Noises are scary

A couple of months ago, my son developed an intense fear of unknown noises. Thunder. Clanks. Cars outside that he couldn't see. The scene in "Cars" where Lightning McQueen scares the tractor-cows.

For the longest time I thought it was all bogus, that someone had made him think he was afraid of those sounds by asking him if he was afraid of them.

Then he started telling us that he heard sounds at night, so we told him to talk to his monkey (who sleeps with him) whenever he heard the scary sounds. He tells me nightly that Monkey makes the noises go away, and it's just become part of our routine.

I thought my boy was getting kind of soft. Not any more. I hear the noise, and it's creepy as shit. And I can't find where it's coming from. But it's definitely in his room.

That's a neat playground

Saturday morning, Family Amos went to the great evil: Toys'R'Us. We were shopping for ideas. Alastair loves to play outside, and he loves the playground at the church across the street. He loves it so much that he pitches the most horrid fits whenever it's time to leave.

We weren't necessarily going to buy one, but to investigate our options. There were way too many to choose from, so we enlisted an expert opinion: Alastair's. We showed him a few options and asked if he liked any of them -- of course he said no to all of them -- but then settled on the Step 2 Woodland Climber because of one feature: a steering wheel (Alastair's obsessed!).

We got it home after a false-start (the box was way too big for the CR-V, so daddy had to come back with the truck), and it was assembled in less than 10 minutes. After his nap, we brought Alastair straight outside for his first romp.

The look on his face as he saw it for the first time was priceless, almost like the people on Extreme Makeover Home Edition when the bus is pulled away, and his first words were "That's a neat playground!"

He's in love with it. There are steps, rock-wall sides, a sliding board, the afore-mentioned steering wheel, and a cave that he uses as a garage for his Radio Flyer car.

Saturday afternoon and Monday -- pretty much all day -- were spent outside at his new playground. Up and down, up and down, throwing balls up the sliding board and driving around it in his car.

Score!

A little rain must fall

Over the last month and a half, my capacity for emotion has been checked. I can't quite explain it, but it was sort of like watching my son being born: the situation was absolutely terrifying, but I was completely detached from it, almost like watching it on TV.

That's how I've felt throughout most of this ride: like it's a TV show. Amanda's not really sick: that woman on the show is sick.

But every once in a while the emotion freight-train comes through town, jumps the tracks, and hunts me down. It did so last night, and with good reason.

Amanda got bad news yesterday. By now you've probably read about it on her blog, but the genetics came back, and she has a chromosomal deficiency: -7. That's one of the big baddies, along with -5 and Q3, which, according to the all-knowing wikipedia, has a 5-year survival rate of 15% and a 78% chance of relapse. It's considered to be in the "adverse" category.

So last night, on our 8th anniversary, we were dealing with these emotions while watching the season finale of House. If you saw it, you know that Amber died. We were wrecked.

Here's how it breaks down for us right now:

Amanda will have biopsy #5 tomorrow. She'll then go in for a follow-up on Friday, and probably be re-admitted early next week. At that point she'll undergo chemo #2, the specific course of which will be determined by the results of tomorrow's biopsy.

Things are not good.