Calendar Girl

At the ripe old age of eighteen months, my daughter is already posing for calendars. It's true she's a pin-up. Olive is one of the featured months of a calendar being distributed for the upcoming year. Shayla, a friend and fellow cancer fighter, contacted us about posing for a calendar featuring courageous cancer kids. We immediately jumped at the opportunity. The calendar is being produced by a foundation dedicated to raising money for kids with cancer and their families. We thought the cause was worthy, and the chance to be in a calendar was too cool to pass up.

Over the past few days Olive has been struggling to take her first independent steps. She is quite the walker when she has a firm grasp of my hand. On her own however, she lacks a bit of confidence and balance. To my utter delight, some of her very first steps were taken during her photo shoot. Luck was on our side. Not often does a mother get to have her baby's first steps captured on film by a professional photographer. When Olive does something she always does it in grand fashion. She took full advantage of the situation. I am thrilled.

A website is currently being created and will be up and running within weeks for calendar orders to be taken. The web address is www.courageouscancerkidz.org.
In the meantime, I can take pre-orders from anyone who thinks they are interested in having one of these calendars. It features ten kids who are currently battling cancer, and sadly two girls who have passed on this year. The pictures are some of the ones that were taken at her photo shoot. However, they are a bit blurry because I don't actually have a real copy of them yet. What you are looking at are pictures taken of the pictures on my computer screen from my email account. I was to impatient to wait for the real images to be sent to me.

As for Olive, we are trying for chemotherapy again tomorrow. Hopefully, the extra week of time has given her bone marrow a chance to regrow and replenish her blood supply. She has seemed exceptionally happy and healthy this week. She did, however, fail her hearing test today. We are still unsure if she has lost any of her hearing due to her chemo medication. She can't manage to sit still long enough to have the exam completed. In order to administer the hearing exam, Olive must sit still, remain silent, and wear ear buds for five minutes at a time. Yeah right. It will never happen. In fact, I don't think I could even meet those criteria. As a result, she is now scheduled to be sedated on December 16, just so they can do a ten minute test. Bless her heart she never does anything the easy way.