Beaches

Apologies for slacking on Jake's blog. We've been having lots of fun.

Jake has adapted to the clinic visits. He has managed to find a silver lining. He likes all the things they do to make it "visitable." When I tell him it's clinic day, he goes through a cadence of things he needs to do: 1) go down the slide in the waiting room; 2) play in the children's kitchen and 3) color. Jake has a port which is a device the size of a dime that lays just underneath his skin in his left chest with a line to his main vein. They use that to give him medicine via IV and draw blood. Without it, they would have to stick his vein at every clinic visit. He used to cry and panic when they would stick his port and draw blood. Now he helps his nurse, Rochelle, draw blood and flush his line.

In September, we took Jake to his first beach. We are cautious about flying with Jake immune system therefore we chose Galveston, TX since it's only a 12 hour drive from KC. We did an overnight stay in Oklahoma City and stayed in Houston, TX. Galveston is a short 45 minute drive from Houston. Galveston is still devastated by Katrina. There were sea front hotels with walls ripped to shreds that looked like it was abandoned. Most homes in nearby Galveston beach front have metal blinds over the windows.

Beach Pics

We also stopped at World Aquarium in Dallas, TX. It was a much needed break from all the driving.

Jake has also broken through another barrier of communication. He is starting to put 5 to 8 or so word sentences together. He is fully capable of having a full meaningful conversation. We were watching a movie the other day and he saw a couple kiss and he said to me "mom, they love each other." A favorite question, "mom/dad, what are they going to do next?"


Jake also loves to cook. We went to Barnes & Noble and bought a kid's cook book and baked some breakfast cookies. It cost us $20 to get the ingredients but they were pretty darn good and good for you.


Jake has a full head of hair now. It has grown back curly, fine and medium brown. Which is a stark difference from straight, thick and black hair he used to have. We are going to let it grow out. I will leave this particular post with a grand picture of Jake thus far.