One Year Anniversary

I know it has been a while since we've posted -- sorry to those of you who've been missing an update. Dayssi is doing very well, looking and feeling great and living her life as it should be more and more each day. She loves school, is learning to navigate her new, very exciting, sometimes intense friendships there, is separating from me more easily and even going regularly to swim and, finally, dance class. She is learning to swim and can hardly contain the thrill of being able to jump into the pool by herself, swim a little, and dive for toys. She also ventured back to dance class (after watching her classmates get a lollipop after the recital!) Her preschool teacher reports that she is on-track developmentally in every way, and we are just relieved to see her growing and blossoming like a regular 3 1/2 year old.

India is also doing really well. It is hard to imagine but she has less than a month left in kindergarten. She's working on reading and writing, still enjoys dance and gymnastics, and is looking forward to trying all of the new activities we have planned once school gets out. She'll have a week off, followed by a week of tennis lessons, followed by a week of theater camp, a week off, then two weeks of day camp, a week of science and art camp, and then we head east for a month of friends and family. I probably over-scheduled her, but we missed everything last summer because of our last minute change of plans.

It is amazing, but last year at this time Dayssi had just been admitted to the hospital for the first time, and we were trying to absorb that fact that she was on an oncology ward with a leukemia diagnosis. A lot of people dread this one year anniversary, but for us, thank goodness, it just feels so great to have a year of treatment under our belts, no signs of relapse, no major complications or setbacks, two daughters who look and feel healthy and, it appears, happy, and a solid marriage. Jim and I both received accolades at work (and one of us won a national wrestling championship but I'm not naming names), and I am actually enjoying work more right now than I have in years. If you ask me, the past 12 months could have been much much worse.

Anyway, we aren't celebrating this anniversary, but we'll do a little something on the anniversary of Dayssi's remission, which is just about a month away.

We are not the only ones out there who've had a rough year, and some of you are still in the thick of it, so we're still hoping for some more good karma. We love you. Hang in there. And if you need a smile, check out that picture of India and Dayssi in the bathtub from a few posts ago!