Fall 09 Part 2

Fall is moving right along.  Elias is 16 and 1/2 months old.  He's becoming quite the little man.  He is all personality.  Below is our sad attempt at a family photo on Thanksgiving day.  Elias desperately wanted to play with the big kids and wanted nothing to do with his mom and dad.

Here he is at the "little kid" table drinking out of his "big kid" cup.

One thing that hasn't changed is Elias' love of the outdoors.  More than anything in the world he loves to be outside.  One day he was at his Papi's house and Papi and all his uncles and auntie were outside doing yard work.  Elias was in heaven having all the big people outside with him.  He especially loved his Uncle Jake's work gloves which he put on by himself.

When Elias grows up he wants to be just like his Papi.  He is constantly grabbing the pool skimmer and dragging it around the backyard.

One morning our condo association decided to remove all the bushes outside our place.  I have no idea why but one day they were there and then the next they weren't.  Elias has figured out how to open the sliding glass and screen doors.  Luckily they need some WD40 so I could hear the door squeaking open as I was in the kitchen.  When I went outside this is what I found.  Such a boy!

"What Mom?  I'm just playing in the dirt."  He had taken a bucket from his water table and was digging in the dirt within a minute.  Although Elias is "all boy" in so many aspects, one thing he hates is having his hands dirty.  After a couple minutes of digging in the dirt Elias started whining and showing me his dirty hands.  It's very easy to be this little boy's hero when all it takes is brushing his dirty hands on my pants.

Elias has a new found love of somersaults.  Here he is in his "ready" position.

I am doing well.  I have had two rounds of chemotherapy.  It is given to me every two weeks.  Things are going well with it.  I feel sick about 2 days and then it will take me a couple more days to fully recover but it isn't as bad as I thought it would be.  We are thinking treatment will last a total of 4-6 months and we already are 1 month down.  Since we didn't know how it would be, the weekend before it started we had the uncles and aunts over for Wii game night and slumber party.  It was Alemu's first sleepover and he was extremely nervous but in the end he had a great time and said he wanted to do it again.  Elias loved having everyone in his domain.  He was dancing around and spinning in circles all night.  My guess in maybe someone slipped him some soda when Brian and I weren't looking.

Elias and Israel are the best of buds!  Here they are playing with sticks at Alemu's soccer game.

A stick and a soccer ball...life doesn't get much better!

Elias loves all things electronic.  I think he mostly like feeling like a big person.  He even knows how to scroll the mouse properly.

Elias loves ranch dressing!  And ketchup!  And anything else that he can dip himself.

Yes, that is a bottle.  Still.  My boy loves his "ba" and asks for it all the time.  He refuses to drink out of the sippy cup the majority of the time.  I know we probably should have nixed the bottle a while ago but he loves it and I love snuggling with him when he has it.  So, I'm thinking it will be our family New Year's resolution to give up the ba at the end of the year.

Just hanging with Uncle Kevin.

This cutie pie just got tooth #7 yesterday and #8 is around the corner.  He loves to smile his cheesy squinty eyed smile when you ask him to smile.

Right now Elias is in to repeating everything that is said.  It's a dangerous place to be. :)  He puts two words together.  He says thank you (dank do) occasionally on this own but most the time he has to be prompted to say please (peeees) and thank you.  He will say things like "help Mom" and "no Mom."  

Here is Dad, Brian and Alemu at Alemu's last game.  They had a great time coaching and will all be part of the All Star team in January.

Here is Elias standing in line with all the team after receiving his first medal!

He is still completely obsessed with Elmo.  I hear cries and chants for Elmo ALL day long.  He understands everything we say and will start the melt down as soon as I say "no more Elmo" or "we are all done today."

Elias is so much fun.  He is still very strong willed and smart!  His favorite thing other than being outside are dogs.  We got to be around a number of dogs when we visited Brian's family after Thanksgiving.  He loves to "woof woof" and pet the dogs.  I'm not the biggest animal fan but Brian and Elias are so it looks like there may be a dog in my future.  I'm holding out for a backyard before I give in though!

We are super excited about Christmas.  It is crazy to think back to last Christmas when I was SURE we would have our son with us and how hard it was to make it through the holiday knowing baby Besufikad was in Ethiopia.  Now we are all together and I couldn't be happier!!

Fall 2009

First of all, thank you all for your words of encouragement. We appreciate all the prayers on our behalf.

