everyone collects wood and makes a bonfire.

Ba'Aretz

2011-05-15T14:17:00.000-04:00

It was a smooth trip after all and we all arrived safely and semi-rested about 4:30pm Israel time (9:30 EST). On the plane, we got a bassinet for Elijah and made a bed for Shayna under the bassinet. Both slept like angels and Shayna didn't scream once. She listened to me when I asked her to be quite when she was starting to fuss each time. Nahum's brothers and their families met us at the airport. What a beautiful site to see family after so long. We ever saw Savta Lea and Saba Dov in the evening.

Our apartment in wonderful. Shayna's sleeping in the bomb shelter room (one comes standard in Israeli construction for each apartment or house). They both are asleep now so we better get to bed ourselves.

Nothing Says, "Ready for International Travel," like, "Shayna Needs a Liver Biopsy."

2011-05-13T13:57:00.000-04:00

I wrote this at 8pm on Thursday May 12, 2011 but blogger was down for maintenance so I'm posting it now.

I've been wanting to do a quick update for while so I'd at least have something recent before our trip to Israel. Well, there's nothing like a little stress to make me want to write. Since I'm short on mental capacity and need to preserve a little for some packing/planning tonight, I'll give a short version of the last 36 hours. Keep in mind, we're planning on leaving for Israel this Saturday.

We did labs with Shayna on Monday. Yesterday afternoon I received a call from her stand in coordinator Nicole, "Shayna's [liver numbers] are elevated. The doctors want her to have a liver biopsy." Luckily, I've learned how to function well in a dead panic. We were able to schedule a biopsy in Roanoke for 8:15am today with a 6:15 check in time. Nahum and I packed the kids into the car at 5:30am and the 3 of us set off on this mornings adventure. Elijah chose today as the day not to sleep well in his car seat but Shayna was an angel with the nurses getting her ready. Once Shayna was out, Elijah and I went to our room upstairs on the pediatric floor so he could nap (a whopping 25 minutes after being up for 3 hours). As expected, Shayna announced her return well before I could see her (that girl has some lungs). (She had to be carried back as she tried to climb out of the crib to escape the nurses and look for me.) This was followed by Dr. O, "We couldn't get the biopsy." He couldn't get a clear enough picture around all the big veins in the portion of an adult liver in a toddler's body and the people with the special ultrasound equipment aren't available until Monday. I then track down Nicole, she works quickly to get us another biopsy appointment for tomorrow (Friday) in Pittsburgh at 10am with an 8:30 checkin. (As I lay out the new plan for Nahum, I am greatly relieved when he tells me he's coming with us.) With the new plan in place, we head home to wait for the LFTs taken this morning with her pre-surgery labs in the hope that they will be better. Halliluiah! All 3 numbers improved enough to cancel the new biopsy, but the 3rd not quite enough to totally get us out of the woods. We will be doing labs again on Saturday morning and packing like we're all going to Israel. The lab results will probably come back as we're driving to the airport or checking in. At that point one of 2 things will happen: 1) the numbers will have continued to improve and we will all happily board the plane. 2) The numbers will be worse. A biopsy will be required. Elijah and I will board the plane and Nahum and Shayna will go back home to go to Pittsburgh Sunday for a biopsy Monday. They will then join Elijah and I later in the week. The airline will move the tickets but will move us to a day that's convenient for them. With just space needed for 2 people, this will allow more flexibility in the date but they would probably come a full week later according to what we learned today.

So, as you can see, our life continues to hold a small bit of excitement. At least Elijah took an unusual 2hr nap in the afternoon so I could nap also.

Besides that Elijah continues to be a beautiful, healthy, smiley baby who adores his Ima and Shayna gets smarter every day.

My wonderful thumb sucker. I love it that he sucks his thumb as it's such an effective self-soothing mechanism.

Check out the mobil. He gets freaked out by it pretty quickly but it's fun to watch him watch it before that point.

We spend a lot of time out side playing with water and a little time peeing in the grass (no pants).

Spring Flowers

2011-04-16T20:43:00.000-04:00

My previously planted tulips are recovering from being twice chomped on by the deer. Almost 1/2 of the flowers survived and another quarter where 1/2 eaten. I'm curious if the half eaten ones will bloom at all and if so what they'll look like. I planted some daffodils and crocuses that spent the winter in the garage (I'd meant to plant them with Shayna last November but the weather got cold and Elijah got big). Today one of the crocuses actually bloomed so there should be several more to come. The daffodils are coming up so they're another garden curiosity. It was a wonderful warm March day when all were planted. It was great to play in the dirt again and is now worth it with the one flower. I've still got a lot of front garden spring cleaning to do but I'm enjoying it all at a leisurely pace.

I got Shayna to play in the dirt with me 2 weeks ago when we cleared a 5'x5' spot in the raised beds and put beet and sugar pea seeds in. Shayna didn't really get the seed part but she enjoyed climbing in and out and using her "little scooper" (a trowel) to move dirt around (she still loves dirt). The seeds have finally started popping up. Since she likes to "walk on the mud" I'm going to wait until they're a little taller and more obvious before I show them to her so she'll be less likely to trod on them (she stays off my flowers quite well when shown where they are). I love watching things grow so I check on it all daily.

Right now Shayna's in bed with a fever, but other than today she's been wonderful. She likes to nurse her stuffed animals when I nurse Elijah. We have 2 boppies so we each have one wrapped around us. She also will carry them over her shoulder while patting their butt/back like I do to Elijah. We set up Elijah's crib and she views it as another place for her to jump. She'll climb up there when I'm changing Elijah's diaper (changing table and crib are back to back) and he watches her in fascination as she jumps around and talks to me. We went swimming for the first since January. It was wonderful to play with her in the water again. She's more hesitant than she was last summer/fall but also more skilled once she relaxes. She blows bubbles and kicks well. Her favorite allowable thing is jumping to me (which is more of a jump than a fall these days) and non-allowable is going down the last 3' feet of the huge slide there (I splash water up it when it's off and she slides down to me until we're told it's not allowed, silly rules). Her monthly lab numbers continue to be good. Her EBV level is at it's lowest since it shot up 2 months post-transplant so we're hoping to drop another med in the near future. We don't know what's wrong today but suspect a virus that's been going around. She got a lot of lap time with both Ima and Aba today to make up for feeling crumby.

Elijah's a growing champ. At his 2-month appointment on the 8th he was above the 98%-ile in head circumference at 14.5", height/length at 25" (2" growth in 1 month), and weight at 15#12oz (6#3oz gain since birth). We weighed him at home this week and he's now over 16.5lb. I was kind of hoping he wouldn't double his weight by 3 months but it looks like I'm gonna have a 19lb 3-monther anyway. He's now in 6-9m clothing. His sleep continues to improve as long as he's not stuffy. The last week was pretty rough as he kept getting stuffy from reflux (he also started spitting up a lot last Saturday so something changed). He wanted to sleep but couldn't breath so started waking at night every 1.5-2hrs by the end of the week and was only napping for 30-45minutes at a time. He didn't want to wake up but if you can't breath you have to wake and do something. He was still relatively smiley and happy even when his voice started to get horse Thursday from lack of sleep (he cries very little). I started nose drops every 2-3hrs yesterday and he slept from 7:30pm-3am, 3:15-6:15, and 6:30-8:30am. He and I were both so much happier today. He even took a 3hr nap in the afternoon. Hopefully the trend will continue with another good night tonight. He loves to talk, coo and smile at anyone near by.

We changed our summer plans from 3 months of work in Israel to 3 weeks of just vacation. We've rented an apartment near Nahum's parents and plan to spend lots of time visiting friends and family and the beach. It got to be too much work for Nahum to coordinate everything such that he would have no time left for his research until June after we were settled and that's too much to sacrifice right now. (They're currently debating whether or not to postpone the fellowship or just take it back and make him apply again for 2 years from now.) As he works all the time (6 days a week anyway), I'm really looking forward to having him around for 3 full weeks.

Here are a few pictures from this month. For some more (including one with me in it), check out this.

April 5: He could almost hold his head up. We're also still in agreement that he looks a lot like my brother Aaron as a baby crossed with some traits from Nahum's father.

Shayna was happily playing with Nahum when I stuck the baby in for a picture.

April 14: Cool dude getting some vitamin D.

Shayna can put her shades on by herself.

It's snowing and blowing

2011-04-02T16:14:00.000-04:00

We were supposed to spend the day outside at the farmers market and international festival (that our friend works really hard to put together every year), but the weather has not cooperated this year (last year was HOT and sunny). Luckily, Shayna's friend Hannah came by to keep us entertain this morning (and her mom Yael and baby brother Noah) and it warmed up enough later for Elijah and I to get out of the house. While Nahum and Shayna napped, Elijah and I enjoyed the festival (it was moved in doors). (Nice work, Jenny!) I enjoyed the outing itself as well. It's so much more relaxed going out with #2, plus he sleeps better even with bumpy sidewalks.

The main excitement in our life has been Elijah and sleep, or lack there of. Last Friday/Saturday he stopped sleeping during the day. Catnaps here and there totaling ~2-3hr and his night sleep was getting worse. Over the week, nights improved (still up every 3-4 hrs but he went back to sleep each time) but the days were the same. After trying all soothing techniques known to man, I began to wonder if we weren't interfering with his sleep by doing them. Sure enough he just wanted to be left alone and now, when tired, all I do is put him in bed, he squawks a couple times then goes to sleep. His longest night stretches are reaching 5-6hrs also. He's turning back into my easy baby again plus he's all smiles at me when awake. He even gave Nahum and I his first chuckles today.

I've gotten too far behind on pictures but here's a few that the non-FBers haven't seen as they're been posted by my phone. I just decided to skip ahead to March as far as updating my FB albums so here y' go.

March 30: Elijah at 7 1/2 wks.

6 Week Marvel

2011-03-22T22:11:00.000-04:00

So we weighed Elijah guessing he'd be around 13.5lb. A hefty size but not abnormal for him. No. He weighed 14.5lb or more than Shayna did at 9 months (post-transplant). We're thinking of taking wagers on when they'll weigh the same and when people will start asking if they're twins. You'd think such a big guy would sleep longer but I just got my first 5hrs of sleep in a row last night. I think it's because he's a lazy eater and tends to drift off once he feels better instead of totally filling up.

On the health status of our "unique" kids: Elijah has had no more episodes and continues the take his medicine like a champ. Shayna's labs on the 8th were great. Shayna is currently battling another normal kid virus, hand, foot, and mouth disease (HFMD). So far it's only been a mild version of it and she still plays a bit and doesn't need a lot of Tylenol or Ibuprofen intervention for either sleep or play. She has been sleeping a lot to kick to bug. It should run its course by the weekend just in time for the sun to disappear behind the coming rain clouds.

I've had some fun cleaning up the garden over the last couple days. It's been nice to work outside in a t-shirt again. Shayna even helped me dig in the dirt.

March 8: A nice domestic shot by Michael.

March 11: Glad my parents aren't sissies as it was 34F with a good wind making it much colder. We all enjoyed getting outside for a very short walk anyway.

March 12: Patricia, Elijah, and Shayna joined Michelle (a former co-worker) in the St. Patrick's day parade for a block. So fun to see her.

March 13: Shayna being cute in her beautiful cowboy and overalls.

While Elijah is being big with Grandpa Michael.

March 21: Shayna's favorite thing to do with Elijah. "Hold Elijah in the bouncy, bouncy chair." As you can see, it's not Elijah's favorite.

Elijah: 1-month and 4-weeks on the same day...

2011-03-10T21:35:00.000-05:00

...just like Shayna was. February's cool like that.

Elijah's 1-month Dr. apt stats: 12#5oz, 23" tall, and 15.25" hc (percentiles: 90/95/90). He does look big. He's also finally starting to get some fat rolls on his arms and he's already in #2 diapers and some 3-6m clothes. It is fun to watch a normally growing offspring; though, I am a little concerned that I'll soon have this mammoth baby to haul around.

Shayna is finally over her ear infections and able to enjoy life. One could easily see she wasn't her normal social, fun self during her birthday party last Sunday and with Grandma Melinda and Grandpa Michael. She's finally starting to really enjoy our two special visitors while they've been a huge help with Elijah. Since Nahum was sick, I wouldn't let him near Elijah but that meant evenings were all me for baby care and boy is that wearing. M&M got dumped with a baby and lots of diaper duty almost from the moment they walked in the door (I think I gave them 5 minutes to put their bags down and say hello).

March 4: Shayna and the big but floppy Elijah (almost 1m)

The next 5 are all Sunday, March 6.

Shayna helps Grandpa Michael make meatballs.

She played in the butter on the pan and supervised the ball rolling.

While Grandma Melinda cuddled with Elijah.

Lots of wonderful friends at Shayna's party. Leslie holding Mara, Ben, Tal, Michal holding Danielle and Ella, and Yael with Hannah.

My first cup cake creation: flowers with marshmallows and colored sugar. Thank goodness for Melinda as she did 14 of the 19 we made so I could nap. It was a simple yet tedious and time consuming job.

Yum-Yum

March 9: Elijah cuddles with Grandpa so Ima can have a break.

Home! Home! Home!

2011-02-28T19:59:00.000-05:00

Shayna and Becca picked Elijah and I up this morning. It was the fastest hospital discharge I've ever experienced. We were home by 11:30, enough time for me to play with Shayna a bit and enjoy lunch with her. It's wonderful how cuddly she is with me. We all took afternoon naps. Afterward, I made dinner for my family. It's wonderful to feel a bit normal again.

Feb 18: Dr. Shayna listens to Elijah's heart.

Reading Ima's Jane Austen book. She loves to take these books off the shelf and "read" them.

Feb 26: Aba and Shayna visit Ima and Elijah at the hospital.

Feb 28: Elijah gets his daily EKG.

Happy Birthday Shayna!

2011-02-27T17:13:00.000-05:00

Happy 2nd Birthday to my little girl! She came with Aba to the hospital again today. We threw rocks in the river and I made the cafeteria staff nervous by throwing her in the air. I love the way her hair flies and she grins right before I catch her. I bought her a cookie just to give her something but we'll be celebrating with friends next Sunday. She loves parties and singing so will be thrilled when everyone sings happy birthday to her.

What a difference a year makes.

Hospital Home into Next Week

2011-02-26T13:53:00.000-05:00

Elijah keeps having SVT episodes; though, they are much less frequent than they were in the first 24hr period. There were 12-14 during that period where the last 3 have been spaced at 11 and 14 hours apart. We need to be 48 hours out from the last one to go home. We're also going to experiment by giving him 5 minutes to get out of the next one on his own. They just upped the dose of Flecainide and we'll also be going home on a beta-blocker whose name I forgot. He'll be on the Flecainide for 6 months to 2 years and we won't know when we stop until we're there. (Usually, the dose is left the same, the kid will just out grow the dose, not have any episodes, and then it's stopped all together.) I don't know how long for the other one, but it seems it just may be a short term thing.

I had an amazing visitor yesterday and today, Shayna. Today Nahum brought her down today. It was his first big outing with her all on his own. Luckily, Becca helped him get set up for today's trip yesterday. Shayna and I threw rocks in the river both days. She was insistent that we go to the river again today. We collect rocks in my jacket pockets, I hold her while she sits on the rail of the footbridge, she throws/drops the rocks in, and we both enjoy the splashes. She enjoyed climbing in and out of the 2 little plastic cars in the regular pediatric area toy room. She also got a lot of stickers as anyone with stickers offers her some. The whole front of her shirt was covered by the time she and Nahum left. We've been able to say hi to a lot of the doctors that treated her when she was a patient and couple of the nurses. We even ran into the pediatric surgeon who'll do Shayna's hernia repair. Nahum, being the wonderful Israeli that he is, asked if the doctor would just look at Shayna now so we don't have to bring her in Monday afternoon for her pre-op appointment. He did! and now we don't have to haul her down to Roanoke except to visit me.

I've got a few pictures and a video but they're all stuck on my camera as the cable is at home so you'll just have to wait till we're home to see my wonderful children.

Paroxysmal Supraventricular Tachycardia (PSVT)

2011-02-24T19:24:00.000-05:00

Paroxysmal: A sudden attack, recurrence, or intensification of a disease

Supraventricular: Located or occurring above the ventricles (the upper 2 chambers of the heart)

Tachycardia: a rapid cardiac rate

You guessed it. More big medical terminology means more hospital fun for the Arav family. Currently Elijah and I are in the Roanoke Carilion Memorial Hospital PICU due to his sudden attacks of rapid heart rate (above 300 in his case). Other than the fact that we're in the hospital and I have to keep smothering my child with bags of ice to get his heart rate back down, we're doing well. I'll try to make a long story short.

