Please keep this in your thoughts and prayers - UPDATE

I published the post below a little over a week ago, and just wanted to give a quick update for those of you who have been praying for John.  His surgery went very well and they were able to remove the entire primary tumor (yay!).  However, the cancer was at one time in almost every single bone in his body (including face and skull), and he will be undergoing another round of chemo within the next week or so.  He'll have radiation at some point in the future also.  And, for the very hard part, the medical team will destroy his bone marrow and then transplant stem cells from his own body that they gathered earlier.  During this time they'll have to be in total isolation for 60 days... with a newborn too!  I can't imagine how difficult this will be on their family, so please continue to keep them in your prayers.

Many of you commented or emailed me asking if there is something you could do.  I'm waiting to hear back from John's mom about this.  There is a bank account set up for donations to help defray costs.  If you are interested in this, email me (tiredneedsleep(at)q(dot)com), and I'll give you the information if I *know* you (ie we've emailed each other before or have been following each others blogs for a while, etc.)

Thanks so much for your prayers, I know they are truly appreciated!

A highschool classmate of mine has a little boy named John, who is 3 years old.  He’s cute, funny, sweet… and he has cancer.  3 years old.  My eyes well up just thinking about it. 
I’ve been following along on their journey as they battle this horrible sickness.  They’ve had to leave their 2 girls in Montana with grandparents while they’ve been in Seattle with John for the past several months as he undergoes some pretty serious treatments.  He’s had 5 rounds (I think) of chemo so far, and has made some good progress, although the chemo itself has taken a toll on him, as you can imagine. 
When they found out he had cancer it was already in stage 4, not good.  Can you imagine your sweet baby this sick?  Or the stress of living apart from family, in a single room of a Ronald McDonald house for months?  Not only this, but his mama (my classmate) is almost 8 months pregnant.
John’s last scan showed some improvement after all the chemo.  And he is scheduled for surgery Monday morning.  The hope is that the tumor is now small enough for the surgeons to get all of it out.
So, if you are a pray-er, and I know many of you are, please keep this little boy in your prayers tonight and tomorrow morning.  I will post again once I have heard how everything went.  Thank you!

The Art Box – Oct. 18, 2010

No picture of the Art Box this week.  We all just need to just be ok with that, don’t you think?  ;)

But I do remember what M had in there:  regular tempera paints, watercolor paints, paper, glue, scissors, tape, stickers, markers, some empty ribbon spools, and red and gold glitter glue.  Also, some collage items: pom poms, buttons, googley eyes, confetti, beads, dyed macaroni.  These are the staples we usually go with (except for the glitter glue and ribbon spools), so nothing too exciting!

He is LOVING his new art strings.  All four of them are practically full at this point, and there’s still art taped to the walls in random areas.  Since the purpose of the art strings was to minimize the amount of art randomly taped to the walls throughout the house, I’d have to say they have been a huge failure.

However, did I mention that he LOVES the art strings?  So, my guess is he’s going to be asking for more art strings, and then our house will look like… I don’t know… like the reason why Mama is crazy, I guess.  Sigh.

Anyway – on to what he made this week…

Another birthday present for Daddy (in addition to the collage last week):

 

I sent M packing on his first guilt trip, and asked him why he never makes anything for Mommy, even though I had a birthday last week too.  I made him feel bad and got these two pieces of artwork out of it:

 Those are hearts!  Cute, no? 
I don’t see any hearts on Daddy’s artwork! Hee Hee.

And another heart with a very cute smiley face.  An M for M and an M for Mommy. :)  Now I’m happy.
Although, I’m not sure, but I think he just used scrap paper for mine – see the chunks cut out?

Some art string artwork:

Experimenting with white on red:

This is my favorite:

The next one is my least favorite.  Can you see the face with a frown on it in the lower left?  That was because Mommy was crabby that day (I asked him about it and that’s what he said!).  You can imagine how awful that made me feel.  However, it does go to prove that he’s able to work out his feelings with his art, and in my mind that’s one of the most important and beneficial things about art in early childhood.  And he was better able to talk about his feelings when referring to the art he’d made.  And of course, there was a big lesson for me there too:  I’M A BAD MOMMY.

Oh wait, maybe it’s more like I’LL TRY TO BE A BETTER MOMMY AND GET MORE SLEEP. ;)   

If you have a kid's art post, link it up below! Be sure to link back here somewhere in your post.

Have a beautiful day! :)