26 January 2014
The sweetest thing
Cuddling with a sleeping baby Luke in the recliner while Matthew drags out every child size eating utensil and multiple cookie cutters to facilitate his homemade play dough obsession. Love watching Matthew play while Luke rests his head on my shoulder where I can rest my cheek on his cheek and we can snuggle close on this snowy day. Ahh, there isn't much sweeter in life than these moments with my little ones!!
25 January 2014
So many milestones, so little time
We've had so many awesome things happening at our house lately!
Luke
Luke has been army crawling for quite some time and continues to get faster and stronger. He's now able to nearly push up into a sitting position on his own and has been able to get out of sitting for probably at least a month. He has also been pulling to kneeling on the bottom step of the stairs for a few weeks and just today pulled to standing while I was sitting in our recliner. He pulled to kneeling by holding onto the recliner and kept trying to get higher so I held his hand to help stabilize him and he pulled the rest of the way to stand! He did this four times in just an hour! Tonight Dustin shared that he saw him kneeling on top of the first step so that's his first success with climbing too! A week ago yesterday at 12 months, 3 weeks Luke said his first word, ball! He was playing with a soccer ball with his speech therapist and she was referring to the "ball" and he just started repeating it! It's such an exciting time to observe Luke, he is just amazing!
Matthew
Luke isn't the only amazing little one in our family, Matthew is pretty spectacular too! He is repeating everything and has a vocabulary to rival some of the best communicators his age. It's normal for him to speak in 5-7 word sentences and it's really fun to talk to someone who can carry on a conversation and has such a high level of understanding and comprehension. This week we've reached a major milestone in that we are seriously working on potty training. The sitter started it with him on Monday and as of today (Saturday) we've only had a few accidents. He's really not been telling us that's ready to go, rather we have to remind him about once an hour, but that's pretty irrelevant to me since it seems to be working. I'm sure it won't be long before he's directing us by sharing his needs. He's been wearing big boy undies all week which is beyond adorable and we've been offering him chocolate chips as a treat after he goes.... He's sure to remind us after each successful trip to the bathroom that he's ready for "more chocolate chips"!
30 December 2013
I wish I could be a child again...
I'm sorry I haven't written much lately. I do have plans to get back online and update on our lives again soon! As I write, both boys are napping in their cribs and I've just taken a break from a new book I'm reading, "The Year My Son And I Were Born: A Story of Down Syndrome, Motherhood and Self Discovery" by Kathryn Soper. There was a line that struck me and I needed to write... so here I am.
"I watched them go, wishing I could be a child again, instead of a mother."
Soper was referencing how she felt as her 6 oldest children left the hospital after meeting their new baby brother, Thomas, who was diagnosed with Down syndrome at birth the day prior. This struck me because I recall feeling the exact same way, wishing someone could take the reigns and live my life for me and I could in turn be reduced to the innocent days of Kool-Aid and cartoons. I wanted to run away from my life and my own reality. I didn't want to deal with the hardships that everyone told me were in store for my future. I felt that way for a long time too during the last half of my pregnancy, when we knew that Luke would be born with DS. It's quite amazing the extremes that I've felt through this experience... the lows have been so very deep and dark and almost nonhuman and the highs have been completely the opposite... I've had an uncountable number of moments when I've felt like I was soaring high above the clouds, in on a secret that was greater than the greatest secret imaginable, like I'd found heaven on earth. I don't know how else to explain it. It confuses me actually, how I could have been so terrified of our impending life with Luke, especially now that I am certain of the love and joy he's brought to my life. Why has our society created that? The divide is too deep and too wide. All life is precious... why did I question the gift that God had planned for my life? I have so many questions in retrospect on why I felt so destitute at the time. I feel guilty for the thoughts that I had back then.
Yesterday, Dustin's Grandpa Taylor told me that he was proud of Dustin and I because "we wanted this child". He told me how proud he was of Matthew and Luke because they were both beautiful and strong in their own ways. In all of his elderly, Grandfather-ly wisdom, he was right. They are beautiful and strong and we have so much to be proud of. It meant a lot to me that he said those words, in his generation, individuals with Down syndrome hardly existed... at least not in the throws of society. They were thought so much less of that they were institutionalized. They didn't have contact with their families... essentially, they were let go and forgotten. I've never asked he or Dustin's grandma (or any of our grandparents for that matter) if they ever knew someone with DS so I'm not sure if any of them ever had personal experiences. Regardless, knowing that this population wasn't readily accepted by their generation has always left me quietly wondering how they felt about Luke being a part of our family. While I probably shouldn't have ever questioned this either... it's not hard for doubts to find their way in through the teeniest cracks and it just felt good to know that he is accepted fully for all that he is by those close to us.
