My sister, my hero...

Breast Cancer... such a scary concept and certainly not one I'd ever thought I'd ever have to deal with but there it is folks, the damned beast decided to attack my beloved older, and only, sister... She discovered it in November and got it checked immediately fearing the worst and the worst is what it was.  She decided to wait to tell me, my mom and her daughters until after she knew for sure.  It makes me sad that she had this secret for what must have felt like an eternity for her, through Christmas and even through our trip to Florida where we were all together and she could have shared but she feared she would have ruined our trip... As if!  As much as I wish she would have let us in on it, I respect her choices and I'm ready NOW to battle with her.  The cancer was in one of her breasts and the surgeon had first suggested that she do chemo to reduce the size of the tumor and then doing a lumpectomy so she wouldn't have to lose most of her breast.  After much thinking, talking and contemplating, she decided to do a double mastectomy.  The oncologist told my her that she didn't need to go to that extent because 6 out 7 women are completely fine after the lumpectomy and chemo.  My sister didn't, and neither did any of us, like that there was still 1 out of 7 (14% if you like percentages) that weren't completely fine and that wasn't ok with her.  She's a mom to two beautiful girls who are 8 and 10 and therefore still need their mom more than ever (but when do we ever NOT need our moms?), a wife to a man who thinks she hung the moon, a daughter to a mom who's already been through so much and MY sister, without whom I don't even know... I just can't even... she's got too much life left to live to take a chance so she bravely made the decision to have both breasts removed. One of the things that helped make a decision came from her husband's aunt who had died a short few years ago of cancer.  This amazing woman left her daughter notes before dying with advice of what to do if cancer ever came knocking at her or someone else in the family's door.  Mastectomy was one piece of advice that she firmly believed in.  The cancer had started in her breasts and came back a few years later undetected and spread throughout her body all the way to her brain.  She was certain that a double mastectomy would have saved her life.  What clinched my sister's decision was advice that came from a co-worker who has been a Godsend for my sister as she went through it all not too long ago and she had a double mastectomy.  She had, as the doctor had suggested my sister do, done a lumpectomy at first. She ended up being that dreaded 1 out of 7 women whose cancer returned two years later and that's when she did the double mastectomy. I'm glad she's there because she's able to relate to my sister's feelings, she's able to guide her through the next steps of her journey and she even showed her her battle wounds... I'm so thankful for her for being able to be there in ways that I could never be.  

My sister's surgery went really well and she's home recovering, still at peace with her decision. She is surrounded by her husband who supported her decision from the start, her daughters and my mom, who once again, raced the clock from Florida to get to the side of one of her daughters.  If you remember, she did the same for me when the boys were born.  She's amazing and the queen of positive thinking so she's a good one to be with my sister.  She'll live there for the next little while until my sister gets back on her feet.  Next, we wait... we wait to see if the lymph nodes the surgeon removed were clear, we wait to see what, or how much, chemo she'll need to do and we wait for an all clear, the beautiful "Cancer Free" words that we all know will come one day.

How am I dealing with it all?  Well I think I was numb for about a week after she told me, in complete shock and disbelief.  She told me the night before I was to start teaching again so in a way it was good timing as I was able to keep my mind of it all from 8:20 to 3:30.  I cried a lot, and I still do, at random times.  I'm often short with my husband and my in-laws (I'm sorry) because I'm just so angry.  After talking to many people myself (don't we all know someone... so awful...), I refused to think negatively.  Positive thinking is very powerful and as negative as I can be sometimes in some aspects of my life, this is one time where all I will focus on is the positive outcome.  I have to say that my colleague Riva, whose mom had gone through the double mastectomy surgery was a huge support for me, helping me with what I should expect before, during and after the surgery, so thank you.  I also have to thank one of my bff's Alicia, who was the first friend I told because I knew that she had gone through a similar situation with her husband when he had testicular cancer, so thank you Alicia.  I have a friend whose mom is battling brain cancer and she and I met by the elevators at the hospital to chat while I was waiting for my sister to get out of surgery.  My husband, bless his heart, doesn't know how to deal with me as I'm going through this because, as all men, they are solvers and he can't solve this thing for us.  He has, thankfully, always been in the positive frame of mind from the beginning so that's been a huge help for me.  My children are a constant source of happiness in my heart so that helps me get through the tough times.  I am so very lucky to be surrounded by family and friends who are the absolute best and from whom I've received so much encouragement and support, my sister has a lot of people in her corner and she WILL beat this thing and hopefully already has by cutting the damn thing away!

If you've been following my blog, you know I'm an open book.  My sister... not so much.  She's given me the go ahead to write this blog about her because she's hoping her journey may save the life of another so please share her story and help make her wish a reality: that she may save someone else's life by sharing her journey as her co-worker has been there for her.  Please don't ask too many questions, I will share what she's comfortable sharing.  I simply ask that you send us your positives vibes, love and prayers.

