Living The Blessed Life...

Wednesday, July 7, 2010

Growing Up

I guess we all have to grow up sometime but does Amelia's time have to be now? She pulled up on the couch yesterday and started walking down the side of it. That lead to pulling up on any and everything humanly possible throughout the day, leading into today. She scooted across the bathroom floor this morning, tugged on my capris, and when I looked down to see what she was doing, she was peeking up at me between my knees, grinning with pride at her new found skill of standing. She's becoming a little more brave about walking and will sometimes take a few steps while only holding on with one hand.

Amelia has started scooting on her tummy and pulling herself across the floor but isn't quite crawling yet. She still prefers to be escorted from place to place but will get mad enough to relocate on her own if left to her own devices. Yes, I'm evil.

She was super-duper whiny and clingy yesterday, not wanting to stand, sit, lie down, crawl, walk, sleep, stay awake be held, be left alone...nothing. I took a peek in her mouth and she has no less than THREE teeth coming in at one time. I think there's at least one more but I'm not 100% positive. I'd be cranky, too! Who am I kidding? Some days, it takes a LOT less than that to make me an unhappy camper. No comments from the peanut gallery, please.

Oh! Amelia is "talking" with two-syllable "words!" Her most common is "Dah-Doo," complete with the cutest little puckering of the lips when she says "Doo" that you've ever seen! We were at the post office today when another little girl came in with her grandmother. Amelia exuberantly greeted them with, "Hey!" and a wave. Does she know she's saying "hey?" I don't know for sure but she seems to say it at the right times. She DOES know "DaDa" and "MaMa," though and that's alllllllllllllll that matters! hehehe

You know how most relationships start with the blind infatuation, complete with butterflies and total adoration? As time goes on, you spend more time with the object of your affection and begin to notice their quirks and oddities. This is usually when the decision is made to continue with the relationship or to call it quits. If you move forward, you're likely to find yourself falling into a completely different sort of love.

It's the kind of love that sees ALL "faults" yet doesn't hold them against you. It's a stronger, more real sort of love that gives you a safe place to land when the world is against you, even though there are times you think the last place you want to be is "there." I found this sort of love with David years ago but I never realized he and I both would feel the same sort of progression of love with our child(ren).

When Amelia was born, and even for months after she came home, I was on Cloud 9, in my own little world of euphoria. As time passed, the head-in-the-clouds feelings went away to be replaced by the realization that I'm not always going to like what Amelia is doing but I will somehow wake up each morning, loving her more than I did the day before. Every day will NOT be a good day, but it WILL be a blessed day. There will be tears, hers and mine. There will be frustrations and days that can't come to an end quickly enough. There will be ear infections, teeth coming in, sleepless nights, grumpy moods (again, hers and mine), and just downright crummy days.

There are also those moments when I look at her and am still amazed that I was chosen to be her mother. Those times when I look in my rear view mirror to see her holding up her blanky in hopes that I will see her and play Peek-a-Boo. How about the times she leans in, mouth wide open, for a kiss? I can't even begin to explain the feeling of pride I felt yesterday when I watched her pull up on the couch all by herself. My heart melts when Amelia smiles and there's no sweeter sound than her laughter. THESE moments are what we'll remember. THESE moments are what we strive for, and those others? Well, those other moments are just a little thing we call being human.

I ran across this in one of my inboxes tonight and thought I'd share. I wonder what it smelled like to Amelia....

It Smells Like Rain

A cold March wind danced around the dead of night in Dallas as the
Doctor walked into the small hospital room of Diana Blessing. Still
groggy from surgery, her husband David held her hand as they braced
themselves for the latest news.

That afternoon of March 10, 1991, complications had forced Diana,
only 24 weeks pregnant, to undergo an emergency cesarean to deliver the
couple's new daughter, Danae Lu Blessing. At 12 inches long and weighing
only one pound and nine ounces, they already knew she was perilously
premature.

Still, the doctor's soft words dropped like bombs. I don't think
she's going to make it, he said, as kindly as he could. "There's only a
10 percent chance she will live through the night, and even then, if
by some slim chance she does make it, her future could be a very cruel
one."