While I'm sure there will be days ahead for me that I will revert to wishing I was a child again, for now I feel so blessed for the role I play to two of the sweetest and most loving little boys in the entire world. I couldn't imagine my life today if I weren't a mother!
"I watched them go, wishing I could be a child again, instead of a mother."
Soper was referencing how she felt as her 6 oldest children left the hospital after meeting their new baby brother, Thomas, who was diagnosed with Down syndrome at birth the day prior. This struck me because I recall feeling the exact same way, wishing someone could take the reigns and live my life for me and I could in turn be reduced to the innocent days of Kool-Aid and cartoons. I wanted to run away from my life and my own reality. I didn't want to deal with the hardships that everyone told me were in store for my future. I felt that way for a long time too during the last half of my pregnancy, when we knew that Luke would be born with DS. It's quite amazing the extremes that I've felt through this experience... the lows have been so very deep and dark and almost nonhuman and the highs have been completely the opposite... I've had an uncountable number of moments when I've felt like I was soaring high above the clouds, in on a secret that was greater than the greatest secret imaginable, like I'd found heaven on earth. I don't know how else to explain it. It confuses me actually, how I could have been so terrified of our impending life with Luke, especially now that I am certain of the love and joy he's brought to my life. Why has our society created that? The divide is too deep and too wide. All life is precious... why did I question the gift that God had planned for my life? I have so many questions in retrospect on why I felt so destitute at the time. I feel guilty for the thoughts that I had back then.
Yesterday, Dustin's Grandpa Taylor told me that he was proud of Dustin and I because "we wanted this child". He told me how proud he was of Matthew and Luke because they were both beautiful and strong in their own ways. In all of his elderly, Grandfather-ly wisdom, he was right. They are beautiful and strong and we have so much to be proud of. It meant a lot to me that he said those words, in his generation, individuals with Down syndrome hardly existed... at least not in the throws of society. They were thought so much less of that they were institutionalized. They didn't have contact with their families... essentially, they were let go and forgotten. I've never asked he or Dustin's grandma (or any of our grandparents for that matter) if they ever knew someone with DS so I'm not sure if any of them ever had personal experiences. Regardless, knowing that this population wasn't readily accepted by their generation has always left me quietly wondering how they felt about Luke being a part of our family. While I probably shouldn't have ever questioned this either... it's not hard for doubts to find their way in through the teeniest cracks and it just felt good to know that he is accepted fully for all that he is by those close to us.
While I'm sure there will be days ahead for me that I will revert to wishing I was a child again, for now I feel so blessed for the role I play to two of the sweetest and most loving little boys in the entire world. I couldn't imagine my life today if I weren't a mother!
07 December 2013
06 December 2013
Matthew used the potty
Matthew instigated using the potty tonight and went #1!
Admittedly, I really wasn't too keen on the prospect of him being potty trained and aside from buying him a potty, I have all but ignored the issue with him other than asking him from time to time if he wanted to try to use the potty. We use cloth diapers and I've already made the investment, I don't have diapering expenses every month. The biggest thing though is that I have no desire to take he and Luke into a public restroom all on my own (if I'm by myself, say like grocery shopping or something...). Luke still isn't standing on his own or really bearing weight on his legs mych. The challenge of holding Luke while helping Matthew and trying to keep him from touching everything is scary to me. And then there is trying to get him up to wash his hands while holding a wobbly, low muscle toned Luke. It all feels overwhelming to me.
And what about the bags? A purse? A diaper bag! What will I do with those during all this?
Regardless, Matthew decided he's ready to give it a try, so here we go! Matthew is 2 years and 4 months old and I'm so proud of his initative! I love that he just caught on and did it without us having to prompt him! I've been told that when he was ready that he would let us know, this time, all that advice was spot on!
I've always told myself that I'd never do this... But I couldn't help myself! Here is the proof of his first success on the potty!
04 December 2013
Clapping, waving and standing
So many milestones! Luke started consistently clapping in response to being asked to clap or when he's excited this week! He's also now waving hi and bye pretty consistently! Also tonight during therapy, our therapist took a cushion off the couch and placed one of Luke's favorite cause and effect toys (this tower thing that you load five balls onto the top of and then when you press a money, the balls are released one by one to travel down a circular slide where they finally come to rest in the mouths of hills at the bottom. It has these wildly bright led lights and plays some crazy loud songs!) on the couch. She position him standing so he could play with the toy and he actually did it! I've never seen him bear weight for that long, nearly 6 minutes! Granted he was resting his chest and arms on the couch, but hey, we will take it!! Love our hard working little guy so much!!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)