June 2012

I’m four now. Mommy and daddy had a real fun birthday for me this year. I got to ride in a real princess carriage with horses and I wore a princess dress. They said it was a big celebration of my life because of the rock that came out at Christmas. I didn’t really understand why people still talked about the rock being gone and why that made them happy. Until it came back.

Sometimes we had to go to the hospital for pictures to check my tummy for anymore rocks. This day we took our swimsuits too because we were gonna go swimming when we were done. But then we had to stay at the hospital a long time and talk to the doctor. Mommy and daddy were both crying and I knew they was probably talking about the rock. I just wanted to go swimming and finally mommy said we could go. Mommy talked on her phone a lot at the pool while Carter and I swam. Sometimes she would come over and say she was gonna play with us but then she would just start crying and tell me to stay in the shallow end. I figured since she was so upset I would listen to her.

That night mommy and daddy told me and Carter about how the rock was back. They were crying a lot this time so I just asked when they was gonna cut it out. Mommy said this time they couldn’t cut it out. She said the rock was too big. And she said they found other rocks this time, too. Ones in my legs and in my back. I didn’t really understand how there were rocks there since those places never even hurt. They said making all the rocks go away this time was gonna be a lot harder than what we did before. That I was going to have to stay in the hospital a lot and take lots of medicine. But they said that mommy was gonna quit her job at the church so I wouldn’t be alone. Daddy was gonna keep working and stay home with Carter so he would never be alone either.

A couple days later we did more pictures and then mommy cut all her hair off. Mommy said that these medicines I was gonna take would make my hair fall out but that it wouldn’t hurt. I didn’t really understand how a medicine that makes rocks go away can make your hair fall out but mommy just said she wanted me to know that we didn’t need hair to be pretty. I thought she looked kinda weird instead of pretty but I didn’t tell her.

The saddest part of all to me was that mommy said I couldn’t go to preschool at the end of the summer. We had just been working on learning my letters and I wanted to go so bad. Carter got to go for two years and he was getting to go to kindergarten after the summer. But mommy said I would be in the hospital too much. She said we could still work on my letters in the hospital. That made me cry but just a little. I was starting to figure out that when I cried it made other people real sad so I didn’t do it too much.