My babies!

Lots of updates this week so I apologize if this entry is a little long. Shaun had his second chemo treatment this afternoon. So only 5 more months! They tweeked his dosage so hopefully his mouth won't hurt so much this time around. I also had a good day. I started doing lab work in my new lab last Friday and already have little embyoid bodies growing (see pictures above). Most of you reading this will have no idea what an embryoid body is so here is a quick description. Embyonic stem cells (from mice not humans) which can become any cell in the body were transfered into an environment that makes the stem cells differentiate (become cells such as skin, brain, heart, etc.). Today I harvested the cells that had become whats called "embryoid bodies". So embryoid bodies are just a ball of differntiated cells. They are no longer stem cells, they are just a ball of progenitors. Eventually, when they turn into heart cells, they will beat in the dish! I will show movies when I get that far. Until then, I just have cute balls of cells. (If you would like a more detailed description, please leave a comment and I can email you).

This weekend was super busy, but lots of fun with friends and family. Shaun's friend Jeremiah, aka The Rock, came up to visit from Bloomington, IN. So the boys played Madden on the wii, watched Notre Dame football and went to the Ram to watch some ultimate fighting whatnot. you'll have to ask Shaun for details on that one. All I heard was ultimate fighting and the rest went out the other ear. We went on our weekend adventure to the Shedd Aquarium. Shaun and I both love going there and it seemed like Bryce enjoyed it as well. Although most of the time Bryce was people watching instead of looking at the fish. He did take interest in the penguins. They would swim right up to the glass near him and he kept a keen eye on them.

Lastly, Bryce has been practicing his crawling by following everyone around. He's gotten pretty good at it! here is an updated video from earlier this week of his improvement.