Secondly, I am very behind with the blogging so here is our Fall 2009 so far...

Getting used to spending every Saturday at Alemu's soccer games - and loving the fact that the parent's think Elias is super cute and give him candy!

He's thinks he's 11 just like the other boys. Always in the mix.

First campfire and smores :)

First goose egg :(

Enjoying Fall in San Diego...still have to learn the difference between Basketball and Soccer

Pumpkin Patch - and yes it was 85 degrees the weekend before Halloween

Alemu's Cross Country Race - he came in first!

First Halloween! We had a great plan. Elias was going to be Curious George and Brian was going to be the Man in the Yellow Hat. With all the stuff that has been going on the past few weeks Halloween was put on the very back burner and Emily and I didn't start looking for costumes until Thursday afternoon. After 3 stores I was exhausted. Everything was cleaned out. We had the choices of a girly looking cow or Elmo. Of course, right now Elmo is Elias' favorite person. When he saw this costume he grabbed it, hugged it, kissed it and wouldn't let go. We had to distract him with the Elmo I was buying him for Christmas in order to pry the costume out of his hands. This is not the cutsie costume I wanted my son to be in but it is the one he wanted. Who knew that my one year old would be opinionated enough to practically be picking out his own first halloween costume? Oh well, there's always next year for cutsie. Meanwhile, here is E-Wok Elmo Elias :)

Hodgkins Lymphoma

Last week I was diagnosed with Hodgkin's Lymphoma. This is a cancer of the lymphnodes. I have numerous masses in my neck and chest. Hodgkin's in common in people in their 20s and 30s. Obviously for anyone in that age range being diagnosed with cancer is a complete shock and something you never think will happen to you. It is especially true for me as no one in my family has ever had cancer.

Hodgkin's is curable but you do have to be aggressive in treatment. The typical treatment regiment is 4-6 months of intensive chemotherapy (given every 2 weeks via IV at the hospital) and radiation. My situation is a little bit different though. I am 15 weeks pregnant. Many of the normal medications they would have given to me, the normal scans they would have done, and the normal treatment are all complicated by the fact that there is another life involved in this journey.

We feel so blessed that God allowed us to conceive when He did as chemotherapy can often make people sterile. We are also blessed by the fact that God has brought Dr.'s into our lives who are willing to fight to keep us both safe, something not all Dr.'s would do. Finally we are feeling blessed that God prevented us from moving to Ethiopia this summer to serve on the mission field as that would have meant a far longer journey to diagnosis and also that we would have been apart from our families during this time when we all really need eachother.

So, how are we doing? This has been really tough on my family. It has been hard for my parents, siblings, extended family, and especially hard for my husband. Children are very aware when things are not completely right but I am happy that so far Elias has been affected very little by all of this. He still tackles his Mommy, expects me lug all 28ish pounds of him around, and generally has no idea anything is wrong. I am happy that he will have no memory of all of this except for what we choose to share with him later in life. I am ok. And that's not just some lame answer...I am truly doing okay with all of this.

We had one biopsy done that came back "very suspicious" for Hodgkin's. It then took 8 more days and another biopsy to get the confirmed diagnosis. During that time I had my melt downs. The wait was awful. To know you probably have cancer but not be able to do anything about it because it isn't for sure - that was the WORST. Since the diagnosis I have been relieved. We can fight now. We can get treatment now. We can start taking the road that will put all of this behind us.

I'm sure I'll have my bad days but for now God is keeping me strong. He is keeping me happy. He is keeping His purpose in my mind at all times. I have a personal goal...to walk in to every appointment with a smile and walk out of every appointment with a smile. It isn't going to be easy but if I can manage that then people will SEE a difference in my life and I hope that someone or many people will be able to see a little bit of Jesus in me. Now once I get to the car I start venting to my Mom or Brian :) but I want the people who don't know me to see the hope and joy that I truly have in this situation - the hope and joy that can only come through knowing Jesus.

