i'm not going to lie...

this whole blog every day this month thing is kicking my butt...how did i do it last year with such ease? oh ya...i didn't have a toddler. so in between the feeding, chasing, cleaning up after, putting to bed, and entertaining i haven't really felt like sitting down and racking my brain for a post. boo.

anyway, here i am...with nothing really to say except that this kid of mine...rocked my world, to the core...in an earth shattering sort of way twenty short months ago, and today, and every day since, he has continued to clear the clouds, to let in the sun, to teach me how to live and how to love. he has taught me how to persevere and to stand up at times i would have gladly sat down. he has taught me how to feel with every fiber of my being...he has helped me grow, helped me learn. i would not be the person i am today had it not been for that day twenty months ago.

lessons...

today as i scrolled through my usual blog rolls, i read through a post from a mother who has an adult child with down syndrome...as the mother described daily life with her child she mentioned what she would have told herself, twenty years ago...

when i think back to camden's birth and what i would have told myself then, right now it is all about acceptance. this mom, twenty years later, had moved past that and onto the reality of daily life...she said "slow down". it took me back a little...because i felt at first like i was working toward that, learning patience in his milestones...but i never really thought about slowing down even our daily life...and as i thought about it, it dawned on me just how personal this lesson was for me.

i am a fast paced person, i talk fast, i move fast, i drive fast, i am always in a hurry, rushing here or there...and on a full day i find myself getting frustrated with my own rushing, i get frustrated with camden when we have to leave and he is taking forty minutes to eat a full meal...and i noticed that on the days i try to pack in twenty things i feel more accomplished, and i wonder, is that really what it is all about? or maybe, it is ok that we just hang out all day...spend time with each other, work on our motor skills, or just play...because maybe it isn't about rushing to fit a quantified number of things into one day, but more about the quality of things that we fit into a day.

i needed to learn how to slow things down, not just for camden, but for myself, because what is life worth anyway if we are consumed with merely filling it? so why not slow down, and fill it with what matters?

i am thankful for my son, every day it is more and more apparent just how perfectly he was made just for me.

weekends...

this is how we start our weekends...

father's day
that's right...my own chair...
parks...

zoos...fourth of july barbeques...
and the occasional lawn mower race...
fireworks! what!?
happy to report that after the initial boom shock, camden sunk right into the awe of that fire lit sky.

time away...

we are leaving this cute mug behind for a week...and i have never been so torn in my entire life...billy and i are going on a much needed, mommy and daddy vacation...but leaving the little guy behind has me tied up in so many knots it is getting hard to count them. i am especially afraid of missing what he will do next...not being there for some fairly large milestone, being that he is hitting new ones on a regular basis now...this last week alone he took his first wobbly steps along the coffee table and the bath tub...he crawled up a whole flight of stairs with little to no help from me...he is pushing off of furniture for a second at a time, and starting to turn in transition from one piece of furniture to the next. and i know he won't be walking anytime soon, because there are still lots of little baby steps in between, but honestly i don't want to miss any. still...i think it is time for us to break away...and a whole week without mom and dad is a milestone all on its own, especially with the oh so fun separation anxiety camden has recently started embarking on...poor grandma bush. but i know he will be in good hands, and time out with daddy should keep this momma fairly occupied!

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.