The Im Family

(picture:  mimi holding her pumpkin at the Pumpkin Playground field trip her class took last week) mimi told me that fall was her favorite time of the year. she loved the leaves and wishes we had a yard with lots of leaves so she could jump in it. for her decorated pumpkin, last year she drew faces with sharpie markers. this year, she wanted to paint an owl on her pumpkin: she had been begging to go apple picking all month long and her grandparents finally took her last weekend. she made me promise that when she came back with all the apples that we would make an apple pie. so i kept my word and using some of the bazillion apples she picked with her grandparents (god love them, they let her pick two gigantic grocery store bags filled to the brim with apples, many of them were bruised, worm holed, and smashed up) we made an apple pie together. mimi's contribution was measuring the ingredients for the pie crust and then later cutting the pie dough into small leaf shapes ...

here i am late AGAIN to post ozzy's monthly update. things have still been busy, and honestly, i'm starting to think that maybe it's not going to ever slow down. ozzy had hives since oct 8th. the majority of it has cleared up as i write this, but a few small red bumps that resemble little mosquito bites still linger here and there. after the first week of ongoing hives, i started to worry that it was a food allergy, so i called to set up an appointment with the allergist, but the soonest we could be seen by mimi's allergist was another two weeks out. so i called a different allergist and got an appointment for the following week. in the meantime, i started to track what he was eating and try to eliminate them. the hives persisted, and at this point it was going on two weeks with hives. the only thing i had not eliminated thus far was dairy. so i tried that and the hives seemed to go away, not entirely but he was no longer a swollen mess of hives so large that h...

mimi drew this the day we scattered kaya's ashes and saw the rainbow in the sky. when i saw her drawing it, she was making the rainbow and i asked her if she was going to draw kaya under the rainbow and she said, no, she's going to be on top. it's interesting to me how her decision makes kaya look like she is crossing a rainbow bridge. coincidence? the girl on the bottom left is blowing bubbles and kisses because kaya loved to pop bubbles.

kaya's condition worsened one weekend. i found her lying in the corner of the dining room, whimpering. this even while on 6 tablets of tramadol, 2 capsules of gabapentin, 1 large dose of liquid metacam, plus pepcid ac to ease stomach discomfort from the meds. she hadnt touched her food. we increased all of her pain medications to try to ease her obvious pain. her fur seemed to be in a constant state of heavy shed and the large flakes of scabby dander seemed to be ever present no matter how much i tried to brush it off. she wasnt putting weight on her affected leg, and a noticeable protuberance, as round as a baseball, suddenly appeared at the top of her leg where the cancerous tumor grew in her bone. getting up and then laying down was ever so slow, and with great effort. her back legs were so stiff, she was struggling to even get into position to empty her bowels. (and yet, when a friend came to visit or a tennis ball came out, suddenly she would get a spring in her step....

okay, so ozzy is 14.5 months old, so this post is a bit past due. what's he up to now? he seems to have developed some separation anxiety. cries when i walk away, and comes running after me. he wakes up often at night looking for me. if he sees me, he puts his head back down and goes back to sleep. if he doesnt, he sits up and cries and cries until i come and put him back to sleep. hopefully he'll start to grow out of this phase soon. he gets VERY vocal when he wants something and doesnt get it fast enough. DIS!!! he screams (this!). recently, he's begun trying to repeat back the words i use. dis? he'll say, pointing at grapes. grapes? i'll ask. and he nods so hard he loses his balance and he says, dapes. dis? he says, pointing at his sippy cup. water? i ask. and he reaches for it and says, dawter. dis? he says while struggling to pull a toy out of the toy box. help? i ask. owp! he says. he doesnt have a whole lotta sounds mastered yet, so they all kinda sound alik...

mimi asked me tonight: does God know everything. yes, i say. more than dad? she asks. yes, i say. wow, she says, that's pretty freaky.