Day +166

Been a couple of weeks.  Been busy couple of weeks.

Important things first.  Today we had a clinic visit which went well.  HGB is up, which is great.  WBC are a ted lower, essentially flat and Neutrophils are up.  The platelets are down from a month ago - from 306k to 238k.  The monocytes are a up a fraction as well.  Both, however, are within the normal range and the slight increase in monocytes can be explained by a bug Zevi is getting over.  The doctor said she is not concerned at this point.  Regardless, blood was drawn for the Chimerism test and in a week or two we should know better.

Another bit of news is sleep training.  After basically not sleeping at all we visited the sleep clinic and were instructed to perform sleep training.  Right around that time Benya had a virus and was banished to Grandma Rita.  Then Alla got a sore throat and was banished as well.  I used the opportunity to get to work.  Four very, very miserable night followed.  The result, however, was almost a week of Zevi sleeping much better, with me coming to his room at most twice a night for a minute to cover him up.  These days he sleeps well roughly every other night.  On the nights when Zevi does not sleep well, things are still a bit better - there is less screaming, more of me coming over and telling Zevi to get into bed, which he does, and even covers himself with his favorite blanket.  We are not done, but things are moving in the right direction.

Another bit of amazing news: our donor wrote back to us!  We now know he is a senior in college and by all indications is a great guy.  Both he and all of us cannot wait until we get to talk without limitations and, eventually, meet face to face.

Finally, last weekend Oregon served up some amazing weather and we headed to the beach.  Great company, a warm bright day, no wind at all.  The boys got to play in the sand, run around, met a few dogs.  It was great to watch them go crazy (ok, up to a point) and especially good to see Zevi have energy to spare.

The language and cognitive (cleverness?) skills continue to grow too.  Benjamin talks up a storm, as always.  He often greets me with a hug and says "Papa, you are my friend!"  Benjamin also refers to hugging and reminders of friendship when he feels he is about to be in hot water.  I helps him about a third of the time.  Zev recently provided this bit of fun: Alla and I were out and Grandma Rita was putting the boys to bed (thank you!).  Per out request she gave him only a bit of juice at bed time.  Zevi, as usual, demanded more.  Rita tried to argue that, in fact, Zevi has a lot of juice.  Zevi demanded to look and was told that his bottle contained more juice than he could actually see.  At that point Zevi suggested they pour out the juice into a clear cup and take a look.  At that point, I believe, Zevi got a well-earned increased allotment of juice.