HOME TOUR

It has been quite awhile since we offered any updates on Cade’s progress and journey with his prosthetics. It’s a whole new year even! We’ve (Cade and I) have been hunkering down in lovely Napa, California for the last month while my husband freezes his poor tushy off on the East Coast. I feel like an 80 year old snowbird as I cling to time on the sunnier (warmer) side of the world. But there is something to be said about being able to walk barefoot to the park and not take vitamin D drops, as much as we’ve missed our friends, church family and frost bite.

This Napa time has given me moments to journey into reading the Bible in chronological order (a resolution) and work on organizing too many pictures in preparation for Cade’s first year photo book. We’re using Artifact Uprising. Stay tuned. We’ll show you the final product.

Time out of our norm can be delightful and equally frustrating. Nana and Poppie’s house is much bigger than our little cape which equates to trouble in baby language. We’ve rubber banded the kitchen cupboards, gotten all the baby fences out and he’s still trying to escape out the doggy door. If there was one word that defines my baby more than any others right now it would be persistence. Offering distractions and screaming “danger” means try harder to get back to whatever I was doing before mom seized me. The little bugger.

So in that spirit of delight and annoyance at my overly persistent 10 month old (yes 10 months, allow me a second to wipe the tears and pick my heart up off the floor, HOW is he 10 months already?) I’m refocusing my heart on recognizing these are NOT days to simply be gotten through, no, these days are an unrepeatable gift. Tomorrow will never be like today. I want to relish a moment in the simple patterns or lack there of.

He is still not sleeping through the night, has never taken consistent naps, eats differently at every meal and can be moody or wonderful. I think i’ve just been waiting for this magical moment when everything falls into place. That moment you suddenly feel like you know what you’re doing. That moment your baby suddenly says, “Ok momma, for 10 months I’ve not given you enough sleep but guess what, starting now I’ll be that picture perfect, sleep-trained, king of the naps baby you thought you’d have.” I need to rest in the present moments I have with him for they will never again be exactly the same. For all of us, each day is an unrepeatable gift. The good the bad, the wonderful the frustrating. Tomorrow will be different. I want to resolve to live more in the present in this new year.

As for our little monkey, he has now had his first set of prosthetic feet for almost a month. He is standing up on them well, bearing all his weight while holding onto objects or our hands. He has taken a couple wobbly steps from the stable object to say an open hand if he really wants you. He has not mastered getting down from standing back to the floor however, he either sits back hard and falls on his bottom or he tips forward and into a push up/onto his head. And I think in the last week he has realized that the prosthetic feet really slow down his turbo crawl so he’s been getting more annoyed as you attempt to put them on him. Arthur said that would happen. That until he realizes standing and walking is better than turbo crawling, he might throw a fit. I’m bracing myself for the fit because Cade wants speed. He wants to get to the dog’s water bowl as FAST as he can so he can stick his face in it and mimic how the dogs drink. It’s great, this 10 month exerting independence phase. But today is an unrepeatable gift and I will embrace them realizing just how beautiful these moments are, these unrepeatable daily moments. Happy New Year friends.