Shayna spiked a fever in the night Tuesday so I took her to see Dr. Berry in the morning. Poor child had massive ear infections again, probably originated from last month's. While we're waiting for her antibiotic shot, I notice Elijah is awake yet calm so figure it's a good time to check his heart rate like I'm supposed to 3x a day. 300+ so I grab the doc to listen too and he says, "pack up, we're going to the ER." So I have a miserable, crying Shayna, a baby in PSVT, and Dr. Berry in the front seat directing us through the parking lot to the ER doors. Dr. Berry stays with us for the next 3 hrs in ER directing Elijah's care, which was a blessing beyond belief as Dr. Berry knew what to do, how to do it, and what to monitor when it seemed the ER staff was overwhelmed and lost. Vagal Maneuvers were used every time (3 ER episodes of PSVT) to get his heart rate down, the effective one being a bag of ice pressed to the face and head. Becca came to help with Shayna and eventually took her home once it was clear that I would be allowed to ride down to Roanoke with Elijah. (Shayna spent the rest of the day snuggling on the couch with Becca and watching Curious George or sleeping. She's doing a lot better today.) Since we got to the PICU yesterday afternoon, Elijah's had 8 more episodes so I've become quite a baby-smoothering-with-a-bag-of-ice expert. (It was scary to watch Dr. Berry do it the first time but after he explained what he did to the transport crew so they could repeat it if necessary, it became fairly easy though still a little nerve racking for me to do.)

In Elijah there appears to be an extra electrical circuit that originates above the ventricles that gets stuck in an infinite loop until either a vagal maneuver or iv drugs are used to stop it. (Thankfully the iv drugs were never needed as they could have also stopped his heart (In the ER, he had little shock pads stuck to his front and back just incase he needed the drugs and the drugs stopped his heart, they could shock it back).) Elijah is now on oral meds (flecaninide) 3x a day to control his heart rate. Once he's bigger (20-25lbs), they can take a look inside to see what's wrong if we're still having issues. At the end of the day, there's a 99% chance that he will simply out grow the PSVT around toddlerhood. Until then, we will walk around with a stethoscope and 2 kids on drugs. The good thing about Elijah's condition is it would take 12-24 hours to begin to kill him by just tiring out his heart. This gives us plenty of time to get to the appropriate medical facility without much stress. We should be able to go home Saturday or Sunday.

My day is going well as I got a visitor who brought real food and company. Both beautiful blessings in my current state of living. My friend even got to experience the thrill of 2 PSVT episodes. She also has a good sense of humor so could laugh with me about our current situation. Tomorrow Becca will bring Shayna down for a visit so I can play with her & she can have some Ima time (I really missed holding her yesterday and just being with her in general).

Elijah getting himself to sleep. We've been sharing the extra bed in the room as we both seem to sleep better next to each other.

Settling In

2011-02-16T17:48:00.000-05:00

We did make it home at 6:30 Tuesday evening. I was so happy to see Shayna and she us. She was pretty excited to see Elijah too. After many Ima hugs, she wanted to hold the baby.

We're settling into our new roles and Shayna isn't having too many issues. She's a little whinier than usual but that's about it. She likes to look at, sing to, and hold Elijah. Elijah eats and sleeps well. I occasionally get 3+ hours of sleep in a row, but he also decides that he's going to be awake during the night at times. He's a mellow fellow and is finally starting to relax fully after his NICU experience. (When we first brought him home, he'd cry for every diaper changed and when his feet we touched and got real jumpy with loud beeping things.) Nahum does Shayna's mornings, evenings, and nights and she's switched easily to depending on him. I miss her so treasure my times with her more than ever.

I'm recovering much faster than I did with Shayna. I'm down to only an afternoon nap as of yesterday with added activity. I took Shayna (and Elijah) to gymnastics yesterday (see pics below) and today Becca drove us all to the park near our house (don't think I'll be up for a real walk until next week but the weather was just too beautiful too pass up).

That's all my brain is up for just yet.

Please Welcome Elijah Yaakov

2011-02-08T15:25:00.000-05:00

We are proud to introduce Elijah Yaakov Arav to the world. He was born on February 6th, 2011 at 10:55pm after 44hrs of all labor. At birth, he weighed 9lb 9oz, was 22" tall, and had a head circumference of 14.5". Yaakov was Nahum's paternal grandfather and we just like the name Elijah. To me, it has always had a strong yet peaceful feel and that was how he felt.

Labor began around 2am Saturday but it was just a long first stage so I was able to sleep most of the nights. The birthing waves would wake me but not enough to keep me from getting back to sleep most of the time. On Saturday, Shayna and I visited the VT duck pond to feed the ducks then to Aba's office to visit him. On Sunday, things started to get a little more intense but Becca was there to help with Shayna. I made Nahum come home at 3pm and our doula Cindy came at 3:30. Things seemed to gear down for a little bit as the company made me feel more relaxed. I was able to make everyone pizza for dinner but by the time it went into the oven I knew I wouldn't be eating it. We went for one last walk while the pizza cooled. During birthing waves, we would all stop while I sang through them with Shayna and sometimes Nahum's accompaniment as well. We told Shayna we were singing the baby out and she was eager to help. When the singing wasn't enough, I hopped in our wonderful bathtub about 6pm maybe for a couple hours. That's when things got started to get amazing as I allowed my body to move into whatever position seemed natural as the waves stepped up in intensity. This is also when I lost total track of time. I'd guess it was a 2hr bath before the back labor really kicked in and needed both Cindy and Nahum's support to get through each wave. At 8:30, I knew we needed to go to the hospital but was so terrified of the car ride that it took another 1/2hr to get out the door. Cindy sat in back with me to help me through as pushiness was now added to the list of sensations. We arrived about 9:20pm to be greeted by Kris the midwife on call. Cindy and Kris walk/danced me to my room where I was pronounced to be about 7-8cm. That news really helped me make myself relax through the waves on hand and knees at first then assume positions that proved increased intensity, like squatting. At some point, my body just started pushing on it's own during some wakes. Nahum climbed behind me so I could lean into him during rest periods. In the end, I had to lean back into him to widen my base to open my pelvis for my fat baby. At 10:55pm, Kris had me reach down and pull him onto my belly. He cried as soon as he was out. He was he a slippery guy with wrinkled, peely elephant skin and he was beautiful. It was a wonderful, natural, normal birth followed by 5 minutes of normal post-birth bonding.

As he was a bit grunty, the nurses asked for him to try to help him clear his lungs a little better. 5-10 minutes of this didn't help, so the pediatrician took him to the nursery where he was hooked up to a heart rate monitor. A newborns hr should be around 150 (as it was throughout deliver). Elijah's was over 300 and not coming down. They did manage to bring it to normal after 20-30 minutes with specific physical stimulations but the order for transfer to the NICU in Roanoke had already come down from the neonatologist. The hospital we were at doesn't have the machines for the tests that needed to be done (EKG and Echo) so he needed to be transferred to make sure there were no abnormalities that caused the excessive heart rate.

As he was stable, they were not planning to do the tests until Monday morning so Nahum made it down to see both of those. I was discharged from my hospital at 10am. Becca and Shayna picked me up. (It's the same place we do Shayna's labs so we did those before we left. She was an angel as usual and didn't shed a tear or fuss. We've got her trained labs are "little poke" and shots are "big poke" so she says to Erin, "big poke, no. shots big poke. little poke." Then she gives her cheerful, "all done labs." She even knows where they keep the stickers so walked over to the drawer, opened it herself, and picked out a sticker to help her through the draw.) I got to Elijah about 11am when Nahum told me all had tests had been preliminarily declared good. He especially enjoyed seeing the Echo as the technician did took "beautiful" ultrasound images of a working heart.

We finally got approval to pull his stomach tube and nurse at 2pm. He latched like a pro and nursed for almost an hour then slept for 3&1/2hrs. Nahum was with me when he nursed and that was the time we needed to name him. Peaceful, normal family time.

Later on, all results were officially declared "beautiful" by the cardiologist and there have been no other episodes. The most common reason is just for something like this is just the baby adjusting to the sudden change in his condition (inside vs. outside) and so far that's what it looks like in our case. We are expecting to be discharged late this afternoon and hope to be home by 6pm. We will have to monitor his heart rate 3x a day for the next 3 months just to make sure it doesn't take off again and make a follow up appointment with the cardiologist in 3 weeks so she can check him also.

Feb 6 about 5pm. Playing on our last walk before Elijah's arrival.

Our last picture of a family of 3.

Shayna LOVES pizza!

Hello baby!

Just before the NICU nurses take him down to Roanoke they let me hold him.

Feb 8: Elijah with his proud Aba.

Just Waiting on SJ

2011-01-31T21:24:00.000-05:00

We are now just waiting on SJ. SJ hit 40 weeks last Saturday and has been feeling like all elbows and knees for the last week. We had a little birthing wave action Thursday and Saturday but both petered out after some sleep. I think he wants out and my money is on he's bigger than Shayna was (8#13oz). As long as he's thriving, we have until Feb 19 before the doctors would want to force him out.

In the mean time, Shayna went for some drama of her own. Luckily, she has recovered from all illnesses but her liver numbers jumped with last Tuesday's monthly lab draw. Nothing astronomical, but enough to startle Pittsburgh and send us back to check the Liver Function numbers (LFTs) again on Friday. They were slightly higher than Tuesday so we did it again today. Today's jumping numbers were lower than last Tuesday's so we did a little happy dance and agreed to check them again next Monday. They think it might have been due to her having been sick. Now that she's recovering, so should the numbers. On the bright side, her EBV blood load was down to the lowest it's been in the last 10 months. This is even better as we dropped on anti-viral dose (daily instead of 2x a day) at the end of November. It's not a medicine that is good for the body overall so everyone would like to have her off sooner rather than later.

Nahum continues to work hard all the time and has also picked up a lot of Shayna's evening routine as I've gotten slower and slower over the last 2-3 weeks. All three of us are overly ready to meet SJ and I to begin the recovery from pregnancy so I can get back to feeling normal.

Jan 23: Shayna had a playdate with Hannah. This is one of the calm moments in the storm as Hannah ran Shayna ragged with lots of running, jumping, ball-pit-rocking, and tickling. Thank goodness Becca was here to chase them.

Jan 25: Everyone loves Shayna, including Becca's girlfriend Heather. On her day off she wanted to come over to play with Shayna since she hadn't seen her since the beginning of December. Like any parent, I enjoyed hearing all the ooo'ing and ahh'ing over her many developing skills as I worked in the office. Shayna likes to roll on the ball these days and touch the floor. For a little more excitement, I usually just hold her feet. She gets a kick out of the instability.

Jan 29: 40 weeks of SJ. To compare, here's 40 weeks 4 days of Shayna.

Amazing Me

2011-01-17T12:49:00.000-05:00

All my hard studying last fall paid off as I passed the PE exam I took at the end of last October and am now a licensed Civil Engineer in the Commonwealth of Virginia! Yay me!

Shayna continues to give us bedtime trouble. The silent replacement method didn't work for her as seeing us simply made her giddier with each replacement. We now just move a little cart that lives in her room across the access to her bed. Once she falls asleep we move it away and put the stool back so she can get out in the morning/after nap. She's turning into an absent-minded professor like her Aba as she gets so involved in whatever she's doing or investigating. Getting her attention takes a monumental effort but I love her toddler-intensity.

Nahum had a wonderful Seattle trip/conference last week. It's the biggest unofficial astronomer conference so he had many old friends to visit with, wonderful talks to listen to, and new scientists to make collaboration plans with. It was also a great opportunity to expose his post-docs and grad student to the science going on in the rest of the country. He also dined with Uncle David and Aunt Vickie (took us sailing last summer and we spent Thanksgiving with in Newport News) then took them to a showing of Picasso's works (his favorite artist).

While he was gone, Shayna and I were all on our own. The start of the week was good but Tuesday night began a battle with viruses and Thursday got Shayna on anti-biotics for ear infections for the first time ever. The ears had her with a 101.5F temp that brought us to the doctor and totally freaked me out as I'm not used to a sick kid. The virus however had it's butt kicked by her but her ears did make her suffer. (I'm still in awe how the person with a chemically suppressed immune system battles viruses better than either Nahum or I.) I managed to wait until Friday to get violently ill with Shayna's stomach/intestine bug being passed around, which was good because I could barely do anything but lay in bed or hug the toilet. Becca was finally back and better so took Shayna for a couple morning hours while Lynn (Shayna's former PT) took an afternoon and evening shift with Shayna. Since she was recovering herself, she was quite calm but also a great sport about Ima having to lay in bed or on the couch all day. (I think she really enjoyed seeing Lynn so much and Lynn knows about working with kids as a fun grandma so even did some real craft projects with Shayna, not just the coloring she and I do. Lynn has a calm, comforting presence that helped both of us feel better about the situation. It was a gift to have her available, I just hope we didn't pass it to her.) Nahum stayed away from me but couldn't resist his usual Shayna worship and is now suffering the consequences with the bug. SJ better stay put another week until this yuckiness clears our house.

Even with colds at the end of December (Carole took care of us then) and stomach bugs now, we've managed to have some fun. Here are some pictures from the last month.

Dec 25: Rocking in the ball pit with Hannah by Fredrick and some calmer sticker time while the dads talked.

If the pillow is near her bed, she'll haul it in for sleeping. Her head starts to slide off so before my nap I always remove it other wise she'll get stuck.

Dec 30: Reading with Grandma Carole.

Jan 4: Going down the "big, big slide". Shayna loves to talk about this slide. It's only up at the beginning of each month at the gymnastics studio and Shayna gets so excited each time. She won't go up or down by herself, mainly because the other kids are much more rambunctious and pushy. Luckily, I enjoy it too.

Jan 8: 37 weeks, stretch-marks and all. Shayna likes to touch and kiss my belly so this picture was totally impromptu with her.

Jan 16: I let her run around naked for 5 minutes between pjs and day clothes and she went straight for the ball pit. This is her cheesey, camera grin face.

Happy New Year....

2011-01-03T21:34:00.001-05:00

...and welcome to battle of the bedtime. I don't care what day Shayna was born (Feb 27) because she is officially a 2-yr-old by attitude. I love that she can get out of bed in the morning (it means I can stay in bed a few more minutes and she doesn't have to cry) and after nap; however, she has been freely getting out of bed at nap and night time. It took 6 placements in bed to get her to fall asleep at nap time (no talking/scolding/scowling/etc, just pick her up and put her back in), but I'm on at least number 8 (this number has been increasing since I first started (final count: about 14 over 80 minutes and she's finally out)) for tonight. I'm tired but I can't get mad since it's normal toddler behavior. She's trying to assert herself and have control and it takes every ounce of strength not to laugh at her engagement attempts.

She has really blossomed in the last month from Dec 1 to the start of the new year. Four word sentences are no longer tongue twisters but said fluidly. She's getting good at using present and past tense correctly. She grew 1.5cm (5/8in) and 400g (14oz) to the 22nd and 60th %-tiles, respectively. Climbing in and out of the ball pit (see video from last post) has beefed up her upper body finally. We had a lab scare at the beginning of Dec but both lab results since have been good, including the EBVirus coming down even with the lower dose of anitviral meds. We both got sick last week after a 2-yr-old b-day party the week before. She and I both had a cough and achiness. Since she never sick, I took her to the doctor to make sure it was just a mild virus where he discovered her first ever ear infection. I was so thankful I took her in and fell more in love with her pediatrician that before. He didn't want her to start antibiotics right away since everything was very mild but trusted us enough to give us the prescription should things deteriorate per his description. She (and I) has since gotten better and we didn't have to add to her medicine regime to get there.

SJ's due date is still Jan 29 per me and Feb 3 per docs and I'm not going to fight them on it as is gives me an extra 5 days to go into labor per their due date. I've been reading Ina May's Guide to Childbirth and learning a lot more about what goes on during both natural births and hospital births. It's quite fascinating but is also making me wish for a nice relaxed home birth. At least we've got our doula to help us fight off the crazy medical system. I can pre-register at the hospital starting Thursday and SJ can arrive anytime after next week until Feb 18. Personally I'm hoping for him to wait until at least the end of the month since I've got quite a long to-do list.

My 30th birthday was wonderful as Grandma Carole entertained Shayna for the morning as I tackled the biggest thing on my list: my office. I did 3 mornings at the beginning of Dec and have done 2 1/2 mornings with Carole's visit. I love just going to the door and admiring the clean floor. I've even inspired Nahum to work on his side. Hopefully the next post with have beautiful before and after shots.

I'd love to share some pictures but I need someone to show me how to find them on this mac. I know how to go from iPhoto to facebook but not from Safari to the file like I did on a PC which is how blogger seems to work.

