Hi from Brayden!

2 days to go on the Ara-C - the yucky chemo med! This one is pretty ugly, but we're so thankful this round hasn't been as hard for him as last time. As a matter of fact, last time we were concerned about dehydration and getting extra fluids. This time, I've double-checked his meds to make sure he didn't start taking steroids again! The last 2 days he's suddenly eating double what he was!! We're so thankful he's eating healthfully. His favorite snack right now is kiwi fruit, cheese cubes, and almonds - yumm!! We're hoping his body is working overtime to keep fighting and staying strong. He's doing great with drinking lots of water and I'm just over-joyed he hasn't been sick. His energy level has been back up yesterday and today.

We've been laughing our heads off tonight playing with the new web cam our friends from my sweet Circle gave us! Thank you so much!! What's funny is my little comedian acts all serious and wants to record a quick video for the bloggie. I start recording and he used these chances to be as silly and crazy as he could be! Don't ask how many takes it took before he decided to not do jokes. I'll have to post one of those soon. His laugh is so infectious!.

We had fun cleaning out the game closet and playing boggle - remember that game?!? HE LOVED IT! He had some fun times playing football with dad tonight - indoors, of course. We've almost used up our hangman pages while at clinic. Still trying to find creative ways to keep him occupied but it's definitely challenging with a 9-yr-old little boy who wants to be outside ALL DAY!!

I made it through changing his PICC line dressing. Brayden was so encouraging of what a good job I did. I have to say it was by far the most stressful thing I've ever had to endure. You have to change the dressing in a sterile environment and not cross-contaminate anything, clean under the stitches that are holding the PICC line in his arm with alcohol sticks. But we did it! This is the downside of NOT going to Little Rock where the experts take care of this for him. We're looking forward to hopefully his counts holding or at least not getting too low and maybe a fun game day on Saturday. He's still pale, so here's hoping no transfusions are needed for a while. So two more days to go on the Ara-C and then we'll know if he gets both drugs on Monday when we stay local for treatment. So here's a quick hi from Brayden. We hope you guys like hearing from him directly and I'm sure we'll get lots more practice with the new web cam!