While it may seem that the little man has been around for at least a decade (for that is how long this year has felt), he in fact hit the tender age of one yesterday and celebrated in real style with a single candle and a banana bread cupcake (I know. I know. This is the new organic non-processed Griffin/Myre household - so no Betty Crocker cakes with sprinkles and that frosting that comes in a can that is so comforting and says 1970s birthday to me so clearly.) The little man didn't know how to blow so his mom (wearing the Miley) pinch hit for him, leaning in - even stealing his one wish. Now we have a cabinet full of "boy" birthday napkins with every form of ball (basket, soccer, footballs). Move over Disney Princess napkins that I carted with us back to America after years of outdoor birthday parties in the "Rose Garden" in Jerusalem. We left guns and ammo and a real war behind in Israel only to now enter a phase where every Saltine is bitten into a shape of a gun and turned into a weapon and our new war is inside my struggling body. To mark Luke's birthday I spent the morning at Georgetown getting an MRI to see where these bad boy tumors had gone after 16 rounds of chemo. Good news is we don't know what the flat 1.2 centimeter mass on the MRI is - and won't until surgery. The bad news is there is still a 1.2 centimeter mass. It's flat rather than round and it is no longer 6- 9 centimeters like an orange. So there is a lot to be thankful for (and maybe that wish I stole from Luke came in handy) but until the surgery on April 6 we won't know whether the cancer is really gone. So for any of you reading this from the Holy Land, we blew out a candle yesterday for Luke's first birthday, but if you are near the Holy Sepulcher or Church of the Nativity, please feel free to light a candle so that we can put this year behind us.
Love,
Jennifer
PS And, yes, Andrea, the Maraschino cherries and fudge were all organic and the ice cream from Whole Foods was milked from cows who hadn't been shot up with anti-biotics and hormones and was non GMO (genetically modified).