I will leave it at this for this week as nothing, not even my triplet adventures, needs to take precedence today.

My beautiful, incredibly brave sister... I love you to the moon and back and back again... You go this sis... XOX

Ladies!  Click this link to help you learn how to do a self check : http://www.breastcancer.org/symptoms/testing/types/self_exam/bse_steps  DO IT TODAY!

Now more than ever, this...

Snowmageddon #2

Well if we thought last week's storm was bad... man oh man!  They've already closed the schools for tomorrow!!  In all the craziness that was today, I forgot today was blog day.  The boys were feeling the cabin fever of it all and they weren't feeling the best so we had a rough parenting day.  There's nothing huge to report from our adventures except to say that our tenant has finally MOVED OUT!!!  So if you know anyone who's looking for a place...

It's been a crazy week and I don't remember a time when I have been this exhausted... so I'll just leave you with some pics.


xox

I hope you had a happy Valentine's day!  These are the crafts my boys made at daycare... so cute!  

They don't often get to hang out outside in the snow.  They were feeling it :) 

They had a rough go at walking in it all at first but they quickly got the hang of it

Samuel was not happy I didn't let him eat Zachary's Eggo

This was out our front door.  This was about 5 hours after  Gabe had already cleared it. 

You can't even see our deck railings...

The boys' new favorite word is ball and it is also their favorite new game.  Although Sam still doesn't like to share... 

I had to cut his "dodo" in fours as he'd drag the long muslin blanket along side himself and trip over it all the time.  Now you can find him with one piece in each hand... 

My little camera hog

Zachary playing ball with Papa

Zachary walking around the kitchen using his "walker", a garbage can we use for recyclables. 

He can push that thing forever... well until one of his brothers comes to steal it and then he'll fall on the floor crying. 

"Reading" their Valentine's Day cards from Mamie & Pappy

Some outtakes from the V-Day photo shoot session.  

I don't wear lipstick and that was the only one I had in my room... It was shimmery and took forever to wash off but how cute are they?

But really though... 

Too cute for words... XOX

Wearing red for valentines

No matter how many times we tell him to sit on the couch... he gives us a heart attack scare every day running on that thing! 

Like this mommy?

Being sneaky little devils... they know they're not supposed to go behind that chair... lol

Gab getting ready to tackle the outdoors

Have a good week y'all!

Snowmageddon

Well what a start to my going back to work!  I saw my students just about every two days since going back to work last Monday!  I guess it's eased me back into it.  I'm not sure if I can handle a full 5 day week!! They're not calling for much snow so maybe I'll have to find out!   I brought the boys to daycare on one of the two days we had off this week and I did so more cleaning and it felt so good to finally feel like my house was actually fully clean since my mother left (who was always a big cleaning help!).  I swear if this Jamberry business of mine takes off, I'm buying us some cleaning lady time!  Anyone know a good (and inexpensive) cleaning lady???

The boys went to a physio appointment on Wednesday morning with Gabe and my father in law and as usual, the boys are doing great!  The physio lady is not too worried about the fact that Zachary is not walking yet as she's still counting on the fact that they were born two months premature and he's got time to get there.  She is concerned that his feet are a little off kilter so she's prescribed him some braces to put in his shoes to correct it.  We had to go and buy some shoes for him that would fit the brace but not be too big or too small as we don't want them to be too tight for fear of hurting him nor do we want them to be too big to really mess up his feet.  I highly recommend Pop Shoes (by Carter's near the power center).  The guy who works there was super friendly and super helpful, they had a special place for kids to sit with a tv on the wall for them to watch while we tried shoes on AND they had toys for them to play with!  What service!  Yes, the shoes cost a pretty penny but if that's what's needed to help our little guy out, that's what we'll pay.  I'm just happy we didn't have to buy THREE pairs!  Anyways, the physio lady keeps being so impressed by how the boys are progressing, so it's nice to hear.