Numb with disbelief, David and Diana listened as the doctor
described the devastating problems Danae would likely face if she survived.
She would never walk, she would never talk, she would probably be blind,
and she would certainly be prone to other catastrophic conditions from
cerebral palsy to complete mental retardation, and on and on.

"No! No!" was all Diana could say. She and David, with their
5-year-old son Dustin, had long dreamed of the day they would have a
daughter to become a family of four. Now, within a matter of hours, that
dream was slipping away.

Through the dark hours of morning as Danae held onto life by the thinnest
thread, Diana slipped in and out of sleep, growing more and more determined
that their tiny daughter would live, and live to be a healthy, happy young
girl. But David, fully awake and listening to additional dire details of
their daughter's chances of ever leaving the hospital alive, much less
healthy, knew he must confront his wife with the inevitable.

David walked in and said that we needed to talk about making funeral
arrangements. Diana remembers, 'I felt so bad for him because he was doing
everything, trying to include me in what was going on, but I just wouldn't
listen, I couldn't listen.' I said, "No, that is not going to happen, no
way! I don't care what the doctors say; Danae is not going to die! One day
she will be just fine, and she will be coming home with us!"

As if willed to live by Diana's determination, Danae clung to life
hour after hour, with the help of every medical machine and marvel her
miniature body could endure. But as those first days passed, a new agony
set in for David and Diana. Because Danae's underdeveloped nervous system
was essentially raw, the lightest kiss or caress only intensified her
discomfort, so they couldn't even cradle their tiny baby girl against their
chests to offer the strength of their love. All they could do, as Danae
struggled alone beneath the ultraviolet light in the tangle of tubes and
wires, was to pray that God would stay close to their precious little
girl.

There was never a moment when Danae suddenly grew stronger. But as the
weeks went by, she did slowly gain an ounce of weight here and an ounce of
strength there. At last, when Danae turned two months old, her parents were
able to hold her in their arms for the very first time. And two months
later - though doctors continued to gently but grimly warn that her chances
of surviving, much less living any kind of normal life, were next to zero.

Danae went home from the hospital, just as her mother had
predicted. Today, five years later, Danae is a petite but feisty young girl
with glittering gray eyes and an unquenchable zest for life. She shows no
signs, what so ever, of any mental or physical impairment.

Simply, she is everything a little girl can be and more - but that happy
ending is far from end of her story.
> > >
One blistering afternoon in the summer of 1996 near her home in
Irving,Texas, Danae was sitting in her mother's lap in the bleachers of a
local ballpark where her brother Dustin's baseball team was practicing. As
always, Danae was chattering nonstop with her mother and several other
adults sitting nearby when she suddenly fell silent. Hugging her arms
across her chest, Danae asked, "Do you smell that?" Smelling the air and
detecting the approach of a thunderstorm, Diana replied, "Yes, it smells
like rain."

Danae closed her eyes and again asked, "Do you smell
that? " Once again, her mother replied, "Yes, I think we're about to get
wet, it smells like rain. Still caught in the moment, Danae shook her head,
patted her thin shoulders with her small hands and loudly announced, "No,
it smells like Him. It smells like God when you lay your head on His
chest." Tears blurred Diana's eyes as Danae then happily hopped down to
play with the other children. Before the rains came, her daughter's words
confirmed what Diana and all the members of the extended Blessing family
had known, at least in their hearts, all along. During those long days
and nights of her first two months of her life, when her nerves were too
sensitive for them to touch her, God was holding Danae on His chest and it
is His loving scent that she remembers so well.

Faith is the confidence that what we hope for will happen. It is the evidence
of what we cannot see, so you see it is impossible to please God without is.
Believe in the Lord by faith and don't doubt it. If you want to come to God you must believe that He exsists and that He rewards the ones who come to Him by faith.
~Hebrew 11:1&6~

---source unknown

July Pictures -
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2070460&id=1378911125&l=8219271a36

David says he likes Amelia's hair down better than always being in a bow up top. I told him we'd need to get her hair cut if we were going to leave it down and he wasn't going for it. He said we can't cut her hair, she can't stand, she can't walk, she can't GROW UP! hahahaha! He's going to have such a hard time in a few years.....

Thank you for still checking in! ♥♥♥