3rd Trimester Exhaustion

2010-12-30T21:19:00.000-05:00

Once I hit ~7 months pregnant, I hit the exhaustion of the 3rd trimester. I think I feel better than the first time around. Chasing, squatting, and crawling around with Shayna has probably helped with that but she's also getting more understanding when I sit down and tell her, "Ima need a break." With SJ due on Jan 29 (or Feb 3 if you ask the docs), we've got 3 weeks to go before he's allowed to enter the atmosphere. Shayna loves to go to the doctor's/midwife's visits with me to listen to the baby's heartbeat. (She ask to go this morning.) She's getting familiar with all 4 faces of the people we meet with, 2 midwives and 2 doctors with a 3:1 women to men ratio. Overall it seems like a great crew (the one guy doc is the only one from the Shayna's birth but it was only a 2 doc operation then also). Nahum and I are preparing by filing the massive piles of papers that have accumulated in the office over the last several months. I'm also planning on cleaning out part of the garage to make room for a freezer (I long to buy in bulk).

Shayna continues to amaze us every day with her new verbal skills. She started trying to put 2-3 words together about 4 weeks ago, 2 weeks ago the gaps between those words disappeared and this last Thursday she used "me" for the 1st time twice. She still says "you" a lot ("Ima catch you" "Ima take you" etc) but I'm making an extra effort to start using personal pronouns at least 1/2 the time so she gets a better idea of their usage. 2 weeks ago Sunday she finally made the physical achievement we've been waiting for, climbing into a straight backed chair w/o assistance. We now have to make sure our computers are closed and there are no glasses of water on the table as she loves to "type" and will grab anything else within her reach. She's looking more an more like a little girl every day. Our greatest pleasure is still just watching her play with a close second of gushing to each other over how wonderful and amazing she is.
.....
I wrote that on Sunday thinking I'd add pictures and videos but no such luck. Here's a link to the latest video on youtube.

Tomorrow I turn 30!

Too Much Excitement

2010-12-05T22:06:00.000-05:00

A lot has happened since my last real post including the exhaustion of the 3rd trimester of pregnancy kicking in. All I want to do in the evenings is sit around and veg these days, lucky for you I'm finally inspired to write instead of just sit.

We had our 1-year post-transplant Pittsburgh visit on Monday Nov. 22 and it was terrific. Shayna was her usual adorable, sweet self so got stickers, crayons and coloring books. She even let our transplant coordinator give her a hug before we left. They are pleased with her progress and labs so we even got to drop our evening anti-viral. Her weight hit the 50th%-ile, her height the 19th, and her head is somewhere around the 110th or so. They scheduled us to fix her belly button hernia this week but with the crazy weather, we're going to look into a locally recommend pediatric surgeon. Hopefully we'll get all that straighten out this week and she'll have a cute little belly button by my 30th birthday (Dec 31).

We drove to Pittsburgh (7 hrs) Sunday then drove straight to Newport News after the appointment Monday (almost 10hrs). Thank goodness for the dvd player in the new car. Shayna watched the10min portion of Finding Nemo where Nemo's dad and Dory hook up with the turtles, the 10min portion near the beginning where Nemo has his first day of school, and the PBS episode of Curious George and the Bunny Hunt each about 15 times. (She's picky about her tv; it has to have lots of action and nothing remotely scary.)

We got really lucky for Thanksgiving as my Uncle David and his wife Vickie were traveling to Newport News, VA to visit Vickie's sister Hollie and her husband Jack for the holiday. We'd never met Jack or Hollie but were invited to stay with them for the week anyway. What a wonderful trip! It was nearly vacation-like for me as Vickie and Hollie did 85% of all the kitchen duties. Shayna endeared herself to everyone with Jack offering to take her off our hands if we wanted at the end of our visit. One of Shayna's favorite things about the visit was Tilley the dog, an old, gentle mixed breed that isn't used to small children around. Shayna followed Tilley everywhere and mimicked about everything Tilley did.

She laid on the dog bed together.

They sat together to read books.

The most Tilley ever did was give her many looks of, "soooo, you're still here are you?" Thanksgiving dinner was one of the best I'd ever had. There was so much traditional food and it ALL tasted great.

We came home the following Friday to fall into the throws of Shayna's Liver Day party for Wed. Dec. 1st. Becca, Nahum, and I managed to pull off an amazing party even with my parents Michael and Melinda having to spend a night near Dullas. Winds forced their plane to land at Dullas instead of Roanoke on the 30th but they got here on the afternoon of the 1st. (Shayna was so excited the minute they got in the car with us.) We had a wonderful catered dinner with great friends, lots of happy kids, and an ice cream cake with a liver on it. We even got visits by two of Shayna's local doctors. It was such a magical time to see Shayna having so much fun.

We even sang "Happy Liver Day" before she blew out her candle.

Michael and Melinda left today. As Nahum is leaving to take them to the airport Shayna is saying, "with Shayna....with Shayna," in her most pathetic (but not winy) voice because she wants them to take her with them. Shayna had soooooo much fun with Grandpa and Grandma. Grandma even replaced Ima as Shayna's potty partner of choice. Besides having play buddies all day long at the house, we also went to the gymnastics studio Thursday,

the library for her first books Friday, and swimming on Saturday. Plus a little adult only outing Friday for sushi and the new Harry Potter movie (both were awesome).

Nahum is doing well and working hard. As mentioned, I've hit the exhausted part of the pregnancy. We're just over 7 months along, or 32 weeks. SJ seems to get bigger each day. He only hangs out on the right side and seems to enjoy having his butt wedged into my ribs frequently, but at least it's his butt and not his head. Every time we hit a new week, I tell Nahum something like, "only 8 more weeks until SJ is late." I learned not to hope for an early baby with Shayna but I can't wait to have my body back so I can be the bouncy, silly parent I used to be able to be with her.

Happy Liver Day Shayna!!!

2010-12-01T22:00:00.000-05:00

Happy Liver Day Shayna!!! A year ago we took a leap of faith, the only one we could, and today we have a smiling, healthy, happy little girl so full of life you'd never know what it took to get her here. Science produced another miracle by giving our little girl a second chance at life, and a reason for 2 cakes a year. We're so happy you're here with us little Shayna.

We had a beautiful party of which I'll post some pictures soon. Thank you everyone. I'll also give you a full Shayna update.

Jumping, Running, and Climbing

2010-11-16T20:33:00.000-05:00

Nahum is gone for the week (Sunday night to Saturday morning) and it's rainy and dreary here so I've been looking into the indoor play programs here. Today we tried the gymnastics studio Virginia Techniques and had a blast at the Preschool Playzone (walking-5yrs). She climbed onto the springy floor, walked a few steps with big eyes then took off running for things to jump, climb-on and explore. It was one of those miracle experiences for me as she demonstrated such strength and independence during that hour that she seemed to grow up in front of my eyes. Along with the usual springy floor space, bars and beams was a blow-up jump castle, a 40'x5' trampoline the kids can run on (which we both did), an in-ground trampoline Shayna can walk onto, a 7' regular trampoline that Shayna climbed onto by herself, and a foam-cube pit which I would toss Shayna into then help her out. Next time I'll get some videos and pictures but the link will give you a good idea of the fun things we played on.

I posted pictures from October, including Halloween, about a week ago. She was an adorable little duck, loved her suite and had no problems taking candy from strangers.

What's this bucket got for me?

"Ima, open pease." (she doesn't quite have that "el" sound yet)

Shayna the duck-dog. She loves to imitate what the dogs are doing when we see them.

Reading books with Shayna this evening brought back memories. She likes "There's a Wocket in My Pocket". I remember reading this to her around 16-months-old and, her pointing out the steps and saying "steps". I was so excited because it was one of the first things she identified in a book on her own. She now has names for a couple dozen of her books and will tell you which one she wants to get if you ask her. She also likes to read them herself ("self, self") and she'll talk about the different activities or things on many of the pages.

Other signs that Shayna is growing up: She can jump with both feet off the ground (a 24-month skill) and she is starting to throw toddler-style fits (she cried when we had to leave a friend's toy to go home). It's gotten a little worse since Nahum left Sunday night as she really misses him but I'm thinking we'll be in for a rough ride with our independent little girl even when he gets home this weekend.

Next week we go to Pittsburgh for our 1-year post transplant appointment and the week after that it's Liver Day Party!!!

Proud of Myself This Time

2010-10-30T14:30:00.000-04:00

I sat for the 8 hour Professional Engineer (PE) Exam yesterday! It feels wonderful to have actually done it and I still think I have a fair chance of passing. I’d put my odds at 50/50 or even 60/40. I struggled where I thought I would during both the AM (breadth session where everything I learned as an undergrad is fair game) and the PM (depth session where I’m just tested on structural design stuff) sessions. Overall, I’m quite proud of myself for working hard and being able to give myself an honest chance on the exam.

Now I just get to play with Shayna, get the house ready for SJ and Shayna’s transplantiversary party, sort through and file the last month and half worth of mail and relax with just the usual work of life. Today we’ll go to the farmers market where we usually meet up with friends and Shayna plays on the grass with other random kids there. Then we have a little just-for-fun party at a friend’s. In the afternoon, we’ll got down town for Halloween and a local church’s trunk-or-treat followed by a Halloween party for kids at the community center. Next week, I’ll finally have the time to take Shayna on a bus ride. She loves pointing out the busses, but I hope she won’t be disappointed that it’s not a school bus. (She wants to ride on a school bus to school with other boys and girls.) I think we’ll take the bus to my polling station on Tuesday to vote then head over to campus for some duck feeding and a visit to Aba. Wednesday we resume Shayna’s vaccinations (she hasn't been shot since before transplant). She knows about shots because she saw Ima and Aba get them. Since we didn’t flinch or cry, I don’t think she thinks they’re that bad but I know she won’t be happy when it happens to her.

Shayna’s learning her Hebrew letters with this great placemat I got in Pittsburgh. Here she is studying them. She can point out 4 letters reliably and likes me to spell her name and Aba by pointing to the letters with her finger.

Graduation

2010-10-11T20:54:00.000-04:00

Today Shayna graduated from the Early Childhood Intervention physical therapy program as she has met all her goals and then some. Post-transplant she went from being 13-months with the gross motor skill of a 9-month-old to 19-months with "advanced" gross motor skills (don't know what the "advanced" exactly means but I sure enjoyed hearing it from professionals about my daughter today). The whole experience has been wonderful thanks to our great physical therapist Lynn who actually started with Shayna a couple months before transplant. We will miss Lynn's visits a lot. Shayna really enjoyed their play time and especially showing off how good she'd gotten with the tricks and games Lynn had previously taught her.

Shayna is also graduating to a toddler bed. She did great at nap time yesterday and today but fell out of bed at 11pm both of the last 2 nights. I finally have things pillowed properly to keep her from rolling out but allow her to climb out on her own should she choose to. Yesterday's nap was the big deal for Shayna as I removed the side of her crib from her room totally so she couldn'y ask for it to be put back on anymore. She asked about it, "side, side?" I told her it was gone because she was a big girl and didn't need it. She was concerned about this but went along with it. After Becca read her the last book in bed, we watched the monitor with baited breath. While she tossed both monkey and lamby out, she never climbed out herself. She did do a lot a talking about the situation before she finally drifted off. "side, side," while shaking her head then, "big," etc We're very proud of her.

Shayan likes to talk about her friends a lot these days. She tells me that Lana (3-years) swims and plays with Shayna's ball that Shayna shares. ("Lana," "swim," "ball," "share.") Hannah (also 3) ran around our house yelling. ("aaahhhh" while running then turns to me, "Hannah.") Shayna took a bath with when his parents watched Shayna and swims with Sawyer. ("bath," "Sawyer, Sawyer," while nodding her head, and "swim.") There's a lot more to the conversations than that with my full sentences and talking about what we did or will do and Shayna repeating things.

We had a wonderful time at the Sinkland Farm's Pumpkin Festival this last Saturday with Sawyer, Serena, and their respective families. I forgot my camera but luckily Sital has a great camera phone and got these shots of us.

Shayna loved the animals and even showed off her amazing strength by climbing the fencing you see, while I spotted her of course. We saw horses, a cow, goats, turkeys, rabbits (which she reached through to pet), pygmy goats, grown chickens, and best of all baby ducks and chickens.

A much happier than last year Serena and Shayna posing in the same spot with the pumpkins.

Shayna and Nahum enjoy ice cream for lunch.

A year ago Nahum had just completed his living donor evaluation. We revel each day in how far we've come.

Here are some of Shayna's latest activity videos: video1, video2, and video3.

My Amazing Water Baby

2010-10-01T14:34:00.000-04:00

Fridays are my days with Shayna and away from the books so we met up with our usual swimming buddies at the new Christiansburg Aquatic Center. It wasn't as quiet as we'd hoped as there were 3 buses worth of 4th & 5th graders. Luckily, Shayna loves to watch other kids play as well as has great confidence in herself so will walk right up to them in the water to see what they're doing. Her favorite was the kids laying under the bucks (see pic left) waiting for them to fill and dump water on them. She thought that was hysterical. Shayna also likes to go between the fun, regular pool and the warm therapy pool. While were not really allowed to go in there, one of our friends is connected enough that the manager gave the lifeguard the okay for us (poor Shayna's lips were turning blue too). The pic below shows the nice, gradual ramp the kids like to play on so we spent a lot of time walking up and down (or "in" and "out" as Shayna says). Now this is the amazing part: She's gotten the concept of "under" (the ball rolled under the bed, the duck is under the water) so today she showed me she could do it to herself. She would squat or lean forward usually just covering her mouth and/or nose but sometimes her whole face with water and hold her breath for at least 2 seconds at a time! I've tried to teach her to blow bubbles, which she can more of less do, but holding her breath I didn't think she'd understand until much later.

I guess she just picked it up on her own. This kid blows my mind every day. The stronger she gets (and we're about to graduate from physical therapy), the more she experiments with her body and all objects and structures around her. The more she talks, the more confident she is in herself. She also must have this unflinching trust that we'll always be there to lend a hand or help when needed because she'll just wonder off on her own. I guess that could be scary for some folks, but we keep an eye on her and take it all in with pleasure and pride.

Life continues to be good. SJ's getting bigger and stronger and both Nahum and Shayna are noticing it. Nahum and I got to feel him kick with our hands for the first time Tuesday night and Shayna seems to notice that my belly is getting bigger. She also asks to see the baby since I say he's getting bigger. I'm starting her on the word "huge" so I can keep saying "bigger" then add that he has to get "huge" before he can come out to see her. Shayna also recognizes the letter A and 2 Hebrew letters. She seems to understand the concept of 1 and 2 and has been working on 3 in the last couple days. All I do is talk to her about what we do and she just picks things up or she'll ask about pictures (she's got a place mat with letters and pictures). Shapes and colors seem to be coming along too.

Having Fun In September

2010-09-24T16:42:00.001-04:00

Yay for Friday's and time with Shayna (and nap time after that). I get to play with Shayna on Fridays instead of study for my upcoming engineering exam (only 5wks left). Today we met friends at the park then went swimming. Shayna did some great climbing, a bit of swinging and a little sliding. We also found lamby in the car when we got to the park (tiny stuffed animal from Israeli family, been lost for a month, so small the head just sticks out of her hand when she carries him around) so he got to do everything with her with many a, "Shayna," and, "Lamby," said along the way. At the pool, she insisted on going in the jacuzzi. I got her to play in the regular pool for 1/2 an hour before she climbed out, turned to me, and announced, "all done, hot." As in, I'm all done swimming here and now I'm going to the hot pool. I love how she knows what she wants and tells me.

Tonight we're trying something new too. Shayna will be going to her friend Sawyer's house (he's out big swimming buddy and they like each other) while Nahum and I go to a retirement dinner for a colleague. She's never stayed at another person's house w/o us so I'm curious to see what will happen but also excited to get an adult night out.

I posted some September pictures on facebook and some new videos on youtube (video1, video2, video3). Enjoy.

Holding Steady and Being Amazing

2010-09-18T20:19:00.001-04:00

Shayna's Tuesday labs were good again with just normal liver number fluctuations. Her EBV load in her blood dropped even more, which was nice to see. We're still struggling with a strange rash that started behind her right knee a month ago. Initially it looked like poison ivy (we'd gone blackberry picking a couple hours before I noticed it so that made sense) but it didn't go away with steroid ointment. I also noticed bumps on her palms and soles which the doc said was probably a virus but couldn't explain the spreading bumps on her body. The back of the knee began to look fungus like so Pittsburgh said to stop the ointment and wash her in Selsum Blue (the selenium sulfide is an anti-fungal). This dried her skin to the near cracking-bleeding point so we visited the pediatrician again and went back to steroid ointments Wednesday. Ped thinks it's a virus like HFMD while Pittsburgh's new thought is it could be something to do with the preventative bacterium she's on, so we knocked one oral med off our list. Two nights with just the ointment change and her skin was already looking much better. The important thing through all this is that Shayna has been happy and unaffected except during the first week when she was fussier, had trouble sleeping and didn't eat much. She has been engaging in many feats each day that show how amazing she is.

