Our Giant Monster Preemie is 31 inches tall, 27 pounds, 6 ounces and has a giant ole head. Depending on whether or not you adjust for his age, he's in the 75th to 90th percentile. Um, I am not sure where he came from but he is pulling from a very different end of the DNA pool!
He can walk, climb, says DUH! (dog), BA (bottle), dis, dat, dere, dada, mama and has a word for Joseph and Cole. He also made up his own signs for a plate and cup. He gets them for me and shoves them in my hand, insisiting I get him some food. A few weeks ago, I was making pancakes, and he brought me a plate. I set it aside and said, "In a minute, Georgie. Mommy needs to make dinner." He brought me another and I did and said the same thing. I got another plate shoved at me! Clearly, I was not cooking his food fast enough!
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It's hard to believe he's a year and a half old. His six month birthday was such a mildstone but the 18th month is escaping quickly. On May 20th, I noted that he was 18 months old and that was it. I've so caught up with Cole, pumping, feeding and the end of the school year that it didn't make much of an emotional impact. I thought AHEAD to his second birthday, not BACK to his birth.
I will always think back to his birth. People ask if Cole's birth was healing. Cole's birth filled a hole in our family, a little Cole-sized hole that had always been missing. His birth would have been wonderful and filling and healing simply because he arrived. It was every little detail I wanted from our previous births: the labor at home, the quick birth, the bonding after, the healthy mother and baby.
Did I heal with his birth? It's not so much the birth I needed to heal from but the post partum period and, yes, the six weeks after the birth of Cole were very healing. They were bittersweet too because I wondered how things for us could have been so much different, so much better, so LESS tramatic if I had had the home health nurse visits, the support. When I take the time to stop, to wonder, to think- the scar tingles. It reminds me that it is still there.
You see, you can heal. You can move on. But there is a scar, a mark indicating that something happened, something was done there. Something healed over but it is not quite right, not quite perfect not quite smooth. The shape of my soul has changed, the same way cut skin changes. It is wrinkled, purple, puckering- fading over time, becoming visiable only to the owner or the trained eye.
I read Georgie's baby book tonight and filled in some missing details. It's so hard to believe that the serious infant, the baby on the vent, the giant seven month old who learned to crawl at his great grandmother's house is a giant walking, talking, expressive toddler. He has this full ZEST for life and a winning personailty. In some ways, I think he knows how lucky he is to be here.
A year ago, I never thought I would have this happy go lucky tot, a baby brother and a big brother all in one. I never dreamed he would contuine to be so huge. I couldn't think ahead.
No one knows the future. But finally, for the first time in a long time, we're looking ahead, ready to take that giant step towards his second birthday and all the memories it holds. We're ready to live in the present, remember the past, and look ahead.
Happy 18 months to my Giant Monster Chunky Monkey. We look forward to your next 18+ years.
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