His First Big Boy Bath

...since that last bath, where the whole nightmare began. (You can see his two top chicklets in this pic.)

A very different atmosphere today! Excitement warred with irrational fear as I worked to keep my heart inside my chest.

He's making serious progress with his walking, taking 8 to 10 steps to reach us. Of course every step is a major celebration.

I've been avoiding posting for some time. My conflict lies not only in my professional PR, but also in that, finally crawling out from under this heavy cloud, I don't want to look too closely at why we're not 110%.

I hope those well-intentioned don't take my following self-observation to heart, as it's merely a detatched examination. In all of my nervousness and excitement at re-opening my business, I forgot to prepare for the inevitable questions. They hit me like a burlap sack of bricks on Day 1. While I appreciate the concern and interest, I cannot help but wonder how long it will take to shrug the association. I'd just begun to not think of our family as 'special', to feel light and free. We'd slowly started bringing him out to places where people didn't know of his illness and saw him only as a tyical baby. Those sincere questions slowly began to cloak me down again, closing off my oxygen. I've got to figure out how to equip myself to better handle this.

The correct answer always is that everything is fantastic. In truth, our struggle continues, in some ways more hurtful because we feel we should be dancing on the rooftops. After living as two separate team mates for so long, tossing us two cats into the hamster ball together has been a ride. We have yet to fully retract our claws from battle and the flare ups are instant and brilliant. Add to that the pressure of getting our fiscal ball rolling, and it's like walking through waist-deep sludge, swinging big, beefy mallets at each other. We're working hard to get our lines of communication back up, to re-learn the dance that once came so easily to us.

We're almost there... I can almost taste how beautiful it was and could be again.

Un Plugged

He had his last surgery on Wednesday, to remove his hardware. What should have taken 20 minutes took 90. His little superhero body grafted pretty strongly to the tubes in his chest. They had to take it out in pieces.

Of course, yet again I was far more bothered by the entire epidsode than he was. It really is often a relief, having this full-out boy. Nothing seems to phase him or slow him down. I know I'm going to really come to rethink this perspective, but for now... it works.

Picture Post!

Camera Ham...

Going for the Forbidden Cord...

The Ridiculous Snow Suit!

Up and Down

Mostly, the hours sing by every day. He's an entirely new child, removed from the stress and boredom of hospital life. He explores the entire house in great detail whenever he's not stuffing his little face with exciting new foods. He's almost always in a fantastic mood.

I'm experiencing various emotions hourly. I wrap his happy little self around me as much as possible. Once in a while I feel sadness for those who aren't as lucky as us creep into my bubble. It seems that just as quickly as we were dumped into the middle of this vast community borne of necessity, we breezed right out. Faces of children and parents we've come to know haunt me. This is yet another example of when superpowers would come in really handy.

I'm excited to get my business rolling again and fearful that my first real chance at lighting it up full time might flop. I've tried twice before to go full time, but road blocks spelling out K-A-L-E-B have shut me down. I don't have any hard feelings about that, rather I'm simply trying to soak in the wholesome goodness that is him. I don't want to become so busy that I miss out on things. The worst thing for me would be for my head to become so wrapped up in work that I can't see this precious gift that is my family right in front of me. A very wonderful soul already taught me the joy of appreciating every moment in its singular entirety and I don't want to lose that lesson to ambition again.

It's almost an out-of-body experience, being home and finished. We still have a few appointments and minor surgeries. There's a strong sense of inertia, like a canon has shot us out into open air and we need to learn how to use our wings all over again. We're really enjoying settling new patterns and are so happy that we're not where we were professionally before this all started. The tingling fears of taking risks are settled with gut feelings of assuredness that this is our correct path. We love being entrepreneurs, are organised and conservative with our lifestyle and already feel healthier without the career stressors of past days.

Double Post Day

WE'RE HOME!!!!

His first stop...

His second...

Showin' off...