We had a precautionary ultrasound Friday for which she laid perfectly still while a stranger jellied and probed her belly. Granted, I did feed her a light fruit breakfast when she was supposed to be on a 10hr fast (ridiculous on so many levels) and brought my computer with Finding Nemo. I was blownaway by the fact that she just lay on the table perfectly still the whole time.

She's also getting to be quite a good climber with the ability to coordinate her hands and feet on irregularly placed steps an other "odd" climbing surfaces. She's started looking at where she should place her feet next instead of blindly reaching upward.

Her language understanding is increasing at an incredible pace. One daily conversation usually goes:

Shayna: "Aba", Me: "what about Aba?", Shayna: "bye-bye", Me: "yes, Aba went bye-bye. Aba went to work" This is the typical conversation about most people and things Shayna mentions.

Today all 3 of us went on the deck to watch the Apache Helicopter fly over. I'm holding Shayna and she says: "Aba", Me: "what about Aba?", Shayna looks at Aba furows her brow and thinks hard for a few seconds (you can see in her face she's really pondering how to answer this since the usual answer is not appropriate) "Watches" she declares to her parents' utter delight. Needless to say, I thought my child was the most brilliant child on earth at that moment.

In the Market for a Mohel!

2010-09-14T21:11:00.001-04:00

For those of you not familiar with Jewish tradition, this means we're having a boy! We were even able to tell on the ultrasound ourselves. Shayna came and was fascinated by the pictures on the screen. I wonder what her little brain thought of us, telling her we were taking pictures with a special camera of the baby inside Ima's belly. She was also a little concerned about me as she had to be on the table with me the whole time she was in the room or she would cry. SJ's estimated weight was 13oz +/- 0.9oz. We're excited to know and I'm excited about the shopping I'll get to do (after I get all of Shayna's stuff packed away properly).

Shayna is doing great. We had labs today and, while she wiggled much more than usual, she didn't let out a peep. It was also teaching day for Nahum and Becca. They each now know how to get Shayna's lab stuff together and where to take her for the blood draw. Becca also got a tour of the birthing center (they're at the same hospital). We're all ready for SJ and any issues along the way now.

Shayna's physical therapy is almost done. The only thing she can't do is climb onto a straight-backed (dining room) chair so we're still doing a lot of climbing and crawling exercises in addition to the core strength bouncing and jumping. She's well ahead of the curve as far as language goes with well over 50 words, some in both Hebrew and English. She likes to tell us about everything she does and sees. She'll even read some of her books to herself, pointing out the different animals (I heard her for the first time yesterday). She loves books and loves to study each page of whatever the current favorite is (right now it's any monkey, dog, or new baby book; though, any animal book will do). For those of you who aren't on FB, you should check out our latest youtube video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OM-sXfguaUk. Shayna also likes to help me in the kitchen these days. I measure the ingredients then she pours them in the bowl. She's also good at handing me eggs but not so much the stirring. Here's a picture of us with our Rosh Hashanah challah.

Half Liver Life

2010-09-06T21:06:00.000-04:00

Shayna has now lived a day longer with her Aba's liver than she lived with her own. She celebrated by throwing rocks with friends and swimming in a creek at our end of summer picnic. Unfortunately I forgot to bring the camera to the picnic but I did get a nice shot of her with her friend Hannah at the neighborhood bbq. (Shayna is always talking about Hannah.)

Just being cute with her balls.

Awesome Numbers (finally)

2010-08-28T20:41:00.000-04:00

After 2-1/2 months of a gradual climb in all of Shayna's liver numbers, we saw a significant drop in them with Wednesday's labs. While not alarmingly high, we would have had to do a biopsy if they had stayed in that slightly elevated state much longer. She's also still growing quite well. Her weight is about 25%-ile, height about 10%-ile, and her head circumference is off the chart (literary).

SJ is doing well. I ask Shayna, "Where is Ima's baby?" and she pats me (she tries for the belly but any torso part she can get to works for her) and says, "Belly." I feel stronger kicks all the time. We will find out the gender some time in the 2nd half of September.

Free Candy for Being Cute

2010-08-20T19:16:00.000-04:00

Shayna and I went to the hardware store yesterday to get a hacksaw to cut a pipe. It's a local store so has a lot of older gentlemen standing around to help so I asked. He showed me and got a grin out of Shayna at the same time. Shayna then practiced her "running" while I paid. She'll go about 6' from me, get my attention, then move slightly quicker than a walk towards me with a big grin. I guess that just put her cuteness over the top as the gentleman ask, "does she like candy? Bring her over here and have her pick out some candy." I'm thinking one little piece or something but no, it's little bags of candy that are quite large for a 1-1/2-year-old. He got his money out so he could go pay when we finish picking and I can't say no because I can tell he's really pleased to see such a cute kid and wants to do this for her. She likes fish so I pick a bag of Ju Ju Fish (gummies) and hand it to her. She's very proud of herself for what she has even though she doesn't know it's candy. She also seems to understand this nice man gave it to her for when I tell her to say "toda" to him (thank you in hebrew is better than no thank you at all), she walks straight up to him, looks him in the face and says, "Da!" Needless to say at that point I was in full agreement on her deserving the candy as well, which we all have been enjoying. These are pictures from today with a mouth full of a fish and what's left of the bag in her hand.

To get her used to SJ, I bought her a baby doll Monday which she enjoys a lot.

Becca showed her how to carry it well so....

...she of course had to go admire herself with her baby in the mirror.

She's also working on learning to use a spoon (the fork was nearly mastered on vacation). Yogurt seems to be the best as she doesn't scoop yet and yogurt coats and/or fills the spoon easily.

It's a little messy but I love the mess as she seems to enjoy herself so much.

I'm studying for the Professional Engineers licensing exam that takes place at the end of October so I'm extremely busy these days trying to get my brain back up to speed. It'll take a couple weeks of intense work to get back to any sort of former abilities as I need to spend 3-4 hrs of intense study everyday until then working on it. I'm up to 2, but they're a slow 2 yet. This is also getting in the way of posts as spare minutes are devoted to study but I'll try to keep y'all up-to-date as much as possible.

"Rock, rock, rock, rock."

2010-07-31T22:51:00.000-04:00

We're in Boulder, CO now and I don't have regular internet access so can't do many updates (Nahum is putting Shayna to bed so I sneaked out to use his computer). Thought I'd let you know we're doing well and having fun. Today we drove up Boulder Canyon to the 4th of July Trail Head and Shayna so thoughtfully pointed out 90% of the rocks to us on the way. She LOVES rocks. She likes climbing on the big ones, walking over the medium ones and picking up the little ones to throw, usually in water. We did a 3 mile hike to a little waterfall on the way to Diamond Lake. The lake was our original destination but being green to hiking with kid we were happy to make it 3/4 of the way. Shayna LOVES water as well so was more than happy to enjoy a lunch looking at the falls while sitting on a boulder. She made sure all the other visitors saw the falls too. "Hiya," with a wake and then she'd point at the falls to make sure the hikers admired the wonder as well.

Shayna and I head to Pueblo tomorrow for some time with the grandparents, both honorary and official. We'll be back up Thursday so Michael and I can go mountain biking while Melinda takes care of Shayna. We've got social plans packed into every other spare second, including 1 more family hike and 2 longer hikes for Nahum and several dinners.

Here are some pictures of what we did in Seattle.

Shayna took advantage of every second with Melinda so she had a constant play companion.

Shayna likes beds, even doll beds apparently as she kicked to poor baby doll out of her's.

Looking out over the water near our campsite in Washington Park near Anacortes, WA.

Shayna was in her element with a full day of sailing in the San Juan Islands. She did take a 2 1/2hr nap in the cabin but when she was awake she pointed out all the waves, birds and rocks she could see and would just stand and watch the water.

Grandpa Michael did the honory wheel barrow rides. Melinda even got her turn; though, Shayna wouldn't let Melinda ride with out her.

Chasing Grandma Melinda was also a hit.

We got a visit from the neighborhood peacock. Uncle David promptly scooped Shayna up and whisked her outside to get a glimpse. The peacock then hung around for the next few hours.

Shayna's Special Announcement

2010-07-26T12:50:00.001-04:00

Hi All. This is Shayna filling in for Ima as she's a little tired from all the work she's been doing lately and I just finished my typing course so had to try out my new skills.

I'm wonderful of course, but I don't need to tell all of you that. We're in Seattle, WA at Uncle David and Aunt Vickie's house. Uncle David is just as funny looking as Ima said. Grandma and Grandpa O are also here to spoil me. We had a wonderful weekend camping, sailing, and hiking but on to the bigger news.

I have a little secret to share with the y'all: Ima is making me a brother or a sister!!! My new baby is due at the end of January 2011. With me being so wonderful and all, I'm sure Ima and Aba are going to let me pick out the name for the new addition and I've got just the perfect one: Shayna Jr. We'll call it SJ for short. Ima misplaced the 12wk 2days pictures so she'll post those later but SJ looks beautiful and healthy.

June Pictures

2010-07-14T11:47:00.002-04:00

I finally added captions to June's pictures so here's the link for all you Shayna junkies.

June Pic's

The Amazing Growing Baby

2010-07-10T20:10:00.000-04:00

For all you chart and numbers people out there, here's Shayna's latest growth chart from 12-months to now. The astounding thing is the 330g gain between this week and last week. I wouldn't have believed it except we had a doc apt on Tuesday that show her at 9.8kg making the 9.91kg (21#13.5oz) today plausible. (That's a jump from the 17%-ile to the 24%-ile.) She doesn't show any obvious fat rolls from the gain and her belly actually has looked smaller this week (her large liver piece still makes her belly girth much larger than normal) so I'm wondering if she got taller too. She's definitely getting stronger as her climbing skills and little shoulder muscles are much more evident. My guess (from past experience) is she'll hold steady and take a couple weeks to actually reach the 10kg (22#) mark.

On the internal numbers side, things looked good this week. We just checked liver numbers this week and they were holding steady with the last two weeks making both Shayna's doctors and parents happy. If the numbers go up we're looking at another possible rejection episode and, with her immune suppressing drugs low, there's a distinct possibility of that. Right now we're fighting the EBV (a virus that causes a harsh flu in normal people with the worst case leading to mono; in an immune suppressed person it can lead to EBV hepatitis where the virus attacks the liver and worst case leads to lymphoma (cancer)) so we've had to drop her immune suppressing drugs to try to get the active virus level in her blood stream down before it attacks organs/tissue.

On the fun side, we did a little family outing today of the Blacksburg Gardens Tour and saw some beautiful gardens that people have put tremendous work into. My favorite was the yard with lots of curving beds with colorful, textureful plants that looked like wild organization. Shayna liked that one too but for another reason; it had a water fountain. Her second favorite was the one with rocks and dirt she could play in. She likes to show us the rocks and sit in the dirt, picking up fistfuls to pour on her legs. She also really started saying "Aba" and "Ima" today quite distinctly and in context. She's been able to say both for a while but just didn't want to until today. Nahum turns into a little puddle on the floor every time she says Aba.

Bubble beard baby from 6/25.

Ups and Downs

2010-07-02T18:35:00.000-04:00

Labs are back at every week for a little as Shayna's EBV went from it's holding pattern in the mid 60,000s to 170,000. We only check the EBV every other week but we have to watch the liver enzyme numbers weekly in case they start to elevate, which indicates damage is being done to the liver. We're back on the Valcyte (yucky-tasting anti-viral) but totally off prednisone (the steroid that suppresses her immune system on top of the lifetime immunosuppressing Prograf). That's the bad news.

The good news for all you Shayna fans is that I've got 5 new Shayna videos on my youtube channel http://www.youtube.com/mrsarava and my husband bought me a new car today. We are now the proud owners of a 2011 Toyota Sienna XLE. For all you non-facebook people I posted May pics last weekend and am working on sorting the June pics of the princess.

It's the baby's bath time so I better get going.

So Big

2010-06-27T07:56:00.003-04:00

Happy 16-month Birthday Shayna!

We did her monthly measurements and boy did she grow. She is 440g (15.5oz) heavier, 2.5cm (1") taller, and her head is 1/2cm larger since last month.

Ht = 73cm (28.75"), since it's height not length it doesn't work in the 0-36m growth chart
Wt = 9.50kg (20lb 15oz), 16%-ile
HC = 49cm (19.25"), about 98%-ile or off the chart as the chart only goes to 97%-ile

Her achievements for the week: She learned to kick her feet in the pool. It took a month of working with her (only swim 1 or 2 times a week) but she finally understand the command, "kick your feet." She does more of a dolphin than a flutter kick. She signed, "potty" to me for the first time when she had to go and didn't know where it was (we were at a friend's). While she'd started in her pants, she finished in the potty so I was still quite impressed. She's done it once more but that's it. Maybe another month and we'll be there.

Good News from Pittsburgh

2010-06-16T20:50:00.000-04:00

We had our six-month clinic appointment in Pittsburgh Monday. As usual, Gerry and Judy made Pittsburgh home by hosting us even though they just got back from 5 weeks over seas. Since they've taken her as an honorary granddaughter, I think they enjoy our visits a little too.

Shayna's favorite thing about the visit was the stairs at Gerry and Judy's house as they have a 2nd floor so she got lots of stair practice and improved her down technique a lot. There is also a 1/2" step into the kitchen that once she tripped on it and realized it was there became another favorite. She practiced stepping into the kitchen and out of the kitchen. It was so much fun to watch her walk back and forth and get better at handling the slight elevation change. (When we get a chance to watch her discover things or practice skills without her seeing us, it is so amazing and fun to watch how much effort she puts into things and how quickly she learns and enjoys herself.)

Ima and Aba's favorite things were getting to talk to the doctor face-to-face, having 1/2 her meds dropped (especially that yucky anti-viral Valcyte), and having labs moved to every other week (from weekly). It was nice to have the Dr. Sindhi give us such a thorough explanation of where he thought Shayna was and his opinion on our EBV issues. Plus the fact that it was all positive; he thinks Shayna is doing great and he also stressed really treating her like a normal child with a little extra hand washing. (It's nice to hear that what I do is good.) Dropping so many meds just makes every day so much easier and the thought of any travel much less intimidating. (I had no idea how we were going to get the Valcyte in her while camping this summer short of having my dad and uncle perform various skits for us every morning and evening.) If the labs continue to be good, we could be moved to monthly by the end of the summer or sooner. It is so wonderful to be within the normal range AND on the less complicated side of normal too. It is also nice to see how happy the doctor and nurses are to see a happy, health, thriving toddler whose life they transformed.

Shayna's vocabulary is slowly expanding. She says "eye". She surprised me today by saying it and getting my attention to a picture in a book with lots of eyes (the bugs where hiding for miss spiders surprise birthday party). Shayna wanted to make sure that she had identified the things on the page correctly and was very proud of herself when I agreed that they were indeed eyes. She says both "hi" and "high". While she says them in context (as a greeting and when I push her high on the swing), I really wonder how her little brain differentiates between the two. I spotted her first little molar pointing its pointy head through her upper left gums last Tuesday. It was nice to finally see progress after 2 months of chewing on fingers and drooling. She has bumps on the bottom on both sides so she should be able to eat steaks soon. She runs now. Her upper body gets going a little faster than her legs so if she's not careful (eg we're playing and she's excited or she tries to run too far at one go) she does a face plant. Her favorite place to practice is our closet (it's a big walk-through). She goes over to the bathroom door, hoots at me to get my attention then runs through the closet to our bedroom, looks at me for praise and turns around to do it again.

Nahum and are doing well. Nahum is currently trying to get though 80 proposals (like the ones he puts so much effort into himself) because he will be sitting on the panel judging proposals for NASA's Chandra X-Ray Satellite next week in Boston. I joined the swim team last week at the B-burg Aquatics Center. Since my friend is on a "competing" team, I am much more excited about actually practicing. We're fairly evenly matched, but she's been doing a much better job than I at getting to the pool so I'm going to have to start working hard if I hope to beat her at anything. I'm reading my first Danielle Steel novel. It's low grade writing but the characters are all nice people so I think I'll finish it.

Pictures of the Princess:

6/2 Shayna plays with her toys in her beloved kiddie pool in the back yard. That's my current favorite 4-5pm activity. I moved to pool to the deck (gnats in the grass) so I can just sit in a deck chair and watch her play while I read. She loves to climb in and out and fill and pour out her stacking cups.

