adventures...

camden had a little adventure on wednesday...he got to take a trip up to salt lake city and visit the same day surgery center at primary children's...he got his very own hospital jammies...

he met the baby whisperer (aka...the pediatric anesthesiologist) who fought off camden's recent surge in stranger anxiety, like the obvious professional that he was...who softly spoke to him while rubbing his little bare back through the strings of his new pajamas. we walked slowly down the white halls and stopped here and there to play with new hospital toys until we reached the surgery room where camden reached up for the anesthesiologist and went happily away...

billy and i went down to the cafeteria to wait it out and grab some food...and i knew it was a small surgery, and i knew we would be in and out...but there is something about a hospital cafeteria that brings me back to the fog that i sat in for the first nine days that camden laid in the nicu. the out of body experience that it is when you are waiting for the next feeding scheduled, waiting to see if your newborn will eat for you that day, waiting for good news, or bad.

in about an hour we were called back to find our baby boy sweetly resting, bum up in the air, in the small hospital crib...and as billy and i jokingly put it, he is now a "real" boy...(the pediatric urologist had to go into his abdomen and retrieve the right side of his "manhood" and put it down where it belonged). and although he is a little bruised up, and i know i'm not a boy, but man in looks like it should be sore down there, he is reacting like nothing at all happened in that hospital yesterday.

baskets full of eggs...

our easter was filled with reminders of our savior, family, first easter baskets, first egg hunts, first reese's peanut butter cups and a whole lot of love...

bragging moment: camden is such a toddler these days, hands and knees crawling around everywhere (i wasn't sure that i would necessarily like this stage all that much, with the chasing around, but he is still our observer and takes things at a slower pace, besides the fact that i think having those 4 extra months to take it in and gear up to it helped me to be more and more excited about it, and i am happy to say we are loving the crawling thing)...attempting the bottom steps on his own, signing (most consistently more, with his thumbs though, and doggie...but he has also begun using dad, milk, grandpa, hurt all in correct context although not as frequently as doggie and more...i have also seen the sign for cracker and water although i don't think he understands the context), mimicking sounds, and he even started saying mama on demand...that's right, i say mama...camden says mama. he learned how to do the "indian call" (you know the hand on and off your mouth to change the rhythm of your voice). mom brushes her hair or teeth, camden brushes his hair or teeth. he understands simple commands, like "camden look at mommy", "sit up", "come here", "kisses" (he loves to kiss the people and animals in his books as well as his own little reflection...vain?) and he knows he shouldn't do something by the tone of my voice, although that doesn't seem to stop him for more than a second to look over at me. all in all he is getting bigger (by that i mean older) each and every day and we are loving every new little phase.

oh the fun you will have...

games are becoming more and more fun with camden...mostly because he is playing back...

and he may still be a little uncoordinated with the movements, but they are movements none the less...and so ridiculously cute.

things that make me terribly happy...

is it hard...

i was asked this question once...i was caught off guard, and had forgotten at that point in time that camden had down syndrome. so instead of catching onto the meaning behind the question, i answered as any new mom would have, "no, well, motherhood isn't easy, but i wouldn't say it is too hard".

as i walked away, it dawned on me...i wasn't asked about being a mother, i was asked if being camden's mother was hard. it hit me like a ton of bricks, you know the feeling, breath knocked out of you...but not because i was offended by the question, because i thought maybe i had missed a great teaching opportunity. all at once a million answers flashed through my mind...they all consisted mostly of the extreme opposites of hard..."i wouldn't have him any other way", "he is the best baby ever and i don't know what i will do when we have a typical child", "he has been so much fun"...which are all quite true, but they don't really answer the question do they?

camden had physical therapy this morning...getting there on time at eight am, dressed, fed, ready to work, that might have been a challenge. listening to what the words "sensory processing issues" meant, that was maybe a little harder...watching camden struggle to do things that a ten month old can do in their sleep, can be a little daunting. reading the phrase severe delays on his evaluations was tough. thinking about his future, is sometimes a little scary.

but...only when i can't see his face. because that smile of his, well it makes me forget, everything...because when he smiles, it's just me and him. and when he took those first crawls forward, when he pulled with all of his might up to stand, when he rolled his hands while playing patty cake, when he finally understood something, and he smiled in triumph...that was life changing.

so after over analyzing my abundant possible answers, i landed back at my first...
"motherhood isn't easy" (but it is life changing in a multitude of magnificent ways).

littlest dancer...

officially a "crawler"...

cam has been on the move since he could roll over...at eleven months he began inch worming, by getting into four point and pulling himself forward...he got really good at it...and over the last few weeks he experimented with moving one arm at a time and falling forward...and today he started doing this...

spring...

the mountains around our house still look like this...

but the sun came out today...and it hit, dare i say 60 degrees! so we went out and enjoyed some vitamin d...



and yes...that is a little tooth poking through in the next photo...
hurry up spring!