A touching story of strength and courage

I'm passing this story along because it has touched me so profoundly. I never met the little boy, but I did know his mother in high school. Their 2 year battle against brain cancer is hearbreaking and inspirational. After reading this last night, I hugged Alex a little harder today, kissed him a little more, and just took the time to enjoy him. I hope that I will continue to appreciate just how lucky I am to have him in my life, and never take for granted that life can change in an instant. To truly grasp the enormatity of the situation and how brave Brendon's mother was when faced with treatment options that were sometimes worse than the disease, you have to go to the very first page of the journal and start at the beginning when Brendon was first diagnosed. I hope you all take the time to read this story and remember how precious life can be.

http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/brendoncoates

Giggle Box

Young Frakensteing likes toilet water...no not perfume.

Well, I have a few minutes between classes so I thought I would fill you all in on Alex's newest activities and shenanigans.

He is starting to walk in that Oh so cute frakenstein, drunk midget sort of way. It's more of an organized fall right now, but it's progress! He'll be walking all over the place before his 1st birthday! His favorite past time is to point at things and make us walk over to them so we can tell him what it is. He also has discovered it's sometimes (most times) easier to grab mommy or daddy's hand and make that hand do the things his hand cannot. Like turn a knob, or flip a switch. He will be quite a little manipulator!

On to shenanigans....

So, I was sitting on the couch doing homework this morning. Evan and I were both home, so we were kind of both keeping an eye on him. Well, I thought Alex had followed Evan into the bedroom, but I began to hear this "splash, splash, splash" sound coming from the end of the hallway. I spent a few seconds running through my mental list of what he could be doing... Is he taking the nightlight out of the socket AGAIN? no that's not it. Is he trying to climb into the litter box behind one of the cats, AGAIN? no, that's not it. OH NO! HE'S PLAYING IN THE TOILET WATER!! So I jump up and right as I look down the hall, he puts his hand in his mouth! *GASP* I wanted to dip him in bleach! But, I settled for washing his hands, applying hand sanitizer and giving him some juice to wash his mouth. So, kiss him at your own risk, you now know where his mouth has been!

FYI, His first birthday party will be 2/22 and our official wedding date is 6/13/09. So save the dates!

Oh Christmas Tree, Oh Christmas Tree.

This is a very exciting holiday season for me. Christmas is my favorite time of the year and I get to share it with Alex this year! Yay! Even Mr. Scrooge (Evan) has been in the spirit this year, allowing us to get a REAL tree. That's a first for us. In years past I have had to put up a sad little table tree that Evan sneered at until I took it down. But, this year we went as a family and picked out a tree, brought it home and decorated it. We put up the superyard (a baby gate on steroids) around the tree to keep tiny hands from pulling on ornaments or knocking the tree over, but he still loves to crawl over and poke at the ornaments thru the gate. It's pretty cute. Pictures will follow when our laptop is up and running again.

No NBA Star here

Well, I have some surprising news! You guys are going to be shocked to learn that Alex is SHORT! Now, I know you are asking yourselves, "how could that be with the genetic pool he had to draw from"? We were shocked too, but we have to face the reality of the situation. My dreams of raising an NBA star have been dashed.

O.K. enough kidding. We all knew Alex would never be tall. He'll be lucky to hit 5' 5. He had his 9 month check up yesterday. He is 26 inches long, and 18.12 pounds. He is in the 35th percentile for weight and only the 5th percentile for height. Doctor says it's to be expected since both Evan and I are short. Eveything else was great! He's right on track with mobility and verbal skills. They even did some kind of vision test that measures his eyes and screens for early signs of vision problems. He passed that with flying colors too!

While not an official milestone, I have noticed a sudden increase in the development of naughtiness. He is in to absolutely everything! If he notices the baby gate is down, he makes a bee-line to the kitchen. If he notices me coming for him, he kicks in the turbo to get there before I reach him. NAUGHTY!

But, as his naughtiness develops further, so does his cuteness. He now "drives" just about anything across the floor by pushing it while he crawls. He even makes a motor noise while he does it! So precious.

Happy Thanksgiving!

So Cute It's Scary

I took Alex to a pumpkin patch yesterday and took some pictures. He discovered hay and actually really liked it. I figured he would hate it since he hates to be put down in grass, but he didn't seem to mind at all. Go figure.... Anyway, we went with my Mommy Group so I am including a group picture of all of the kids that were there. Alex was a little young for most (OK all) of the activities, but I had fun subjecting him to various things in the spirit of cute pictures. The pumpkin patch was at a church and I'm hoping that they do it every year. It will be a fun tradition to do with Alex. They had storytime with a story about how to hug a pumpkin (like a baseball if you were wondering) and a sing-a-long, and a few games and such. Plus they had every shape and size of pumpkin you could hope for. It was a lot of fun!!

As for milestones reached since the last blog, Alex is a full on crawler! He can go anywhere he desires and is lightening quick. He's also pulling up on anything and everything as well as cruising. Any toy that he can stand up and hold on to, like his activity table, he now pushes across the floor and walks while holding on to it. He'll be walking by Thanksgiving I'm sure!