2003 Journal Links

It's difficult to find time to sit down and write when you're six-month-old wants you to play with him. Especially when the sixth-month-old obviously adores you and likes nothing more once he's tired himself out playing, playing, playing than to be held tight against your chest, close to your face, so that he can touch your cheeks, eyes, nose, mouth. He smiles then, this six-month-old, and giggles and the sounds he makes are like musical notes that encircle mother and son like a magical spell of happiness before they float away and alight all the corners of the room.

Just this week Archie began holding his arms out wide, reaching for me, to indicate his desire to be held. At first I thought I was reading too much into the gesture, but by bedtime last night I knew that Archie truly was communicating with me. What a bright boy I have.

And apparently he's also a healthy boy. I sometimes wondered if I would ever be able to use that adjective to describe my son. Last week John and I took Archie to visit Dr. Stroud, his hematologist/oncologist. A CBC confirmed that Archie's white blood cell count was within normal range and that he had no blasts in his blood. "I read the slide myself," Dr. Stroud told us. John and I smiled at each other. We smiled at the doctor, too. I'm sure my sigh of relief (yes, there really is such a thing) was audible. "Let's bring him back in a month and we'll take another look," Dr. Stroud said, his hands held, fingers interlaced, in front of his body below his waist. "And then I'd like to see him every two months after that. But if something were going to come of the transient leukemia, it would have most likely already happened."

Yesterday Archie's nurse discharged him from her care. "He's doing very well," she told me smiling. "He doesn't need me anymore." Before she left she stood a while, holding her computer and scale, watching Archie play on his blanket. "I'll never see you again," she said to him.

Archie smiled in response while I answered for him. "I'll see you around, Miss Cheryl. But I'll be bigger then and you'll be so happy to see me."

"He's big now, for him," she told me reassuringly as I walked her to the door for the last time.

During his baths Archie likes to stretch his legs out straight and solidly position his feet in the corners of the tub. After he does this he sighs loudly and turns his head so that he can watch me in the bathroom mirror as I bath him. Last night, though, Archie decided he would rather stand during his bath. I tried to force him to sit down, but he wouldn't, so I had to ask his father to come help me and support Archie as he stood, soap suds running down his body, long and thin, and smiling at his reflection in the mirror.

"He's standing, Mom!" Archie's physical therapist exclaimed to me, laughing, this morning during the baby's weekly session. "He is doing so well!" The physical therapist then rattled off a list of Archie's accomplishments during the session. Archie turned his face toward the physical therapist and smiled. He lifted his hands then to explore the therapist's face, curious little fingers touching here and there. "Nope!" the therapist said, laughing. "No low muscle tone here! He's come so far since I first met him," he marveled aloud.

"I know it," I responded.

Archie slept through the night yesterday, as he's been doing consistently for some time. I slept, too, all the way through, for the first time since October.