Posts Tagged ‘twins’

« Older Entries

Ye Olde Blog Archives

Tuesday, June 11th, 2013
Summer, 2008

Summer, 2008

Every so often, people ask me if there’s a way to go back and read my old blog posts from my blog Baby Squared on Babble, where I blogged from mid-2007 (when my girls were 6 months old) through Summer 2012 (when they were 5-1/2 and, you know, we got cancer and all.) And the posts even before that, before I moved to Babble.

There’s never been a terribly easy way to to find and go through the old posts, and I kept meaning to build an archive here and never got around to it. But finally – FINALLY! — I’m doing it.

Below are word documents with the blog posts for each year. Be forewarned: They’re not carefully formatted. Most of the pictures aren’t included. Some content may be missing. Any links left in may or may not work. But it’s the best I can do on limited time.

(more…)

Tags:, , ,
Posted in Featured | 12 Comments »

Refreshed and Renewed

Tuesday, April 30th, 2013
Le paperback! On sale today.

Le paperback! On sale today.

Today is a good day. A day when I’m feeling — yes — refreshed and renewed. It’s 65 degrees and sunny outside. I went for a run this morning. I’ve got lots to do, but not so much that I’m feeling stressed. I’m wearing a spring-y shirt. I’m drinking a tasty au lait. And today is the day that the paperback version of Double Time goes on sale.

A year ago today, the hardcover version was about to be published, an event that ended up feeling rather anticlimactic. It’s a weird thing as an author; you work and work on this book, you see it all coming together — the cover, the pages, etc. — and then suddenly one day it’s on sale and…nothing really happens. I’d heard this from lots of author friends, and tried to prepare myself for the let-down. But you still sort of feel like there should be champagne or fireworks or something.

I treated myself to some extremely excellent shoes as consolation. But then, less than two months after the hardcover came out, Clio was diagnosed with leukemia. Which cast something of a pall over the whole thing. (Publishing the book, that is; not the shoes, which are completely pall-resistant.)

This time around, though, I feel like a much more seasoned author, and clearly I have some more important things on my mind than my book’s ranking on Amazon. Paperback launch? Yes, how lovely! I hope my book gets into the hands of more people as a result.

But what’s especially nice about this final milestone for Double Time is the sense that I can fully move on to the next project(s). I’ve had an idea for a novel cooking for some time now, and am starting to buckle down and work on it for real. (more…)

Tags:, , , ,
Posted in Featured | 3 Comments »

They Get It

Saturday, March 23rd, 2013

BakeSale11. Elsa Gets it

I was so freakin’ proud of her last week.

As you know if you follow my Facebook page (and if you don’t, you should! We have fun there!) we have a fabulous young woman, Katelin, who’s running the Boston Marathon in honor of Clio for the Dana Farber Marathon Challenge.

This has been hard for Elsa. Katelin has been really wonderful about focusing on both girls (exhibit A: the picture on the donation box at her recent fundraising bake sale at work). But the fact is, Clio is the one with cancer, and the one at the center of this particular event. And for a gal like Elsa, who likes to be the center of attention — or at least share the spotlight equally with her twin sister (though she’d rather not have to share it at all) — that’s a bitter pill to swallow.

So, not surprisingly, last weekend when there was an event for making and decorating giant posters of the kid-honorees (to be displayed at the dinner the night before the marathon), Elsa went apeshit. (more…)

Tags:, , , ,
Posted in Featured | 20 Comments »

Our Bear with No Hair

Saturday, January 5th, 2013

BearGosh, I just realized I never actually wrote (except a brief Facebook post) about Clio’s hair / lack thereof.

Nurses and doctors (and we!) have been amazed all along that Clio wasn’t losing more of her hair, more quickly. It was thinning for sure, but until recently she had enough that we could manage a decent comb-over, and plenty in the back. It didn’t seem necessary to cut it all off.

But over the past few weeks — a couple of weeks after her second dose of Doxorubicin — it started thinning a lot faster, to the point where if I ran my fingers through it I’d pull out a clump of a dozen or so hairs. And one morning I caught a glimpse of her from afar, looking rather like an adorable little Gallagher, and thought: it’s time.

She’d always said that she wanted to at some point. In fact, over the summer when her hair first started thinning, she was ready,  but I resisted. “Let’s wait a little while,” I said. “You still have a lot of hair left.” (more…)

Tags:, , ,
Posted in Featured | 13 Comments »

It’s Hard Out Here for a “Sib”

Monday, December 3rd, 2012

This blog post is brought to you courtesy of Facebook — more specifically those of you who offered up suggestions for a topic over on my Facebook page. I was feeling a touch of blogger’s-block, and asked for topics. And you delivered!

I may touch on a few of those topics over the next few blog posts — except for kale, because I’ve made my views on that topic abundantly clear, and there’s nothing more to say. I do not like kale.

Today, by popular demand, I am going to write about a gal who is long overdue for her own blog post — Clio’s bright, brave and otherwise fantastic “sib” (as siblings are known in pediatric cancer circles), Miss Elsa Margaret.

Poor kid. Sometimes I really wonder if this whole experience is harder on her than it is on Clio. I mean, Clio has to suffer the physical end of things — the hospitalizations and clinic visits, the chemo, the medications (as many as five different kinds a day, some of those twice a day, depending on where in her chemo cycle she is) and the nasty, into-the-thigh-muscle shots twice a week.

But Elsa has to deal with the fact that her twin sister is, necessarily, getting more attention and spending more time with us, whereas before the scales were always balanced, more or less. We try our hardest to keep things “even-steven” even here in Cancerland. But it’s next to impossible. (more…)

Tags:, , ,
Posted in Featured | 17 Comments »

« Older Entries