6/5 Shayna enjoys an apricot on the kitchen counter. She'll eat 1/2 of it then give it back to me. I also have to be careful of the pits. If she bites it before I take it out the apricot gets flung violently away from her.

6/5: Enjoying the hose since her pool got over run by older kids (2 1/2, 3, and 5-years). She loved watching the water run down her arm or trying to drink from the hose.

6/11: Enjoying a snack while I get dressed after a play date swim at the Aquatics Center. I had to fish her out of the water several times as usual as she still likes to walk in to her armpits but has trouble always staying on her feet. At least she doesn't cry about it. Just coughs a little, recovers for a few seconds on my lap, then goes to play again.

6 Month Anniversary

2010-06-01T19:43:00.000-04:00

A lot happens in 6 months. I handed a very sick baby over to a team of medical professionals for a life saving, 10-hour surgery. Yet, only 6 months before that, Nahum and I had a healthy baby girl, for all we knew. I was getting ready to go back to work and start Shayna in daycare. 6 months can sure be a long journey. Thankfully these last six have been a beautiful journey with a vibrant, strong, independent little Shayna just bursting with life.

We had a magical water weekend over all 3 days. It started with a little hike at Mountain Lake with friends down to the water (it’s a “little” low) where Shayna and I went swimming. It was a bit chilly but Shayna loved splashing, stomping, and wading in to her chest. Sunday I set up her kiddie pool which was shallower but colder. She climbed in and out, stomped, splashed and laughed until I decided she was getting too cold. Later that evening we had a thunderstorm pass over so I took Shayna out in the rain in just her little onesie. She held her hands up as the rain hit her and just grinned at me then took off at a trot down the driveway pausing to look back to grin at me or stomp in the water. Yesterday we met friends at Claytor Lake (a damn on the New River) for some swim beach action. Shayna was so excited by the boys swimming around that she tried to join them. (She thinks holding my hand will get her anywhere.) She would shriek and splash whenever they got near. Today we continued the swimming trend and met another friend and her 15-monther at the Blacksburg Aquatics Center for some play. They’ve got a really wide ramp and shallow swim area leading to the lap pool where the kids can play. Shayna loved walking up and down the ramp. When she held the hand rail I didn’t mind so much as she could keep herself from going under, but she’d just head out down the middle of the ramp at times with no concern for the fact that at armpit depth she couldn’t keep her head up if she fell. Needless to say, she did go under a few times. She also fussed every single time we had to leave the water.

She has a couple other recent achievements that I’m quite proud of. She can go down the little and big slides at the parks by herself. She does it feet first on her belly. This helps both in not losing control on the way down (she’s already laying down) and she can get off the bottom of the slide easily too. The other amazing thing she did was say, “hep, hep,” without prompting this morning for me to come help her go peepee in the potty. That's the first pre-pee, verbal communication I've ever gotten.

My fun was of course all those things with Shayna but I also had a swim lesson on Friday with a friend and a good coach. It was wonderful to get some simple, helpful guidance on all 4 strokes.

Last Thursday, Shayna and Becca play in the rain.

Becca is teaching Shayna to stomp in the puddles. She caught on right away and has turned bath time into a little bathroom hurricane.

Shayna checks out the hail pieces we grabbed for her. It was her first hail experience. She melted them in her fist and ate other pieces.

Shayna, Patricia, Hannah and Fredrick splash around in Mountain Lake on Saturday.

Shayna's 2nd dip was al-natural with some swimming. Here she is hiking back on the docks that used to float. Check out her awesome new shoes.

Relaxing with Aba in the shade and watching the boys swim at Smith Mountain Lake.

"Hiking"

2010-05-26T20:02:00.000-04:00

Since Shayna loves being outside so much, Nahum and I decided to go on a little outing with Shayna last weekend. We went a whole 0.4 mile to a beautiful overlook called Wind Rock. Shayna walked about a quarter of it each way and loved scrambling around on the rocks, eating rocks and pulling up the grass. We plan to explore Mountain Lake this weekend. Hopefully it'll be sunny so Shayna can check out the water too (something else she loves).

Shayna and Patricia playing on the rocks and looking over the overlook.

Nahum helps Shayna with the uneven ground.

Shayna waffles between wanting to hold a hand and doing it on her own.

Shayna is adding to her vocabulary and can say duck along with hat. She works on other words like on, off, down, help, and hand when I mention them first (eg I say, "do you want some help?" and she'll say, "hep, hep" if she does). One of her favorite play areas in our shower where the drain cover comes up so she can stick her hand down the hole or try to stuff my shampoos down the drain.

Today I sanded the deck after power washing it last week in preparation for staining it tomorrow. I finally got around to putting the insulation back in the basement ceiling last week (had been removed a year ago when M&M were here after Shayna's birth as Michael and I ran some new line for a new spigot outside). I only got about 1/2 way done when I discovered the master shower had been leaking. There's some cracks in the grout where the floor and walls meet. I'm just waiting for it to finish drying so I can caulk it. I fixed Shayna's door yesterday so the top doesn't stick on the jamb. The house projects seem to be never ending but I guess that's just part of home ownership.

Labs were still the same last week (liver numbers stagnant and EBV down). She was an angel again today and didn't cry at all when Misty took her blood. I'll see those results probably Friday.

5 Months in 6 weeks

2010-05-18T13:35:00.002-04:00

We had Shayna's 5th physical therapy session yesterday since her evaluation at 13-months-old. At the evaluation, her gross motor skills we at a "solid 9-month-old's". Yesterday, at 14-1/2-months-old, we were told she's closing in on 15-month skills. Thanks to her physical therapy exercises, all the work her caretakers put into her, and Shayna's general enthusiasm for life, she has advanced 5 months in just 6 weeks. She still has some core, hip and shoulder weakness that we're having to get more specific to target. She has a crib mattress we support on a little stool next to the couch. She has to crawl-climb the mattress ramp to get onto the couch and reach her toys that we put just out of reach. She also has a large exercise ball which we bounce her on (to the wonderful music of Lady Gaga). This challenges her balance and makes her work her trunk and pelvic muscles to stay up right. Shayna loves both activities and will ask you to put the music on then goes over the her exercise ball and slaps it a few times to get your attention that she wants to bounce. If the mattress/ramp isn't set up she'll go find it and shout and slap it to get our attention so we set it up for her. She loves crawling up and down it on her own. Stairs and little curbs (e.g. from playground to grass) are also strongly encouraged and a huge hit with Shayna.
Her liver numbers were stagnant last week so there were no medication changes. Two of the numbers are in the 40s and need to be in the 30s for us to start prednisone (steroid) weaning. EBV wasn't checked last week since it had been trending down. We'll have it checked with tomorrow's labs. I would imagine having to be off prednisone to be off the valcyte (antiviral) since the prednisone opens the door for the EBV. (EBV reminder: 90%-95% of 40-year-olds have the antibodies, it causes a harsher flu when most people get it and is the cause of mono, in immunosuppressed people it can lead to lymphoma (cancer).)

Nahum and I are trucking along as usual. I get out for bike rides with Shayna once a week with a friend who has 2 little girls and just happened to buy a bike trailer for them on the same day I got mine. It's been a lot of fun doing little rides to parks and ponds with them; though, Shayna continues to have her reservations for the trailer. My garden is 90% done. I'd still like to get some strawberries in in one area. Other than that, it's just a matter of watering, grabbing the weeds when they come up and watching things grow. We had one of our best Virginia weekends last weekend as we had 2 sets of friends with kids over on Saturday and went to a potluck at another friend's house on Sunday. It's the people in our life that really make it great.

Her are some pictures from our 2nd Saturday gathering.

Here Shayna tries to get Avishi to climb the mattress with her. The picture is from a video I just posted on youtube of them.

Avi, Jenny and Shayna play.

Sarai, Jenny and Shayna play.

FYI: EBV down too

2010-05-10T21:00:00.000-04:00

Shayna's EBV-PCR level is down from 99,000 to 68,000 last Wednesday. The docs are happy because this means the oral antiviral is working so we don't have to run that test this week, just all the others.

Shayna can now walk on grass. I stuck her out in the middle of the yard so I could have some time to water my garden without her trying to play in the sprinkler or the mud. Instead of the 15 minutes I got last week because she had to crawl and therefore noticed more grass, dandelions and clovers that needed sampling, I got 30 seconds as she toddled straight to me. Luckily the back steps are just as fun as mud and water so I was able to find a good distraction for a little bit.

Super Low Numbers

2010-05-09T15:19:00.000-04:00

Two of Shayna’s liver enzyme numbers that we watch are the lowest they’re been since transplant. The other one wasn’t alarmingly high but is still dropping as well. (Elevated numbers indicate liver damage as well as hint at probable causes depending on which ones are elevated.) She also shows no signs of anemia yet, a common side effect of the antiviral drug Valcyte that she’s on. I don’t have the results for the EBV numbers yet but we’ll probably be on the antiviral for a while (possibly 6 months). Shayna’s getting sick of having all the medicine syringes in her face so I’m hoping we can start weaning the steroid Prednisone soon since I have to give 2 other meds with that. I long for easy days of only 4 meds w/ 1 twice daily. Now we’ve got 8 meds w/ 3 twice daily.

Shayna now walks where ever she pleases all over the house. She took her first steps 3 weeks ago on accident. 6 days later she walked for her physical therapist Lynn and I but could only go 5-6 steps before falling. When Melinda got here last Wednesday, Shayna could go in a straight line on a flat surface okay. By the time Melinda left the following Wednesday, Shayna was freely navigating the whole house but still needed a wall or object to get her on her feet when she fell. Friday she was able to squat to pick up small objects and stand again 1/2 the time. Yesterday she started being able to stand on her own in the middle of the floor. Nahum and I are just in awe of her development and skills. It’s wonderful to see her just appear in a door way or disappear into another room. She still has a lot of trouble on grass but she’ll just ask for a hand to help her so she can walk to what she wants. Her stair climbing technique was finally perfected yesterday at our friend Yael’s house as she has a 2nd floor. Shayna loves to walk back and forth between Nahum and I for hugs. She also loves books. She’ll sit by herself and flip through one book for 15 minutes and gets excited when we offer to read her a book. She’s still only got the one constant word of “ha” for hat but is starting to mimic my cow and sheep sounds though it comes out “boooo” and “ahhh”. She also has her own word for ball, kind of a combination of duck and ball that I can’t quite put my finger on.

Here are a couple pictures from Melinda’s awesome visit. It was such a gift to have her here while Nahum was gone.

Reading a book.

Hiking at the Cascades.

You'll also find two new videos on youtube.

Nahum is now back from Israel and doesn’t seem to be suffering any jet. Shayna was ecstatic to see him and wouldn't let him leave her sight for the first hour. She started crying when he left her for a minute to go to the bathroom. Nahum gave me this morning off and took care of Shayna while I rested. A nice Mother’s Day treat.

EBV and Liver Numbers Down

2010-04-30T21:13:00.000-04:00

For the 3 or 4 of you waiting with bated breath for my little updates, I thought you'd like to know that Shayna's EBV numbers went from 270,000 last Wednesday to 99,000 this Wednesday. We only started the Valcyte (antiviral) Monday evening so I don't know if that's the reason it's down or if it's another reason. I'm just very happy they're down and I hope they'll keep going that way. On the other amazing side of having another person's liver, her liver numbers are down which hopefully means the rejection is also getting under control. Since I've only seen the number and not actually talked with anyone, I'm hesitant to get too excited until I see what next Wednesday's lab results will be and have the verdict verbally confirmed by our nurse coordinator.

We are thoroughly enjoying Grandma Melinda's visit with lots of activities and a constant play buddy for the baby. Shayna is taking longer and longer unassisted walks to wonderful things like hats and balls. I even think she's starting to say ball. Nahum probably cried himself to sleep in Israel because he misses Shayna so much. He's visiting his family, and a couple colleagues, for a week and will be home Thursday. I am doing well. I got to swim with my friend Leslie today and do some plant/garden shopping with Melinda and Shayna.

Strawberry-Valcyte Ice Cream

2010-04-27T12:53:00.001-04:00

Shayna's EBV blood level jumped in the 5 days she was on the steroid Prenisone so our newest nasty tasting medicine is a last ditch effort to keep the EBV from attaching her liver since her body already is doing a little of that. Valcyte is an antiviral drug typically used to fight CMV (another common virus that can cause some trouble with transplant patients) in some transplant patients; though, it is an off-label use for liver transplant patients. Since we are currently dealing with a little Mild rejection so have to suppress her immune system, we also have to help her immune system deal with the EBV. While all this is a bit scary and overwhelming, it's nothing the Pittsburgh transplant team hasn't dealt with before. It also strickly manifests itself on the lab level only so Shayna is still growing and developing with no signs of any issues.

In fact, we had a major development milestone yesterday. Shayna strung several steps together a few times and even kicked her purple ball on one of her walks. She was showing off for her physical therapist I think as she usually like to do firsts with an audience if she can get one. She also discovered the joys of doors and draws Sunday (and I forgot to get cabinet locks on my shopping trip yesterday). The only thing left is climbing and then nothing in the house will be safe. It is truly a joy to be in this position with Shayna. Watching her thrive and grow brings Nahum and I such pleasure that the extra work is actually fun.

With all her new talents, I don't think she's quite ready for a spoon. I let her feed herself yogurt & kix Sunday. The spoon was quickly abandoned; though, she did have fun trying a few times.

She weighed in at 8.46kg (18lb10.5oz) last Saturday. That's a 140g gain in one week (5oz)! Since today is her monthiversary, I'll check her height on the back of the door after her nap when I can get some help. 14-months-old today!

Crabby, Steroid Baby

2010-04-23T14:05:00.001-04:00

We made it home safe and sound last Saturday. Shayna is getting to be a much better road-tripper. She slept for a full hour in the car and didn't complain while falling asleep or waking up (a first for post-transplant trips). We spent most of the drive home either playing "what's on your head" where Shayna puts various things on her head and hoots at me to wonder where they went (she can't see them) then show great enthusiasm when she pulls it off to show it to me in the review mirror or dancing to Lady Gaga or Miley Cyrus. (We now listen to both daily as she likes to dance; though, I have order a couple new cds so we can have a little variety.) She also chilled out and ate snacks I passed her.

We had labs in Pittsburgh last Friday that showed a slight decrease in liver numbers but they didn't change this week after 5 days of prednisone (steroid to suppress her immune system) and a slight Prograf in increase (normal/lifetime drug for suppressing the immune system) so we doubled the prednisone dose to 10mg a day. She was already a bit crabby with the 5mg as she squawks in her high-pitched, ear-splitting screech much more readily these days. We'll run labs again next Friday and start her prednisone wean too. As long as the EBV doesn't skirocket, it'll probably be a 6-8 week weaning process.

Speaking of weaning, we're weaning from nursing. Shayna is taking it much better than I am and we've only gone from 6 to 4 sessions a day so far (before and after each bed time). She gets thawed breast milk in her sippy cup during the day so we might have room for food in the freezer again in a couple months. (She also takes cow's milk and water.)

This week's milestones are first steps and climbing stairs. She took her first unassisted steps on Tuesday April 20. The most she's done to date is 3 before grabbing something or falling and she doesn't like walking on her own either. She gets psyched out easily with both standing or walking alone so complains when we let go of her (unless she's playing "standing baby"). She finally figured out what to do with stairs so we use that for physical therapy. Stair climbing combines coordination, balance and strength.

These are the back deck stairs and the rock works as motivation because she's climbing to reach a goal.

I've posted some new videos on youtube this week for Shayna's adoring fans.

Plan Change: HOME TOMORROW!

2010-04-16T12:41:00.000-04:00

Shayna's liver has a case of Mild Rejection with no trace of damage from the EBV. We will slightly up her dose of Prograf and put her on Prednisone (a steroid) to mildly suppress her immune system some more. Yes, this is playing with fire as a lowered immune system gives the EBV a chance to proliferate. We'll be back to weekly labs at NRV Carilion and just hope things get better and the EBV doesn't go crazy. I've got to pack and clean the Ronald McDonald room and I do not drive well when tired so we're heading home first thing in the morning. Yay!!!

2 week minimum

2010-04-15T20:15:00.002-04:00

All I know is something isn't right, which means we're not going home tomorrow but more than likely being admitted for 2-3 days of inpatient treatment followed by at least 1 week outpatient observation. Yuck. We'll find out tomorrow what that "something" is.

