Happy Times

It's been a while since my last post, but that's because we've been having so much darn fun. Now that the weather is nicer, we have been spending a lot of time outside. Saoirse really loves her swing, and she has gotten used to the grass. She even picks "flowers" when she's walking around the yard and give them to me. We have done some fun things with friends - park days, sprinkler days, birthday parties and good old fashioned play dates. It's been great to see her playing with other babies. When there are a lot of people, she's still not sure of herself completely and tends to hang by me, but with two or three babies she's perfectly content (as long as I'm in eye shot). It's nice that they play more on their own too, because it means us moms can get in some much needed adult chatting (you can only discuss what sounds animals make so many times before you start thinking you're a monkey). Saoirse even started walking on her own!!! We've been trying to get her to take some steps on her own for weeks now, but she wouldn't budge without holding on. But the other day, we just plopped her in the middle of my parents' living room, Mike demonstrated nicely, and she started moving those feet. She was quite proud of herself; she clapped. It was so exciting, and I managed to get it on video! Today she's been practicing a lot. She's starting to really get the hang of it. We're probably going to have a runner on our hands in no time at all. 
Saoirse had her first of five days of chemo today. The doctors think she's doing great. The only tough thing about chemo at the clinic is that she wants to run around and play. It's hard to keep her corralled in her crib and entertain her when she just wants to be up and moving. A squirmy one year old is even harder to keep on your lap. She did great though. She played, and ate, and even took a nap. Tomorrow should be a much shorter day because we don't have to have a dressing change and doctor evaluations. We just have to go in, do vitals and start up the premeds. I'm hoping to be out of there soon after lunch time. So far I'm liking having it done as an outpatient. It's nicer than having to be stuck in the hospital. She even got to play out side and go for a ride in the stroller when we got home. Too bad this may be the last time we are able to do this (it will depend on how she reacts to some of the other drugs). After this cycle, we will be doing lots of trips for other things. Saoirse will be having her stem cells harvested, which means a couple trips to Children's and the art of keeping her entertained when she has to be sitting "still." She is also having her scans redone, so hopefully we will be able to see the improvement on the inside that we're seeing on the outside. I'm really looking forward to finding out the results and seeing how the doctors think she's doing. She seems like she's doing so well - she's back to looking like herself, and more importantly acting like herself. I have my happy go lucky, friendly, giggling baby back, and I'm loving it! 
In other news, in an effort to make my life easier, I decided to get an iPhone. This has, so far, only caused me distress as I have to try and update my computer so that I can actually use it as intended and sync it with the files on my computer. The updating process has become a total hassle as I have to find an outdated software, try and back up my computer to drives that are dying, and ended up having a panic attack that I was going to loose all of our photos of the baby and our wedding and everything else before that to a dead drive that was simply a problem with the power in our house (we have really old wiring everywhere except the baby's room. That was our savior yesterday, as I sat on her floor and loaded files onto a new drive). I'm hoping that once all the ridiculous updating is done, I will finally be able to use this tool as I intended to, and hopefully it will be worth the hassle. Sometimes I hate technology.