… or are we running the dishwasher nearly every day now? Is this a by-product of having children?

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In the afternoon, we dressed Anna in her Addie’s Santa outfit (which my long-time readers may remember from last year) and headed over to my parents’ house, where we spent the rest of the day with them and my brother and his family.

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We had our first Christmas morning with Anna at home.

Look—someone filled Anna’s stocking! (This was actually my first stocking when I was a baby!)

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Well, after having a few weeks where we could breathe a little easier, thinking perhaps we had beaten the cancer, it’s back. David found a small tumor on Sasha’s side, which is most surely another osteosarcoma, and the vet found two more on the back of her tongue, most surely the melanoma returning. The lab reports will have to confirm this, but there’s really no reason to think it’s anything else. Crap. Still no sign of a bone tumor anywhere, so we don’t know where the osteosarcoma is coming from. And the melanoma really threw us; we thought the vaccine had taken care of that.

Sasha still appears healthy and happy and full of life; she’s certainly not the old, sick dog most people envision when they think of a dog battling cancer. I think maybe that makes it even harder to deal with. Well, I don’t really know. It would be hard no matter what.

She’s finally overcoming her fear of cameras a little bit and allowing us to get a good shot now and then.

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… for another month-birthday update. Anna is 9 months old today! She wanted to wear her big-girl jeans and sweater to show everyone how grown up she is; no little baby rompers today! She’s all but officially crawling; she’s still tummy-crawling wherever she pleases, but I’ve seen her take a “step” or two (I don’t know what you call it for crawling) up on her hands and knees. She’s going to figure it out any minute now and really take off. And she’s already pulling up on her knees! Good gracious, she’s about to turn the house upside-down, isn’t she? She’s having a grand time exploring her surroundings.

This month, Anna gave me the privilege of wishing her a happy birthday right at 1:19 A.M., when she was born. Poor thing woke up crying her eyes out around 1:00; I guess she had a bad dream? I found her sitting up in her crib with her face sopping wet with tears, so I picked her up and she immediately melted into my arms and calmed down. Ahh, some things just give you the warm fuzzies, even in the middle of the night. I rocked her back to sleep, and since it was so close, I stayed there until 1:19 and then whispered “happy birthday,” which caused her to startle a little bit but not really wake up.

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Seriously, I did. If she’s going to be scooting/rolling/crawling around all over the floor, I have got to be better about vacuuming!

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This is one of those “I haven’t blogged in a week so I should write something” posts.

Let’s see… Anna can push herself from lying down up into a sitting position by herself now. Consequently, we lowered her crib mattress a couple of notches—she’ll be pulling up before we know it. She can do the soldier belly-crawl wherever she wants to go, and she can get up on her hands and knees and kind of go backwards, but she doesn’t really know what’s happening. It’s kind of funny—she looks at me with this mildly distressed look as if to say, “Help! That’s not where I wanted to go…”

Our other baby, Sasha, is still doing well (David wrote an update here). She appears very healthy, lymph nodes are still down, and she has no evidence of any more tumors right now!

We’re almost done with our Christmas shopping. Before we went, David wasn’t all that excited about getting Anna presents. He said (and he’s right) that she won’t know what’s going on, she’ll just play with the paper, etc. But then we browsed through the toys, and he changed his tune—he wanted to get her everything! We restrained ourselves, though, to two toys, a couple of warm sleepers in the next size up, and a few little stocking stuffers.

Anna now gets an OOY—Ornament of the Year. She helped us… er, watched us… hang it up last night.

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… by her older cousin…

Hendrix just sent us a little t-shirt in the mail yesterday. So we had some fun with it.
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Anna was given a Fisher Price “Little People” nativity set to play with. It’s cute. It has baby Jesus, Joseph, Mary, an angel, a couple of shepherds, and then some animals: two sheep, a donkey, a cow, and… a border collie?

Hmm, that’s a new one. Never mind that the border collie didn’t come along until the late 19th century; I’m sure if they had been around back then, the shepherds would have had one. They’re excellent sheep dogs, after all.

So when I acted out the Christmas story for Anna with the figures, and I got to the part where the shepherds left their sheep on the hillside and ran to Bethlehem, I paused and glanced down at the sheep-herding canine lying on the floor. “But the sheep were probably ok because of this very fine border collie here,” I said, placing it with the sheep.

I can just imagine the angel saying, “Leave thy sheep with thy border collie and go at once to Bethlehem…”

Ok, I’m taking this a bit too far. Time to get back to decorating.

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Anna is quite pleased with herself that she finally got a book off of Mommy and Daddy’s (mostly Daddy’s) bookshelf. Her choice? The Far Side Gallery 3. I’m not quite sure what I think about that.

In other news… Anna has gained a whole pound since her last doctor visit! Yea! That brings her up to 14 lb. 12 oz. Must be all those Gerber fruit puffs—the only solid food she will voluntarily put in her mouth so far. I’m afraid she’s going to be like her Mama—living on carbs.

Oh, and I have to brag on my brave girl who didn’t even make a peep when she got her flu shot today!

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