On a brighter note, Shayna and I walked to a really nice, little park about 1/2 mile from the Ronald McDonald we're staying at in the morning. Shayna spent a lot of time swinging and a little time exploring the other play equipment. We also had a lovely visit with Gerry and Judy where Shayna got to admire their koi pond.

On a happy baby note: One of my favorite things about Shayna these days is her desire for a name for everything and how she likes to show it off if she knows/likes something. She makes sure I see all the big lights in the RM dining room, the cars or trucks that catch her eye, the birds she spots, etc. (She also expects me to name all the people we see walking past us; I just stick with man, woman, girl, boy or baby for that.) She's just so happy when she has names for things or I stop to show her something she didn't see (like the "pretty flowers" which always gets a grin out of her).

Recovering Well

2010-04-14T15:45:00.000-04:00

The biopsy went well this morning; though, we were a little late getting in the procedure room so missed the same-day-return cutoff for results. We'll see what's up some time tomorrow and go from there.

Shayna is sleeping now; though, we were just discharged from the recovery area. She fell asleep nursing (reason #2 I'm so glad we still nurse) about 30 minutes ago and I'm hoping she'll stay out for at least another 15 as she really needs it. She was pissed and starving when I got her 11:30 after the biopsy. She gulped 5oz of breast milk right away (reason #3: formula is considered "food" so is not allowed but breast milk is a "clear liquid" so can be given right away) and yelled for more so we gave her another 2 1/2oz of pedialite. She's had lemon-sugar ice, cheerios and more breast milk and she's held it all down so we're all pleased with her recovery from anesthesia.

Reason #1 for still loving nursing came yesterday when I was told I could breast feed until 5am for a 9am procedure. Midnight would have been the cutoff for formula. I woke her at 5am (yes, I cheated a little). She was pissed enough that she nursed on both sides, thank goodness as that was the only way we averted full blown melt down until 10:30 (yes, the biopsy started a "bit" late and we had the usual 3-poke fiasco getting the iv started after that).

I'm ready for dinner as I've hardly had anything to eat. We'll stop at the cafeteria on the way back to the Ronald McDonald so Shayna can do some people watching since we don't have a good car-watching window (that's what we do at home during meals). Tomorrow we'll be finding some outdoor entertainment. I'm thinking Schenley Park since it has lots of trails for me and swings for Shayna.

Liver Biopsy Wednesday

2010-04-13T07:09:00.000-04:00

Shayna and I will be driving to Pittsburgh today for a liver biopsy at 10am on Wednesday. Our weekly labs have shown that something is attacking her liver. These labs are so sensitive that there are no physical symptoms. The biopsy will show us whether her body is attaching her liver (rejection) or the EBV is attacking her liver (EBV hepatitis). The treatment for each of these are polar opposites and the treatment for one helps the spread of the other. Because the lab numbers can only show that something is going on in the liver, a biopsy is necessary to determine what is actually happening to the liver tissue. Luckily, everything right now will be outpatient so I will be able to keep Shayna's schedule and life as normal as possible. As the Ronald McDonald house (attached to the hospital) is full, we will be staying with Gerry and Judy until we can get a room. I will keep the blog updated as things happen and information comes in.

Double Trouble!

2010-04-09T19:33:00.002-04:00

Shayna and I went to the doctor this morning just to make sure she didn't have an ear infection as she'd been pulling and holding her ears a lot. No ear infection (just self soothing from teething) but she did finally DOUBLE her birth weight. She's now a whopping 8.2kg (18lb1oz)! She is also telling me no for things other than eating by turning her head as far over her left shoulder as possible and looking down. She'd been doing this for months to indicated she didn't want whatever you were trying to feed her but only did it when offered food. I asked her today if she needed to go to the potty and the brilliant little monkey turned her head to indicate no. She did this more than once today but also didn't do it once. She just made one of her talking noises so I put her on the potty and she peed a lot.

On a more serious note, we will probably be heading to Pittsburgh next week because her liver numbers did jump. The doctors were still in the OR at 5pm so they have not had a chance to review the labs to let us know how urgent the situation is. If we don't hear from them tonight we'll hopefully won't head up until Tuesday for a Wednesday morning, outpatient liver biopsy. If someone calls us tonight then we have to drive up Sunday and admit her to do an inpatient liver biopsy Monday. Nahum leaves for a conference in England on next Saturday followed by a short visit to his family in Israel so it'll just be Shayna and I in Pittsburgh. Depending on the biopsy outcome (if there's treatment needed and how long that will take), my CO mom Melinda will fly out to stay with us for a week or so.

We'll let you know when we know. Until then, keep your fingers crossed for us.

From Gefilte Fish to the Easter Bunny

2010-04-03T14:28:00.000-04:00

Lots of holidays to celebrate. Shayna made her first Easter Egg hunt this morning; though, since parents couldn't accompany their toddlers into the coral (see pic below) we had to rely on a friend's child to get Shayna couple eggs (Thanks Sharon).

Patricia, Shayna, Hila and Sharon in front of the Toddler Egg Hunt coral.

We went to meet with Sital and Serena. Serena actually got some eggs as she can walk well and is exactly 1 month older than Shayna.

We did the obligatory torture you toddler with the weird constumed person picture.

Most kids took too it.

Ours did not.

Labs went well again this week with very little fussing by Shayna. Sitting on my lap for them seems to really help. The results were not that awesome though. 2 of the 3 liver numbers they watch had climbed a little then plateaued for a week then climbed again last week and her EBV doubled again. We'll repeat everything again next Thursday and if it's the same or worse we'll probably have to head to Pittsburgh for a liver biopsy to test for either EVB Hepititis (where the EBV has begun attaching the liver) or rejection. Neither one is a good scenario as we could be spending a week or more up there for treatment, plus they're just bad things to begin with. This is also par for the course so none of this is unexpected or abnormal. I'm incredibly thankful for the health care passed this week so Nahum and I will be able to insure Shayna until she's 26 and she won't be denied coverage after that for her pre-existing condition as the infection/rejection struggle we're in right now will continue for the rest of her life.

Our adventure for next week includes a trip to DC. We'll be heading there tomorrow through Wednesday for some museum fun and the gorgeous cherry blossoms.

A Gefilte fish story

2010-03-29T12:56:00.000-04:00

I volunteered to bring the Gefilte fish to Pesach/Passover dinner tonight for our group knowing that my mother-in-law Lea makes an awesome Gefilte fish. Over skype a week ago Saturday, I asked if she could some how get me that recipe. Lucky for me, she was excited to share because it took some doing. First she wrote it out in French because she cooks in French so she won't forget the language. Then she nagged her husband Dov to type it out in Hebrew on the computer as she verbally translated it into Hebrew for him. (They live in Israel, he being born there and she moving there probably in the early 1950s from France though she was born in Germany.) After a few days of this, she gives up and calls her oldest son David in northern Israel and translated it to him over the phone as he typed. David then sends it as a pdf to Nahum who printed it off for me this last Saturday. Saturday night he translates it to English for me as I write out the ingredients and cooking steps. This generates a few questions and 2 more phone conversations with Lea to get everything straight on Sunday.

Armed with an ingredient list and only Sunday to figure everything out, I start calling the local grocery stores because I need whole carp scaled, de-boned, and ground and the heads, tails, and bones preserved for fish stock.

Basic conversation with all 3 places I could call:
Me, "Do you have carp?"
Them, "No, we never have carp."
Me, "Do you have whole fish?"
Them, "No, not today. If we did it would be trout."
Me, "Can you grind fish for me?"
Them, "No, no one in this area has the ability to do that due to cross contamination issues."
Me, "Do you have Pike?" (It's the other option listed in my Joy of Cooking book.)
Them, "No, we're out of that today."

Luckily, we had invited some friends over for brunch, the Sanborns. We tell this story to them and Robin miraculously solves one problem with, "Oh, I have a meat grinder on my Kitchenaid mixer. I can grind the fish for you." I still don't know what fish to buy, but at least I was temporarily saved from the horrible fate of buying a jar of Gefilte fish from the 5' Kosher section of our Kroger. After call the original 3 stores and 2 more, I'm able to locate 1 store with fish stock. Once at Kroger for the bulk of my shopping, I consult with the butcher as to which fish in the display case is most similar in taste and/or texture to carp or pike. We decided on tilapia. After picking up some fish stock, I head over to Robin's for a quick fish grinding party.

After another hour in my kitchen and two hours for the fish on the stove, I now have homemade Gefilte fish patties that taste pretty good but got a lot more help than originally anticipated to get here.. Nahum was the official taste tester as he's been eating Lea's fish all his life. While he says the texture is definitely different, he gave them his full approval (with a little salt of course).

Click here for a picture of the pot cooling on the back deck last night.

No Hemolyzing

2010-03-27T08:59:00.003-04:00

Shayna is not destroying her red blood cells (phew!); her iron level is just low. In a month or two we should see the red blood cells numbers reach the normal range based on the combination of iron vitamins but continued weekly blood draws.

We like to weigh her ever Saturday to make sure she's gaining well. While last week was only a 30g increase this week we jumped 170g. We all proceeded to do the happy dance around the scale with that number. She's now at 7.87kg, or 17lb 5.5oz. According to the Denver Children's Hospital this is only 80g (3oz) from being in the 2nd percentile (this a huge improvement over the 1kg it used to be). Below is my Excel chart (download from the CDC website).

The other exciting development this shows is she is only 50g away from her previous all time high and this time it's all healthy Shayna weight. (The two dips are from hospital visits that included albumin transfusions with a diuretic to get her to pee off some of the fluid that had collected in her belly (ascites). The 2nd one was accentuate by the transplant 2 weeks later).

Today we take Shayna to her 2nd Easter egg hunt. I got her her first basket, which she really enjoys playing with, so we can collect some plastic eggs with candy for Aba.

I posted Monica's birthday pictures from Shayna's birthday. Enjoy.

Good Times

2010-03-24T12:53:00.001-04:00

Nahum and I have been relishing having a health daughter for the past couple weeks and enjoying normal family time and outings with friends. It feels so magical to be a "normal" family again.

Happenings since we've been back:

-Nahum went to the Netherlands 3/13-3/20 for a wonderful conference. Shayna and I did great while he was gone with lots of play dates and even a bbq.

-I got a Burley D'Lite ST bike trailer that I'm in love with and Shayna is adjusting to. The first ride to the store was a bit tough as she got tired and hungry before it was over and I didn't have the seat and straps adjusted quite right yet for her comfort. This morning's tour of the neighborhood went much better. Leslie came over with her 2 girls and their new trailer then the 5 of us did a loop around the neighborhood and ended at the playground. I think this helped Shayna as she loves the swings. She mildly protested when I first put her in at the house but after the park she actually seemed content in the trailer. A few more little trips like that and hopefully we can use it to run errands.

-Labs continue to get better. She sat on my lab for yesterday's and only fussed mildly when the needle went in and out but was great during the draw. She even tried to grab to the tubes, to help I'm sure. I don't know today's results but we did have to add some extra tests to see if she is hemolizing her blood (destroying her red blood cells) due to a possible autoimmune disorder because of the immunosuppression.

-Shayna's scooting more and more on her own. She continues to gain weight well. She enjoys trying different foods but would happily eat cream cheese sandwiches and strawberries all day if I let her. She takes her (cut up) generic Flinstones chewables with iron like a champ and feeds herself the medicine in her syringes.

-I went to master's swimming for the first time since Shayna got sick last night and Nahum took care of Shayna (dinner, play, and bedtime). All three of us had a wonderful time. Nahum loved walking Shayna all over the house and I enjoyed being rewarded by the Pittsburgh gym session with some good starting times in the pool and enjoy dinner and a beer with my friend Leslie afterward.

Each day continues to be a joy and a blessing with our health little girl.

Lab Fiascos and Trying to Exist without Katie

2010-03-11T19:51:00.001-05:00

So I botched both lab attempts this week by not bringing the orders, instructions for the portion sent to Pittsburgh, and all the UPS stuff to send it. Shayna had to get poked Tuesday and Wednesday and things still weren't straightened out since the prograf level test was canceled for some reason even though they kept the blood to run that test. Luckily, there's next week.

The house is 1/2 unpacked. I miss all the nooks and cubbyholes of our Eldridge house. I need to get some more pretty storage shelves and cubbies here to protect the table and counter spaces from ballagon. This house is about 2.5 times the size of our Eldridge apt but there's 1/2 the space to put things. I miss Katie the cleaning hurricane. I have to do all the unpacking, Shayna care and regular house stuff myself plus I don't get any gym breaks. Oh well, I guess it's just back to normal life and pushing the jogger.

Shayna's doing great for the most part. She's perfected the pincher move so can now get all the little things on the carpet into her mouth (a week ago she could only pick them up but would miss her mouth). We still have to coax her to scoot as she'd prefer it if we'd hand her what she wants. She squeeled and hooted at some ducks and a bunny today. We also visited Aba who showed her off to all his friends in the VT physics dept.

The "Aravs in Virginia" Again

2010-03-07T20:48:00.000-05:00

We pulled into our garage about 1 1/2 hrs ago (from starting this post) and couldn't be more delighted to be home. This homecoming was more meaningful and more wonderful than when we first brought Shayna home from the hospital at 3-days-old. It was magical a year ago because of this beautiful, new, healthy life we had been blessed with but within 4 months of that first breath we learned something was trying to snuff that beautiful life out. We took a dying child and a healthy man to Pittsburgh and have returned home with a thriving child full of life and a parent and child connected beyond comprehension. Thanks to the wonders of modern medicine and the thousands of scientists that came before and are today, a healthy man was able to give part of his liver to a dying child and save his daughter's life. We were given back our child and the possibility of a long, healthy, and full life for her.

Thank you so much for all your kind words, warm thoughts, and extraordinarily generous help through out this difficult journey. I would like to recognize today's hero Yael who drove to Pittsburgh yesterday, helped us finish packing, loaded her car with most of our belongs, drove them back to Blacksburg today, and unloaded everything on her own so it was waiting for us in our garage when we pulled up. A special thanks to her husband Frederick and daughter Hannah who went shopping for us today so we'd have some real food in the refrigerator (and he also shoveled our humongous driveway 3 weeks ago).

What a blessing to be home and have a chance at a normal life again!

Going Home!!!

2010-03-04T20:26:00.000-05:00

I've got tons to do between now and Sunday morning when we pull out of here but we've been officially cleared to go home!!!!!!!!

Oh, and Shayna started crawling on hands and knees yesterday too.

The Zoo It Was

2010-03-02T20:22:00.000-05:00

I spent the afternoon at the Pittsburgh Zoo and Aquarium with a 1-year-old and she was totally fascinated.

She giggled over the Lemurs like she does the cat out front.

She didn't know what to make of the water line in the glass so kept trying to grab it but the swimming penguins were fun.

Standing over one of the aquariums at the Aquarium building. The fish swimming beneath her were really cool and there wasn't that stupid water line to confuse her.

I want to go back so we can spend more time at the Aquarium as we had to rush through since she was very tired. We saw lions, a tiger, two polar bears, otters, a kodiak bear, a black bear, elephants of all ages, lots of monkey type creatures, sharks, penguins, bright fish, an octopus, eels, and lots more. It's an amazing facility.

Training Aba

2010-03-02T12:24:00.000-05:00

I wondered how Nahum would be involved in EC/TT because when I ask him to potty Shayna he moans about the "work". I didn't ask much so last week Shayna took matters into her own hands. She'll squawk when she wants something (nurse, sleep, potty, attention) so I've been making educated guesses for the last 2 months. She's also only expected me to take her to the potty so hasn't asked others to do it, until last week that is when she started making Aba take her potty too. Instead of Aba toilet training Shayna, Shayna is training Aba.

We're still on for going home this weekend. I'd put it at about 85% chance as her liver numbers looked great and her prograf level was right where the doc's want it, but her EBV results aren't back yet. We don't see the transplant doc's until summer but they still have me on bi-weekly labs. The reason I think the chances are so good is that Shayna's coordinator sent discharge packets to her Blacksburg pediatrician Dr. Berry and Roanoke GI doc Dr. Hart yesterday for our appointments with them next week. I stopped by clinic to get weight and height for her 1-year babybook entry and she's really grown. She's gained 200g in the last 2 weeks to hit 7.446kg (16.4lb) and is 69cm (27.2in) so she's officially out grown her car seat. (I've got her big girl car seat in Blacksburg waiting for us.) She's got 585g (1lb4.5oz) to go before she doubles her birth weight (usually done around 4 months) but she's been eating like a horse recently so I'm hopeful it'll happen soon.

