HOME TOUR

Sigh. Grumble. Oh crap. How are we here already? I suppose that all comes to mind. We are officially moving into the one week countdown to Caedmon’s surgery. His big surgery at Children’s Hospital in Boston. We’re a mixture of terrified, optimistic, confused, hopeful and honestly just trying to keep on moving, breathing…functioning.

Today we met with Next Step Bionics and Prosthetics in Newton, Ma and they were calm to our terror, some solid ground for our journey ahead. They spent the afternoon with us, playing with Cade, showing us around their amazing property in an old mill building. They have a pediatric physical therapist in the same office and she spent a better part of half an hour playing with Cade. Matt and I were ever so proud of him as he dominated their play space. We knew he was on the earlier side of the continuum for crawling and pulling up to stand but they confirmed our suspicions that this little monkey of ours has a point to prove. Feet. Overrated apparently

They kept commenting on his upper body strength, core stabilization and agility. In fact the main prosthetist said we should mark our calender for the 2030 Paralympics. You hear that folks. Not even 8 months old and we’re talking about sports. I’m going to bask in these moments because I was so terrified to dream about the future for him for so long. I just didn’t know what it looked like. But being in this amazing office, touching those prosthetic legs, meeting the craftsmen and learning about the process really makes the breath come a bit more freely. Cade is going to be okay. He can do this. We can do this.

Psalm 77: 19-20 

“Your road led through the sea, your pathway through the mighty waters–a pathway no one knew was there! You led your people along that road like a flock of sheep…”

Sometimes the path before us seems impossible. I felt that way when we first found out about Cade’s limb abnormality. Sometimes God asks us to walk through the sea. And our human heart and shaded eyes, well, they question. Sometimes God asks us to walk through the sea, straight into something we cannot fathom how it could possibly work. And then it does.

Today they also made a mold of his sweet little foot for us. We love his foot, those three precious toes and we are so sad to say goodbye to them. He is ticklish on his foot. He squeals when you tickle those little toes. And that makes it hard. We’ve been purposeful about letting him experience as much to life as possible with that little foot so we can say someday, you did have sand between your toes and a muddy foot. Dogs licked your toes and grass kissed your foot. Most recently we played in the leaves and he got to feel that crunch. Little things. Maybe they mean more to me than they ever will to him but if that’s how we get through it, then that’s what we’ll do.

So we’re praying. Playing. Breathing in life with our little boy as we enter the one week count down. Here are just a few of our fall adventures. And tomorrow is Halloween. He is going to be our brave little lion. We took those steps, we’re walking through the sea. We could not fathom it, but somehow, it is all going to work out.