Round Two

RJ, Courtney and Jessica made a visit to blog central today on the way to chemo round two tomorrow. RJ is due to check into the hospital tomorrow for five days of chemo and if everything goes well will be able to go home on or around the 20th. He's armed with new pajamas and robe, Jessica's laptop and a stack of inappropriate-for-pediatrics DVDs. It's going to be weird going back to the hospital again, but we just keep reminding ourselves that things are VERY different from a month ago when he first arrived. A lot has happened in a month and we keep hoping that the worst is over. These past few days at home have given everyone perspective and it has shown RJ and everyone around him that there is an end to this disease after successful treatment and that life will be normal again one day soon.

One thing that has returned to normal is his appetite - blog central personally witnessed the scarfage of an entire burrito and big bowl of ice cream. This apparently topped four waffles and several slices of pizza early in the day. The boy is six feet of skinny right now so we're cramming as much into him as we can.

As part of the treatment, RJ is sporting a really crazy hairstyle right now - blog central was able to take a few keepsake photos, but we've pinky-swore that we won't post them to the blog and we have to honor that. The closest we could come is to picture RJ's face on this bird and you've got some idea of what we're dealing with. You've got to hand it to him - RJ is owning the chemo hairstyle with pride as visible evidence of everything he's gone through and we're glad we got some evidence of it before it's all gone.

Baby sister Courtney is even cuter if that is possible - she really is a pretty easy kid these days, spending a lot of time just noodling around and watching the goings on. Blog central got a photo of her surrounded by four doting boys and we have a sneaking suspicion that this won't be the last time. We're enjoying having all of the baby items in the house and getting some baby time in, although blog central's husband keeps reminding us that we are too old to have more kids. If we could get one like baby Courtney we might just take a chance.

We'll keep you posted on how the hospital stay is going as we count down to the next time the family gets to go home.