After a valiant 2 weeks of 10hr days every day, Nahum submitted the major proposal he'd been working on since January on Friday and a smaller one as well. It was was wonderful to have him home all weekend for both Shayna and I. We had a relaxed birthday morning then spent the afternoon with wonderful friends. We relaxed more Sunday, went for a walk to watch the people sledding at the park (which has an amazing sledding hill), and I got an afternoon nap. Nahum is just dealing with bureaucratic odds and ends this week so he can hit the ground running next week with his new post doc in Blacksburg.

I'm debating whether to take Shayna to the Aquarium and Zoo today or start packing.

Happy Birthday Shayna!

2010-02-27T20:48:00.000-05:00

And congratulations to your parents for getting through your first year.

A year ago today Nahum and I were enjoying a quiet first day with our new baby girl Shayna after a 12:12am birth. It was a magical and awesome day for both of us. Nahum was lucky enough to experience that instant and overwhelming love for another human being. With the first glimpse of her head, he knew he would do anything for his daughter. My first thought was, "it's over," as I was exhausted. For me, Shayna just was and always had been. It felt so natural for me to have this little person to care for and love. The details of that care were something both Nahum and I had to work out together. Luckily she was an easy baby. She fussed when something was wrong (wet, hungry, tired), we took care of it and she was happy again.

With all that has happened between this day and that day last year, Shayna is still the light of our lives, the greatest blessing we have ever experienced, and brings us more joy than we ever thought possible.

Here's a brief history of the last year:
Feb 18, 2009 Shayna's due date comes and goes with now sign of a baby emerging any time soon.

Feb 26 1am: Labor induction begins because her estimated size is 9lb10oz (+/- 15%)
6:30pm: Pitocin is hooked up.

Feb 27 12:12am: Shayna enters the world at 8lb13.5oz and 21.5in.

The next couple months are a wonderful, if slightly sleep deprived blur. Shayna nursed well, complained when something fixable was wrong, and began sleeping through the night at 8 weeks.

March 11 around 3am: meets Grandma Melinda and Grandpa Michael from Pueblo, CO for the first time as a tired Ima dumps a baby into their arms so she can sleep a little.

April 2: Gave Aba her first smile.

April 16: Behaves beautifully on her first plane ride to Berkley, CA. We spent a beautiful week meeting some of Nahum's old friends from the area and seeing some transplanted Boulder friends as well. We also discovered on this trip that Shayna gets hot very easily and will tell us.

April 17: Meets Grandma Carole from Death Valley, CA.

April 26: First hike. To the Cascades with wonderful friends.

May 2: Surprise herself and her parents by rolling over when she doesn't want to sleep. Unfortunately we only saw the results and not the action.

May 7: Laughs out loud. What a beautiful sound.

June 2: Put Shayna in daycare for the first time with great plans of getting much done. I only lasted 1hr before I had to drive back to check on her. She stayed another 1 1/2hrs after than and Aba picked her up.

June 15: Ima officially goes back to work part-time (24hr/wk). Aba takes Shayna to daycare. This lasted for a wonderful 4 days then...

June 18 9:30pm: We take Shayna to the ER because she's inconsolable. While we know she doesn't have colic and feel very strongly something is wrong, we still sat in the parking lot debating whether or not we were just be over concerned, first time parents. At 10:30, Shayna finally nursed and fell asleep but shortly before midnight results from a heal prick would send everyone panicking. The nurse practitioner was the first medical person to take her yellow color seriously and with elevated liver enzymes (the things we watch so carefully to this day) and a total bilirubin of 12.4 we new something was seriously wrong.

June 19: Doctor's appointments and checking into the pediatric wing of Roanoke Memorial Hospital.

June 20: We got a swift, and painful for Shayna, lesson on how to stand up to the medical professionals but by this afternoon we now have no problem say "no" to them until we clearly understand what they want to do and why.

June 25: Shayna and Ima take a private jet to CO to Denver Childrens who have are experts in Biliary Atresia and have one of the best teams for doing the surgical procedure that we hope will temporarily get bile flowing out of Shayna's liver again so it stops poisoning itself.

June 26: First surgery and it's unsuccessful. They do everything safe that they can think in the OR but still have no idea why they're is a blockage or what is causing it.

July 1-Aug 8: Spent a beautiful if stressful summer in Boulder, CO with many doctor visits along with all the visits with our old friends and hiking in the mountains.

July 6: Found feet.

July 16: Figures out mechanism for rolling over at will.
Aug 10: Sits unassisted

Aug 17: Cuts first tooth and begins evaluation Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh for a liver transplant. Beautiful facility but stressful time.

Sept 1: 2nd hospitalization. Luckily only 3 days instead of 2 wks (between 2 hospitals) like the first time.

Sept 10: First movie date night for Ima and Aba since gaining those titles. We saw Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.

Sept 17: We all get the flu shot for the first time in our lives.

Oct 1: Figured out how to work both hands together to pick up her new basket ball.

Oct. 6: First Pittsburgh hospital over night stay. Shayna loses 1kg (2.2lb) of fluid from her belly over night with albumin transfusions and diuretics.

Oct 7: Nahum begins 2 days of testing for Living Related Donor (LRD) compatibility.

Oct 16: Nahum nearly confirmed as a match for Shayna; however, doctors concerned about his cholesterol levels. Transplant date scheduled for Nov 19.

Nov 3: Shayna enjoyed her first trip to the polls; though, most of the people we voted for lost and Virginia went red again.

Nov 14: Shayna shows cold symptoms.

Nov 16: Transplant officially rescheduled to Dec 1 because Shayna has a cold.

Nov 24: Learns to wave "bye-bye".

Dec 28: Leave for Pittsburgh and 3 months away from home.

Dec 1: Hand my daughter over to the transplant team at CHP because my husband's liver literally looks good to his surgeons.

Dec. 7: Shayna's abdomin is closed and the paralytic turned off. Michael and I watch as she begins to twitch and move again after a week of no Shayna.

Dec. 8: Shayna's breathing machine is turned off as she is breathing well on her own with a little extra oxygen.

Dec 9: I get to hold my baby for the first time since I handed her over on the 1st.

Dec 10: Moved from the PICU (pediatric intensive care unit) to the regular liver/small bowels issues wing. Hard not having our own personal nurse but much quieter and better for adult sleeping.

Dec 13: First post-transplant smile. This means her incision site is feeling much better.

Dec 15: Rejection noticed with liver biopsy (numbers had started going up instead of continuing down). Start iv steroids to combat and hospital stay officially lengthened.

Dec 18: Saw Shayna's old liver. Large, hard and deep green.

Dec 21: Hilary leaves after 3 weeks of caring for Nahum. Nahum is sad.

Dec 22: Met and got autographs from some Pittsburgh Steelers.

Dec 23: Got released from the hospital. We were ecstatic to be out but completely overwhelmed by all the meds I was supposed to get into her on my own.

Dec 25: Michael goes home and we both cry inside about it. It was amazing and wonderful to go through everything in December with him.

Dec 27: Got a visit from some friends from home up visiting grandma. A nice feeling of some normal-ness.

Dec 31: Patricia's Birthday. We celebrated the next night with a good movie, Sherlock Holmes. Shayna tasted her first snow.

Jan 1, 2010: Celebrate 1 month post-transplant with a growing, happy Shayna.

Jan 7: Shayna pees in the potty for the first time. Within 3 days, she's peeing on cue (me saying "pssss") if she has to go and I have little potties all over the house.

Jan 20: Take Shayna to the pool (3rd time overall, 1st post-transplant) and she LOVED it. Watching the other kids play was especially great.

Jan 25: Grandma Carole comes to visit and dote on Shayna.

Feb 4: Sits up on her own.

Feb 5: Crib mattress is lowered.

Feb 6: Pulls to standing in crib.

Feb 13: Cruises the couch.

Feb 14: Our first go-home day comes and goes due to both infection and rejection.

Feb 17: Can military crawl forward (no more inch worm) but still goes backward occasionally

Feb 21: Our 2nd go-home day comes and goes due to both infection and rejection. Luckily the EBV seems to be getting under control and the liver numbers haven't actually gone up.

Feb 22: Cleared for a March 7th return home (pending good labs on March 1)

Feb 27: Our angel turns 1! We celebrated with with much sugar and processed carbs at the Hertzmans. It was a nice dual party as their 8-year-old shares the same birthday. (I forgot my camera so they have all the pictures at the moment.) Laux, cream cheese, bagels, and 3 cakes. Plus, I learned how to make hamantaschen, a traditional Purim cookie as today is also Purim.

We would like to again thank all of our family and friends who have made this last year doable for us. Without you, we don't know how we could have done all that has been asked of us just to get Shayna to her first birthday. Thank you.

A few minutes old and one-year-old.

Liver Numbers Down!

2010-02-23T10:43:00.002-05:00

Her liver numbers are back down in the normal, but high, range. If that were the only thing we were watching, we could go home; however, we have to wait for the EBV results to come back today or tomorrow before we're officially cleared to leave. We had a prograf dose change so I have to do labs this Thursday. Her level went from 3.2 to 8.2 on the same dose but I don't think I changed how I gave it (sprinkling powder vs. whole capsule changes the amount of prograf absorbed so it's very important to administer it in a consistent manner). Now I have to alternate between 0.5mg and 1.0mg each morning so I made a calendar to keep it straight. Her blood pressure remains down (100-110 over 55-60, high for a baby but great for her) so I'm down to only 3 daily meds with 4 total administrations and vitamin D plus bactrim Mon/Wed/Fri.

She can military crawl forward but is still intimidated by distances over 1.5 feet so yesterday I laid out rummikub tiles like bread crumbs to get her to go 3'. We'll do some more today as I want her to crawl before she walks for the muscle development and coordination crawling requires. She loves to cruise on the couch. She's still pretty slow about it and has trouble getting her left foot to coordinate with her right (the right one just gets too excited so won't stay still), but she'll go back and forth for hours if we let her. She's much more adept at getting Cheerios into her mouth. She has lots of carpet picnic snacks since the high chair we have is just a seat without a tray and sits about 2" lower than the table top. Bamba are now a thing of the past but gold fish are great. She still loves halved blueberries, pealed grapes, avocado, and flavored yogurts with cheerios. Noodles continue to be rejected much to my dismay. Most of her nutrition still comes from nursing. She continues to gain weight so that seems fine for now. She has more word like noises and I think can say much more than she lets on as words escape her mouth once but I won't hear them again after that. She's back on 2 naps a day too. My guess is the prednisone (steroids) finally wore out of her system so it can act in its more natural state.

Good news on the electronic from for me. My cell phone was replaced as it was still under warranty; though, I still hate it just as much. I took my computer to PC Doctor (2 blocks from our place and run by an Orthodox Jew). He's installing a new video driver today for $85 and says that's what was causing me all the problems and the reason it quite powering up. It'll be nice to have it back, and not to have to figure out where to scrape the money from to get a new one (like the one I'd like to have). We'll go out for a walk with an umbrella to get it (and get me some exercise) this afternoon.

Right now we're shooting for home on March 8th.

Staying in Pittsburgh

2010-02-18T14:51:00.000-05:00

Shayna's liver numbers went slightly down, which is good but not good enough to send us home. We saw Dr. Bond today who said that it can take 2 weeks for signs of rejection to begin to show. It's only been 1 week since we went cold turkey on her steroids (something usually weaned over a 2-3 month period) and halved her prograf so the rejection could easily begin to manifest itself next week. If we went home and that happened, we'd be sent back to Pittsburgh so the safest thing is to stay put. We'll have a full lab workup Monday followed by clinic then the 2 day wait for EBV results. In the mean time, we'll just keep our fingers crossed that her body has missed the fact it still has a foreign organ operating inside it and EBV stays low.

Our amazing landlords Evan and Mark have extended our lease yet again to take us through March 8th (taking a conscious business hit with that decision). Nahum's big proposal is due on the 26th so we wouldn't be heading home in the middle of the week either way and with all the labwork unknowns we'd just rather play it safe and give ourselves some extra time to play with.

There are 2 reasons I'm excited about staying until March 8th. The first is I have a new chance to take Shayna to the Aquarium now that I can drive again (Yay for driving!) and, after the proposal is submitted, we can take an early afternoon and go to one of the museums. (Right now Nahum is working 7 days a week.) The second is we're not moving on Shayna's first birthday so I can take the time to make a cake and plan a little party. I've been reading about cake making in Joy of Cooking and am stoked to be able to make her her 1st birthday cake on her 1st birthday. It's right after the proposal is due so Nahum will actually take the whole day off to be with us too.

Thank you Mark and Evan for providing such a wonderful home away from home. Thank you Yael for keeping your weekend open for us in case we could have come home. And thanks to everyone else who has been sending good thoughts and words our way. We continue to be amazed by and grateful for all the wonderful people that surround us during this difficult journey.

EBV Down...

2010-02-17T19:40:00.001-05:00

...but we still have to wait until our appointment tomorrow morning to see if we can go home. It hinges now on how much her immune system attacked her new liver while it was also fighting the EBV.

In the mean time, I dug out the car today with the help of a nice neighbor Rose. She saw me working and just came out to help with her broom and snow shovel. We cleared the car in 40 min instead of the 1hr30min it would have taken me. That worked out even better since Shayna was woken up early from her nap with a dirty diaper. I stepped into the house to have her start hooting for attention just after I'd gotten my wet shoes and clothes off.

I can drive us to lab and clinic tomorrow!

Little Mishaps

2010-02-12T13:34:00.001-05:00

We're fairly snowed in here so transportation is hard to get. I managed to get a cab scheduled for yesterday morning at 6:45am to take Shayna and I to labs and clinic. The driver called me @ 6:30 to see how to get to me without getting stuck on our street. I said we'd meet him at the corner of the main road because it's fairly clear. He decides to try to be a hero anyway and as I'm loading Shayna up in the entry I hear the "vvvvvvvvvvvvv" sound of tires with no traction. I spent the next 30 minutes helping our driver try to dig out his cab before a truck from his company came to pull him our of the snow bank and back into the snow ruts on the road. The rest of the drive was sloppy and skiddy but we made it there just before 8am. Shayna was grumpy because she'd woken up at 5am and was still tired so she cried when they drew blood and was not interested in being bothered by anyone except Ima. The talk with Dr. Sindhi finally helped me understand Shayna's EBV-PCR numbers. It's basically a super sensitive test that looks for active virus in her blood before it infects the tissues. Right now, Shayna has the active virus floating around her blood stream but it has not infected any tissues. It could stay like this for a while and not cause any problems but there is no way to predict one way or the other. However, problems it could cause are severe and difficult to treat so we stay put until nothing happens for a while and we go home or something happens and we go to the hospital. On the bright side, we're down 3 more meds because of the high EBV (one of them was 5ml too) so only have 6 that we give her.

The good new was Shayna gained ~150g for a naked weight of 7.25kg. She really likes to feed herself so I am continually challenged to find nutritious, delicious, and calorie dense food that she can pickup. Babma has replaced rice/oatmeal baby cereal and the exersaucer from the Hertmans has become snack zone since it's the only thing we have with a tray around it. We've also been successful with canned fruits (in pear juice not sugar added syrup). She master sippy cup drinking this week. She now knows which piece goes into her mouth and that she has to tip it up to get liquid out.

An interesting coincidence: both my computer and cell phone quit working on the same day 2 days ago. My cell is under manufacture's warranty so Verizon is sending a new one (yay!); however, the computer is 5 years old and has been giving me the blue screen of death almost everyday for the past month. If I were home, I would have wiped it clean and started over with many phone calls to my dad and my software disks. Now it simply won't turn on; however, there is a computer repair place around the corning with a sign saying if I bring my computer in they'll do a free diagnostic. It's worth a try. For now, I have Nahum's cell and laptop (he's got a real computer at the office so leaves it home anyway and they're gave him a phone a couple weeks ago). It's nice having a husband that shares so well. (I did save all my documents and pictures to dvds last week.)

Nahum has an infection at the surgery site again. This time he's been given antibiotics for 2 weeks but they shouldn't knock him out like the last ones. He's been on them for 2 days now and seems to be responding well and still able to function as he's still putting in long hours at the office and can play on the floor with Shayna in the evening.

We're both anxious to be home to find our new normal and quit living a life so up in the air but are thankful to be able to have such a wonderful life here.

Home Coming Postponed

2010-02-09T17:08:00.000-05:00

We have to stay through next week because Shayna's EBV numbers have continued to climb. We had both the prednisone and prograf lowered today and are looking at a possible liver biopsy if things don't improve by Thursday morning to see if anything more serious is happening. Instead of the bottom of the 3rd tier, she's now 1/3 of the way through it. If she hits tier IV, she'll be admitted to the hospital for IV anti-viral medications. I've extended our lease and canceled our moving help.