Daycare bugs are creeping into our kids... Their nose is runny and they seem to have mild fevers that come and go.  Hopefully they won't catch the flu again anytime soon.  Something was off with our little Jacob last night as he woke up crying at around 10:30 pm and normally when they do that, they fall asleep within 5 minutes.  I let him cry for 5 minutes and when he didn't let up, I went to check on him to make sure he was ok (he looked fine on the monitor but you never know), and he hadn't pooped, he had his soother near him, he didn't feel warm and he stopped crying the moment I picked him up so all of "let's make sure the baby is ok" checklist was checked off so I put him back to bed with full intention of letting him cry a bit (at this point, I was thinking it had been a bad dream or something).  Anyways, 10-15 minutes later, he's still quite upset so I go pick him up and bring him in the bedroom with us and soothe him.  He falls asleep on me within minutes.  I leave him there for about 15 minutes and ask Gab to go put him in his crib.  He starts freaking out the moment Gab even starts bending over to put him to bed, like freak out freak out.  I'm a huge believer of the CIO (cry it out method) when I know they're fine and to me, everything seemed fine... so again, we let him cry but he was crying harder than we had heard him in a long time so there must have been something wrong with him that we hadn't put on the list so our little guy came to bed with us.  He cuddled up to me, and then Gab and then back with me where he fell asleep in my arms (still so sweet though right?).  I rolled him off my numb arm (as cute as it was, I wanted my arm back) and he woke up for a few minutes where he made the cutest noises (while Gabe and I tried hard not to laugh) and drifted off to sleep while clinging to my shirt.  I let him sleep there for about 2 hours until I woke up to my cramped self who couldn't take it anymore so I took a chance and brought him to his crib.  He cried for about 1 minute and thankfully fell blissfully asleep.  Maybe he just needed extra love last night, and that's ok.  I'm a little tired today though and I'll be hitting the bed pretty hard pretty early as 5:30 will come quickly.  Hopefully, tonight won't be a repeat of last night because my students will have to deal with my already twitching eye!

**UPDATE** So we just put the boys to bed and now it's Zachary that's crying... he was perfectly fine when we put him down... eye won't stop twitching... please go to sleep little buddy... 

In other triplet news... Jacob is still a kamikaze accident waiting to happen!  I swear the daycare will think we abuse him!  He's got two new cuts/bruises on his forehead!  The first bang happened when Gabe play scared him and he got real scared and fell head first on a cube shelf.  The second is when he tripped over his own feet and fell head first on their little toy car.  Tonight, Sam fell and hit HIS forehead on a kitchen chair... nothing needing stitches yet, thankfully!!  The boys have been acquiring new skills lately too which is neat to see.  I don't get to see much of their new developments anymore as I went from being with them 12 hours a day everyday to only having about 1.5 hours of playtime with them a day so this weekend was fun to see new things already happening within the last two weeks!  They're starting to put toys IN stuff instead of taking everything out of everything so that's fun.  They can now fill and empty on their own and they love it!  They are starting to give things to one another or I should say Jacob is starting to.  Samuel doesn't share.  He gets soooooo angry when either one of his brothers takes a toy from him.  He'll sit there and cry his eyes out the moment it leaves his hands.  Zachary will only get upset if it's food or his water bottle and Jacob will just take it right back.  Gabe was telling me that Jacob brought a toy over to Sam today and a little later, he took a toy from him and Samuel started chasing him around the living room to get it back.  So maybe he'll get over his crying fits and stand up for his rights to his toys!  It's fun now that they're both fully walking pretty well.  People said I should be scared as the moment they start walking, it's over!  I think it's great!  I can't wait for Zachary to join the party!

**Update #2** You can all rest easy, all is quiet in the nursery... can I still call it a nursery?  Anyways, the boys are all quiet (asleep? but quiet is good).

I'm sure many of you are wondering about my tenant situation... no good news there I'm afraid.  Can you believe the little witch IS STILL THERE!!  Tomorrow is her last official "legal" day that she can stay.  We are getting the authorities involved tomorrow.  Oh yeah, and the money she promised us we'd get last Wednesday... not a cent my friends... that's now two months rent she basically stole from us... that's almost a full month's daycare fees!  I'm trying so hard to understand how someone could do that.  I've never known anyone in my life to be so deceitful and dishonest and it's really difficult to wrap my brain around it all.  Anyways, hopefully by next blog post she'll be gone!

On a happier note, here's some pics!  There are less and less of these because I just don't have time anymore  :(

We started a little project this weekend...

...a little chalk wall to put up our menu/groceries etc.  All that's missing is the frame!  Update on that next week!

My niece Alexie forgot her sweater here so we did a mini photo shoot with Jacob wearing it.

Sam and momma having a laugh

It's tea but whatever, the caffeine still did its job

Zachary and mommy went out alone this morning, it was both sweet and weird to be out with just one baby (and and EASY lol)

At Pop Shoes trying his new shoes on while eating a Mum-Mum

Sam is the fastest eater ever so when he eats his snacks in half the time it takes his brothers, he tries to steal 

Zachary is trying to give me some while Sam is upset that he's not giving it to him

Samuel and Alexie having a cousin moment.  Samuel must have laid there with her for 15 minutes, it was super sweet

That's NOT how you play the piano Zach!  We'll never get on Ellen if you don't learn properly!! 

You can clearly see his first cut on his head and the other one is by his eyebrow (a little fainter).  Still cute as all getout though! 

And THAT's how accidents happen... 

That blanket is his new obsession.  I've been calling him Linus all week. 

Zachary checking out the Cars decals on his Cars couch... none of us have ever seen that movie... 

Ready for our date mommy!  I even put on my awesome jean jacket!  

Have a good week y'all!