HOME TOUR

Whelp. So the shoe shopping was a bit harder than expected. I even took Saturday off of work to go downtown with Matt and Cade. Our goal was three-fold: 1) Find our baby some adorable first shoes 2) Get in the holiday spirit by enjoying the Christmas decorations in the city and 3) Make Cade cry then put him quickly into Santa’s arms for an epic first Santa picture. The downtown mall was surprisingly void of baby shoe places. Our one choice, Jack and Janie, had no shoes that would work. We learned quickly that baby Cade needs lace up shoes or a highly elastic upper part of the shoe in order for the prosthetic foot to slip in.

We found one pair in Baby Gap that would have worked but I just couldn’t commit, it didn’t seem special enough. I ended up feeling lousier and lousier as the day wore on ending up with a fever, chills and sore throat by that night (NO fun!), Santa had gone home for the day by the time we found him so that didn’t pan out and some of the Christmas-y atmosphere Boston is usually pretty good at was diminished by protesters lying in the streets.

So as sad as dad was to not go shopping for shoes, momma and Cade headed to Nordstroms today. Ahhh. Nordstroms. Now we’re talking. Shoes, shoes, sneakers galore and then I spy them…baby moccasins. Freshly Picked sweet little brown moccasins. And they fit. The tab part is fully elastic so they slipped right on. I know I know, cute and expensive but just how practical are they Jackie. Now clearly they don’t have grip on the soles so I went ahead and bought a back up pair of navy Converse sneakers. But I am not sorry for giving in to the cute shoes because he’s a baby and this is the first pair I’ve ever gotten to buy. Sorry hubs, no Air Jordans at Nordstroms.

Cade and I went straight from Nordstroms to NextStep Prosthetics. Arthur and his coworkers are working VERY hard and VERY quickly to get Cade’s first set of below the knee prosthetics ready by Friday when we leave for California. Because the grandmas said all they wanted for Christmas were Cade’s feet. 🙂

This last Friday, they took the casts of Cade’s lower legs wearing his silicon liners and today Arthur was fitting the liners into a plastic socket that was created using those molds of Cade’s sweet little legs. At the end of the plastic socket, the little prostethic foot is attached via screw. My cute husband actually thought he’d get to use a power tool every morning to put Cade’s feet on. Oh dear. No honey, no drills on the baby please.

NextStep Prosthetics has engineered a little velcro strap that attaches the silicon liner to the plastic socket so the leg doesn’t fall off. Brilliant! It is on the outside of this plastic socket that our creativity gets to come out, well, until Cade has an opinion, SO I’m soaking up these days of momma-approved prints because if he really is my child, he’ll be very opinionated. We can choose ANY fabric print from Joanns Fabrics or even from Cade’s outgrown clothes to add a pattern to the leg. Matt had the idea to use our favorite pair of Cade’s PJs. They are cream and have the word “Hi” printed all over them in grey. Many a night we poked Cade all over saying “Hi Hi Hi” and he would squeal. Sweet memories, and now it will be on his first set of prosthetic legs forever. How very perfect.

On the sentimental side, both Matt and I had to hold back tears when we saw Cade with feet on the ends of his legs for the first time. What a moment. I’m reminded by how tall this mountain looked from the bottom. Those early pregnancy days when I thought, “there is no way I can scale that. I’m just not strong enough, brave enough, capable enough.” And now standing near-ish the top, I look down and see that sack of tears and think, “I did it. I came through that. AND more importantly. I’d do it ALL OVER AGAIN.” Because one hearty laugh from that blue-eyed baby and I want to bite him he’s so cute. I reminded ONCE AGAIN that we ALL have situations like this. Situations that place us in front of a mountain. Climb it my friends. It’s a beautiful view.

“Taste and see that the LORD is good. Oh, the joys of those who trust in Him!”                   –Psalm 34:8