In the past week I have seen Benjamin start to walk on his own much more. He is still a bit uncertain and wobbly, but he is starting to walk between furniture and across rooms at times. Yesterday he walked by himself just holding onto one of my hands down to the end of the block. I was really hoping that he would be doing this by his second birthday, which is Sunday! I cannot believe it has been two years since my little guy made his surprise arrival. Last week during an insomnia spell one night, I allowed myself to drift back to the days spent in the NICU. I often think of bits and pieces of our journey, but I really allowed myself to remember this time. Honestly, it was hard. It is amazing how you can stuff pain away like an ugly sweater in your closet. But next to the ugly pain sweater is the beautiful "miracles & blessings" sweater that is a joy to rediscover. The David Crowder Band song "How He Loves Us" just came to mind. That song is so true. If you haven't heard it check it out at this site
http://www.onlylyrics.com/hits.php?grid=11&id=1034792. God loves us so powerfully and He is jealous for our hearts. You can know God if life is just dandy and nothing bad ever happens to you, but when you go through something tough and suddenly God goes from being big and good to being your lifeline and source of breath...wow. It is so weird to love a difficult experience. My mom and I were talking about this just the other week. We didn't wish this on Benjamin, yet we would not want to go back and undo the experience (but I don't want to do it again either!)
A quick update on my little guy's progress. We had an appointment with the Developement Pediatrician & PT today. I must say I am not a big fan of these apts because we almost always end up walking away with more apts with other specialists and they usually can be rather negative as they focus on what he is behind on rather than how far he has come (that is when I realize how blessed we are to have his other PT, Karen who tends to focus on the positive and provides much comfort for this mama's heart.) They did standardized testing on him to see his progress. He did much better than last time, but as usual they want more work on speech and occupational therapy and ordered a hearing test. (I told them Benjamin's hearing is fine, but could they look at Brian's instead? He never seems to hear me.) I always walk out of there feeling like a bit of a failure as a mom. Just another reason to pray harder for a full term or near full term baby this time. It would be cool to just have one regular pediatrician to work with instead of a bunch of specialists. I do not recommend parenting under a microscope.