What happens next? I have weekly appointments with the oncologist, weekly blood work, and many appointments with different specialists in between. I am still working (for now). I can still take care of my child (although I get very very tired). I can still live normally. The frustrating part for me is because this is a "rare" disease (12,000 people per year) and because it is especially "rare" to be pregnant during Hodgkin's (published research is on only a couple of dozen cases worldwide) - the story of what comes next is always changing. On 10/22 I was diagnosed. On 10/22 I was told chemo would start next week. 5 days later I was told no chemo yet. In the meantime my sister bought a one way ticket home from Ethiopia because the plan was for her to come home once chemo started because we would really need her. On Tuesday I was told I would be starting a steroid this week...still no steroid. That's the frustrating part for me. I get mentally prepared for something and then it changes. And then it happens all over again. But the reason why it is always changing is because the Dr.'s want to do as little possible for as long as possible to keep my child alive and safe - how can I be mad about that? I'm a planner. I'm not so good with rolling with the punches. But really that is what the next year of my life is going to be. We will most likely start a low dose chemo soon. Once the baby is delivered I will most likely then need to have the full Hodgkin's regiment (4-6 months intensive chemo)..

This is very private for our family and very serious. Unfortunately what we are finding is that people like to gossip. Human nature feeds off of "big news" like this. Many people have taken liberties in sharing our very private news with many people. Some people have even taken liberties and shared this news on Facebook. To us its unbelievable because its so personal and deeply private. But since sometimes people let us down we figured we wanted the people we know and love to hear it from us first. So if it's going to be out there either way we would rather it come from us.

We appreciate all the love and support we have received.

Love,
Autumn (and Brian)

We have created a private blog to keep family and friends up to date. If you would like access you can email me privately for permission at autumn underscore gossett at yahoo dot com.

so behind

but here's a cute picture to hold you over...

it doesn't get much better

Yesterday we spent the day at Disneyland. We had an awesome time celebrating Alemu's birthday. (more pictures to come). For the first time I actually heard my son squeal with delight. We were walking and all of the sudden Elias let out a high pitch scream and pointed to a giant bouquet of balloons. This was after earlier in the day when he had tried to take a balloon off another kid's stroller.

My son was so happy and excited. He really really wanted a balloon. So like a good Mommy at a magical place like Disneyland I walked over to buy him one. Then I saw it. The sign that said,

"BALLOONS $12"

As Israel would say, "WHAT ZA HECK!" $12 for a balloon. Technically I guess it was 2 balloons because it was a Mickey balloon inside another balloon. Anyway, the worst part is I actually still considered buying it for him. The good news is, Brian had all the money.


Today is Monday which is Elias' day with his Papi. Here is the picture I saw while at work. He got a balloon after all.

It doesn't get much better than a little boy and his balloon.

Baby #2

Well, as it turns out baby #2 really does exist. When the nausea faded (yeah!) about 2 weeks earlier than "normal" I was a little worried. Then I started having nightmares that we went to the ultrasound and they couldn't find a heartbeat. This started happening after the appointment with my midwife when she tried and couldn't find one. Despite her telling me there would almost certainly not be anything it was still a not so fun feeling to actually not hear anything. I'm still a couple pounds under my pre-pregnancy weight despite having an appetite back for 2 weeks now and being 12 weeks along. All this to say I had my doubts and concerns.

Yesterday all those went away when we saw our baby! We saw fingers and toes, the spinal cord and umbilical cord. We heard the very strong and fast heartbeat. We saw the baby completely flip over when I coughed. We also got to see some waving and kicking. Now, after many weeks of knowing in my head I was pregnant I actually, really believe it.

Elias wasn't so thrilled with Mommy being on a table while some man messed with her belly button (which just so happens to be his favorite part of me...and everyone else). He was whiny and uncomfortable with all the new stuff.

There are times I look at him and he seems so big. In the past couple days he has decided that he will only eat if he does it 100% by himself, with utensils. When he wants a bottle he walks to the fridge and then takes his bottle and walks to the rocking chair to let me know he is ready to rock. He no longer tolerates being carried from the car to the house unless he is completely exhausted. He wants to put his own dirty dishes on the kitchen counter and throws a fit if we try to help him. At 14 months old he is an iPhone genius. His Grandma taught him to scroll through the pictures which he does brilliantly. Physically, he looks big too...he towers over kids who are older than him, and in many cases says more words than these other kiddos.

Then at other times, like yesterday when he wanted his Mommy to hold him as I was laying on the table for the ultrasound he still seems like my little baby. He stroked/played with my hair as we walked to the car. He does this when he is trying to comfort me. ***Side note: how do I know this? Because sometimes I fake cry so he will come over and play with my hair and give me kisses. I totally suck, I know. It's horrible to deceive a baby, right? But his kisses are SO worth it. They aren't the open mouth baby kisses anymore. Now they are closed lipped, still slobbery big boy kisses but they are just as good.

He's going to be such a great big brother!