She's officially switched from a 2-nap-a-day baby to a 1-nap 1-yr-old. (My little girl's growing up!) That should make planning outings so much easier and I'll be able to stop at the store now on the way home from labs. She's getting much better at feeding herself (things in her fist were inaccessible, now she's gets them 1/2 the time) and climbing everything. She enjoys her new found scooting freedom as she can get to toys w/i a 3' radius of where she's placed. I've put a few outlet covers in the outlets she's discovered but she still can't get to much so I haven't really had to baby proof anything.

Here's today's pic of the day: I was walking her to the table for a snack and she decided to take the abacus with her.

Gerry and Judy Our Heros

2010-02-08T20:28:00.000-05:00

We had to get Shayna to labs today, our car surrounded by walls of snow, the plow had not gotten to our street, and we've got the worst tires possible for driving on snow. I decided to take her in the afternoon (works better with our prograf dose schedule anyway) hoping the roads would be a little clearer and I could take a cab. So at 3:30 I call Yellow Cab to see if they could get me to the hospital between 4:30-5pm. No dice. I then looked at the bus schedule. It's a 2-bus, 1hr trip on a normal day. So pulled out my last resort card and called Judy, my good friend's mother-in-law who has been helping us with everything from the very beginning. She and Gerry were at the grocery stocking up for the next storm (current predict up to 10") and the store was very crowded. None the less, they came to my rescue and picked Shayna and I up at 4:20 with a carseat already in the car. The drive to was a little sketchy but not bad, lab took 25 minutes, but the drive home was another heroic effort of 60 minutes. Without these labs results back by our Thursday Dr. apt, we won't know if we can go home so I had to get to the hospital for it today so Gerry and Judy saved the day again.

Shayna is her usual amazing self and has begun to listen to instructions (like "stay" when she wants to worm and squirm for a diaper change). She goes through these intellectual and physical leaps from one day to the next and just blows us away. When she stands in her crib, she's still scared to let go to sit again so needs rescuing when she's tired. (When she just wants to play, she'll get up and down no problem.) When she's tired she just gets overwhelmed and works herself into a fit. Luckily she'll go straight down with a little calming.

Nahum and I are concerned the approaching storm may delay our home coming by a week. And I have no idea how we're going to get to the hospital on Thursday if it really snows 10". We'll figure something out. What is life without a little excitement. At least they plowed our street while I was out. Now there's only 4" of packed snow.

Here the princess is at the bottom of our front steps on Saturday.

Good Eating, No Sleeping, and a Hair Cut

2010-02-04T19:07:00.001-05:00

It was a wonderful day for feeding Shayna as she ate nearly everything put in front of her. Plus I finally put butter in her banana, breast milk oatmeal so it's just jam packed with calories and she still finished the whole dish. Since she ate so well, she decided she must give me trouble on another front: napping. She only slept for 1/2hr in the afternoon, fortunately I slept then too otherwise we wouldn't have survived. During one of our up periods when I wasn't trying to sleep her, I gave her a haircut AND she looks better than when I started (even Nahum thinks so). It was just a little trim to get rid of the wild bush look.

Here she is enjoying some avocado from Jan 27.

We're still going home on the 14th!! even though her EBV-PCR (the extremely sensitive test they run to detect EBV before it has a chance to do anything) is now at the bottom of tier III (in a four tier system) so they've adjusted her prednisone (anti-rejection steroid) and prograf (main anti-rejection drug, on for life) again.

On her amazing feats from, she can now easily go from her belly to sitting. I watched her go onto her belly for a toy, tuck her legs under her and push straight back up like she'd been doing it for ages. It amazes how much stronger she gets each day. I don't think she'll be walking for a couple months at least because she's still so wobbly but I see her doing some real crawling soon. There are some new youtube videos on my mrsarava channel showing her current inch worm technique.

One of my favorite times of the day is just after dinner and before bed when Nahum and Shayna play on the floor. It brings joy to my heart to hear them laughing and talking together. That's what they're doing right now.

Immunosuppression Does Its Job

2010-02-01T19:32:00.001-05:00

Shayna's liver numbers are going down again but she's also got a cold. We'll be on the increased prednisone until next Thursday (2 weeks) then start the weaning process (7.5mg @ 1wk, 5mg @ 4wks, 2.5 @ 4wks then hopefully none). I don't know how the cold will play out. So far she's in good spirits with a runny/stuffy nose. She was never sick before transplant except the little cold that postponed the original. All she did then was sleep more and cry less (sore throat).

We're still going home on the 14th!! We've got our last Dr apt next Thursday then our friend Yael will come to get us.

Shayna still slithers toward desired objects (forehead to floor while her legs push) but she's getting more confident about it. She finally figured out the whole walking by holding hands thing but is still more enamored with just the standing in place. She helped me do laundry and clean the kitchen today.

I finally started sorting mail from the last 2 months. I'd kept up with the bills but everything else was just piling up. Yay for EOBs. My favorite was the EOB for $445,545.75 that had a negotiated rate of $183,242.63. You gotta wonder about that difference. Most EOBs are a few hundred to a few thousand. Thank you Virginia tax payers for our wonderful insurance. I'm also beginning my collection of tax documents.

Everything's up.

2010-01-29T07:26:00.003-05:00

The results from Monday's EBV test and Thursday's regular prograf-dose-changed draw weren't so hot, but I don't know enough to understand the implications. The 3 liver numbers we watch all jumped from Monday to Thursday indicating she's gone back into rejection and the EBV was slightly up too. With Monday's prograf increase we're now dumping on a Prednisone increase. No IV but we are going from 2.5mg/day to 10mg. I've got a lot of questions for the doc on Monday. Does this delay going home? Do we have to start the Prednisone weaning process from the top? When do the EBV levels get concerning enough to risk rejection by lowering the anti-rejection meds? How long might we be on this teeter-tauter? Luckily we've got an awesome doc at home who used to be the head of transplant in Atlanta so we probably can deal with a lot of this at home. But do the local labs have the ability to run the tests Childrens run (they're pretty specialized tests)? As Kate just pointed out, at least the prednisone will make her eat more (steroids increase your appetite).

Shayna's still being incredible. She pulls herself up like a pro when you grab her hands. In fact people have so much fun with that that she doesn't get as much tummy time as she should. I was working on some tt yesterday and she can slither across the floor a few inches. I set my cell phone about a foot from her so she spent some time with her head raise contemplating it. She then lays her head down gives a push with one of her feet, lifts her head and reaches for the phone to see if she can get it yet. She did this a few times, mixed with rolling to her back for a perspective change and to check out another toy within reach a couple times, before she finally reached the phone. She reached a strength milestone yesterday too. She can now be on her hands and knees at the same time; before, if one end was up the other went down.

Update: I just talked with Shayna's nurse coordinator and she said we'll still be able to go home in 2 weeks because they can monitor everything from Roanoke. Yay!! (As long as things don't get worse that is.)

No tears!

2010-01-25T20:44:00.001-05:00

Today's lab and clinic morning was monumental. Shayna didn't scream, cry or protest when I laid her on the lab-draw bench, when the nurse put the tourniquet on, when Shayna watched the needle go in, or anytime during the whole 4-vial blood draw experience. As her usual routine is to scream like a banshee the moment I set her down, this was phenomenal. The meeting with the doctor and nurses was informative. We were told we could go home in two weeks as long as Shayna gains weight and her liver numbers stay down. Then I had a great talk with the dietitian who has instructed me to put butter or olive oil on just about everything Shayna eats to make sure every mouthful is packed with calories. Now all I have to do is actually get her to eat the food. Her belly continues to shrink and her legs and arms get bigger and stronger but they don't measure those things, only the number on the scale. That number is getting bigger slowly, but they'd like to see more (and so would we); however, I think the bigger picture needs to be looked at with actual fat measurements being taken on legs, arms, etc since she's still working on getting rid of and not producing any more belly fluid.

The results of last Tuesday's EBV blood draw was good and bad. Her EBV numbers went down but her liver numbers when up. It's quite a delicate dance they have to do, giving Shayna's immune system enough leeway to keep the EBV in check but not too much to avoid rejection of Aba's liver. The tentative good news this week is that, without any med manipulation last week, her liver numbers went back down. We have to wait until Wed/Thur for the EBV results, but as they had dropped significantly last week and now changes were made, should be down still.

Carole (my birth mom) got to the apartment at 3:30am from Vegas (she lives in Death Valley). She'll be staying for the week, helping out and just keeping us company. Shayna is loving the extra person to dote on her and Carole inspired me to go for my first outdoor run today (I found a cool trail too; wish I were in better shape so I could explore more). While I jogged, Carole walked so we both got out during the 1 hour of sunshine we got today (more snow for the rest of the week). We went to Trader Joe's today. A nice tourist destination but not a place I will shop frequently as there is much more prepared food than I need and not enough plain food. (The cheese/dairy section was great though.)

Plans for the week include an adult dinner with Carole, Nahum, and I at a Thai place, walks with Grandma Carole and more jogs for me, begin collecting tax paper work (new baby and medical stuff this year), and make arrangements for getting us and all our gear back to Blacksburg the weekend of February 14th.

Thanks goodness for the JCC

2010-01-20T09:47:00.001-05:00

That's one reason I'm enjoying Pittsburgh so much. I've been working out regularly (those baby expelling stomach muscles still need work as they always seem to get sore) and finally took Shayna swimming for the first time since our stay in Boulder. (Blacksburg just doesn't have good facilities.)

She LOVED the water (see more pictures at end of fb album). We also hung out there Sunday while it rained outside (after a short jaunt in the rain to get there) watching the kids play basketball in the gym then people walk through the main hall while I looked at the art exhibit. Shayna got pretty excited about the kids playing basketball but then spotted all the extra balls in a corner of the gym and wanted to play herself. Once she got more distracted by the stationary balls (which she would have promptly tried to eat) we left to watch people in the hall.

Even though we can't see a whole lot of people (as I would get smacked by Shayna's coordinator for exposing her to all those germs), it feels like we've got a community here. We had a lovely dinner at some new friend's house on Friday. Much more high class than I am used to with delicious custom martinis, but they're also grandparents so had a highchair and toys for Shayna (she even got to take some new things home). There's a fruit stand/store around the corner whose owner I stop to chat with when I walk past with Shayna. There's a park 10min walk from home with friendly parents I chatted with while pushing Shayna on the swing Saturday. Yesterday we took a family day (since Nahum worked all weekend) and explored one of the little parks/trails along the Monongahela River. It's been one of the snowiest winters but I can still easily picture myself living here.

Shayna responded great to our sleep training. As long as I maintain a rigid nap and bedtime schedule, she only wakes once in the night now for feeding and goes right back to sleep. It makes the day a little inflexible, but for a real night of sleep I'll take it. I just have to prep for any outings I want to take her on (like grocery shopping or swimming) while she sleeps so we can get moving as soon as she wakes. Having Kate helps a lot with this as I can run errands on my own, and Nahum and I can have date nights. We saw Avatar in 3D at the IMAX theater in Homestead (a borough of Pittsburgh just over the river from Squirrel Hill). Seeing a movie in 3D is AMAZING, plus it was a good movie.

Childrens was closed Monday (for MLK) so we did labs yesterday. We won't know about the EBV levels until Thursday since the testing takes 2 days. Our next clinic is this Monday (every other week) and that's when we'll know better about when we might get to come home.

Revelations and EBV

2010-01-15T11:26:00.000-05:00

Her EBV (Epstine Bar Virus) levels are up. This is something 90% of adults have by the time they're 40 and in normal people it's usually just a rougher flu and can occassionally lead to mono but in an immunosupressed person there can be more severe complications. Shayna's numbers are in tier II of a four tier system so, while her Predinose was lowered Monday from 7.5mg to 5mg as a natural wean, we lowered it again to 2.5mg on Wednesday (it takes 2 days for the EBV levels to come back) to give her immune system a chance to try to fight the EBV. Right now we wait and see where the levels go over the next few weeks and we'll deal when anything else if and when it happens.

We continue to struggle with normal parenting things like sleep, or lack there of. I finally moved to the master bedroom with Nahum on Monday and enlisted his help with night-time Shayna calming. When she sees me, she expects to nurse for comfort and gets pissed if I don't so if it's been less than 3hrs we now send Nahum in to help her get back to sleep. Last night all three of us finally had a decent night sleep and I got a full 4.5hrs of uninterupted sleep and Nahum only had to calm her once (though it was a rough one). We're also working hard on a strict nap schedule and bedtime routine. So far, she seems to be responding.

Speaking of napping, she just woke and is calling. I'm going to take her swimming today so I better get going so we can work all of our stuff in before nap time #2.

No Prograf Change!

2010-01-11T20:06:00.002-05:00

The good news today is that we don't have to adjust her Prograf dosage. This means we don't have to go to lab on Thursday. In another day of freezing temps, clouds, and wind, Shayna and I ventured out into Pittsburgh at 7am (the sun's not even up that early). She was a trooper as usual and flirted with the doctor (who thought she was so cute that he took a couple pics with his phone). They declared her fit and said we only have to come to clinic every other week. With the lab results in the afternoon, we found out we only have to do labs once a week now too. Next time they'll talk about when we can go home, but it's looking like our lease, which ends on the 16th of February, is just about perfect.

Shayna is a goofy, energetic baby and I still think she'll be crawling, or at least scooting, before the end of the month. When I listen, she tells me when she has to pee even with her diaper on. Total victory is a long way off, but each pee-pee in the potty is a little victory that makes us both grin (she's so proud of herself when she goes). We're also both loving the new baby food pureer I got as she can now eat anything we eat, like brisket by Leslie (yummy-yummy) and chicken mushroom stroganoff. She can finally feed herself Cheerios, etc, which also means she can eat the piece of cheese or Bamba stuck in her palm.

Shayna sans diaper (part of EC) in the kitchen loving some Bamba.

Shayna enjoying her new beach ball.

We're official Sam's Club members. I joined the one here as one is coming soon to the Blacksburg area. (I still think Costco is better, but I'll take what I can get.) I made my first trip while Shayna was with the sitter so I could wander the isles uninterupted. Most of it is the basic highly processed food stuff, but there's enough other stuff (like diapers) to make it worth while. I splurged by getting a jar of pesto and some blackberries (not to be eaten together).

Still at Twice a Week

2010-01-08T09:52:00.002-05:00

With Prograf levels still fluctuating, we've had to stay at twice a week labs. Alone that's fine, but the snow is making the morning drives (still w/o snow tires) a little sketchy. We've had good road luck so far this week and it looks to continue (I was even able to get in a trip to the supermarket yesterday before the snow really started.) Nahum made is first lab/clinic day yesterday, on 3 hours of sleep (his normal insomnia), and wound up getting poked too for one of the studies we entered (I think we're only in 2). Her liver numbers are actually w/i the normal range, probably for the first time since she was born. She's not gaining weight again so there's talk of supplementing her. I'm trying to stuff her between now and Monday to get her to show some weight gain, and so she'll stop waking up so much at night. (At this point, I'd love a consistent 2-3 times as she's settled into 3-5 times.)

Shayna doesn't like be wet or sitting in a poopy diaper so I've decided to try to EC her in the hopes that this will also help avoid what I've seen friends' toddlers do recently, throw fits about diapers changes. We're just doing it part-time, but so far she love to pee-pee with Ima. I've always taken her to the bathroom with me in the hopes that she would see it as a normal part of life and be more willing to potty train with the time came as her health issues before transplant made ECing daunting to me. If I work with natural baby timing (after nap and during a nursing break), she pees about every time. The no-diaper watching is a little harder she sits and her belly is a little bigger than most babies so it's hard for me to see when she starts peeing. (Most people start EC when the baby can't sit and it's a lot easier to see a baby start to pee when it's laying down so the genitals are visible). Yesterday I caught her signals 2 of 3 times (the miss was caught by towels and pads and didn't even reach her play blanket over the floor). I ordered the book The Diaper Free Baby yesterday (along with 3 sleep books). That'll get here Monday so I can stop winging it based on the website and my friend Yael's advice (and the little I did read in the book I borrowed from her before Shayna arrived).

I made it to the JCC gym twice this week!! Since I'm so out of shape, I only do 40min workout +10min stretching to avoid burnout before I can even get started. I jogged and biked the Tuesday and biked and lifted weights yesterday. Their bikes, while being only recumbant or cruiser style and not like real workout bikes, are quite hightech. Most have computer screens that show tv or a cycling route and half have handlebars that turn. I picked "Evening Bliss" so the computer took me on a 2.5mi loop ride in a park like a video game race track except you can't crash (I tried runing into other cyclists and they just kind of disappear once I hit them and it also won't let me off road when I tried to ride into a ravine). My goals are to making hiking with Shayna easy this summer and to do a 10k in 50mins before summer solstice (my current PR is like 50min40sec).