there are moments...

there are moments on this journey that make you stop, dead in your tracks...moments that touch you, that make you silently reflect and think about just how and why you are on this journey you find yourself on every day. why it was you chosen. moments where things fall into line, when you are at the right place at the right time. things that would have never happened had you not been chosen to take on this new path. people that you meet, and you can feel this swelling inside, the quick paced beating of your heart, because you want so much to wrap your arms around that new mother and tell her that it will be wonderful, breathtaking and inspiring. so when you meet a couple, just a little half way through their first pregnancy at a barbeque, for a friend that either of you hardly ever see...a couple whom after finding out that camden has down syndrome, bursts out to you, whom they have just seconds ago met, that the baby girl they are carrying might have down syndrome too...it makes you stop and realize that this is part of it. this is all part of the journey now...and that somebody else is walking you through each step that you take...because just how much coincidence really happens in life?

and regardless of whether or not that baby girl, still growing and changing, does have down syndrome, this couple needed you at that time, and you needed them. i am thankful for these moments, they always seem to happen at a time when you needed someone to wrap their arms around you and remind you that this path is wonderful, breathtaking and inspiring...

just because...

i know my blog is overrun with video clips these days, but i can't help it...
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the toughest thing about having a 16 month old who is the size of most 8 month olds (or younger) is finding developmentally appropriate toys that fit his tiny frame...but every once in a while we get lucky...this was a christmas present from a certain pair of grandparents and i am happy to say, g and g bush, that he now loves his truck! (click here to see how cam first responded to this now treasured gift)

every day i love him a little bit more...i don't really know how that's possible.

simon says...

while in the produce aisle at the grocery store cam looked to the side, folded his arms and bowed his head, so mom looked to the side and there it was...an older gentlemen pacing the aisle in search of some vegetable his wife had no doubt sent him on a hunt for, with his arms folded across his chest, i immediately started to laugh and then from behind heard another patron begin to laugh..."what a good mimic cute one" she said as she walked by...

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he is definitely becoming our little mini-me with all of his mimicking and i can't help but fall in love with this newest obsession of his. it is truly amazing how each stage brings something even more magical than the last.

the world upside down...

ignore the shaky videographer...pretty sure looking at the world upside down is cam's favorite thing to do these days...

and i have to throw in his awesome signing and speech skills too!

and ignore the tv in the background haha i was obviously not paying attention...

summer is peaking out...

of the frequent clouds and gloom this year, we have had the occasional day of sunshine, yesterday and today being hopefully the start of more and more...to celebrate the sunshine we headed to the zoo yesterday with cousin austin...

and today we went for a quick swim! PLEASE STAY SUNSHINE!!!

a,b,c's...

a couple of months ago we started speech therapy with cam...i felt like he was doing alright with making a few sounds, he did mama, dada, baba, goy, nana...so what i really wanted from therapy was to get him eating more (he was having problems moving to more solids...he ate stage three baby foods all day long, bread, puffs of all sorts, and cookies and french fries, but had a problem with choking and then vomiting on pretty much all other foods, including his bottle, and he wasn't taking a sippy or a straw). along with his speech therapy weekly, his early intervention coordinator through the school district set up a feeding eval and encouraged us to encourage cam's speech by repeating every sound he made to us, back to him (and i mean every sound).

so we faithfully went, every week, even though cam had mad stranger anxiety with the therapist and spent half of every session clinging for his life to my neck. and billy and i have been making an extra effort to repeat every single sound that comes out of our boy's mouth. we got some great advice on eating from the therapy sessions, along with our early intervention coordinator, each week. i also started singing a,b,c's to camden at bed time, i sing once through the traditional way...a,b,c...and then through with just the sounds (ah, ba, ca, da...). i do it at bedtime because that is when i have his fullest attention, he will do anything to postpone going to bed.

so here we are one and a half months later and cam is now eating and swallowing (without choking) small bites of meat (chicken, meatballs, vienna sausages), small fruit slices, yogurt, fruit bars, cereal bars, bagels and cream cheese, peanut butter, steamed veggies, most anything sweet, graham crackers, pudding...you get the idea) and he hasn't thrown up anything in about three plus weeks! we still have a long way to go, because the bites are still ultra tiny but we are getting somewhere! he is also drinking through a straw!

as far as speech goes, he has started to blossom, he is trying to mimic a lot of sounds we make, where before he would only mimic mama and the other sounds he only said when babbling...now he copies ma, da, ba, wa, ga, ka (this one is a little throaty), s (it's a mix between an s and th, because he has no top teeth, but it sounds pretty dang good for a toothless s), h, na, doe, no (which he is also saying in correct context here and there), ta, oh, uh. we are really working on getting him to say uh oh and hi and the e and i sound...but he hasn't quite yet. all in all i am so excited to see improvement!
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seeing cam blossom and knowing that he can and will continue to accomplish so much is so amazing to watch! we are so proud of his hard work! and so thankful that we live in a day where the help that he needs is available.

uh oh...

my sweet, innocent, baby boy is a hair puller and biter to boot! we are starting time out this week, since he laughs when mommy signs owie and pretends to cry and since he has branched out farther than family members and thinks that you initiate play time by grabbing hold of the nearest head of hair and pulling it in...something has to be done. he goes into nursery at church in just two short months and i definitely do not want to be called up because cam took a chunk out of some kids scalp and laughed about it before he bit him. so we will see how the time out thing goes. if anyone out there has experience and suggestions...please feel free!

apparently he doesn't like tile...

motivation: keeping knees off of the tile...maybe we should tile the entire house?

just a little somethin' somethin'...

note his leg movements in the background mirror...

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!

how do you explain it...

when someone asks you how you felt when you found out your son has down syndrome? because honestly i don't really want to explain the first twenty four hours...i want someone to ask me...how do you feel now, now that you have been given an entire year with your son, down syndrome and all...how do you feel about it now? but they never, ever do. instead you are torn between the lines...on the one side you have the cliche, "he is my son, and i will always love him just the same"...or you have the truth. that sinking feeling, that cloud of dismay and all encompassing weight of the unknown...all brought on by a world of misunderstanding and just plain not understanding. and don't get me wrong, i understand the reason for the question, very much. i would have asked it myself. it's just that, when you find out anything that wasn't what you would have originally put into the blue prints of your life, the first twenty four hours, i believe, (and sometimes a little more time is allowed), is god's grace period. he understands the tears...he understands your fears, even if they are completely unfounded and irrational in the whole scheme of things. he reaches out when you are shaking your fists up at the heavens and he forgives those almost unforgivable thoughts. because he knows where you will be in just a short year.

so you want to answer that question with the way that you feel about down syndrome now...the beauty, the personality, the love, the strength...it all comes bubbling to the surface, because you want everyone to know that it is okay, that you are okay...after that initial grace period you start to see what heavenly father has seen all along, and you are thankful. thankful that you get a glimpse of what true unconditional love really means. thankful that you are fortunate enough to learn something of christ like love. thankful that you understand, a little better, christ's love for you.

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!

family....

we made an unexpected trip up to visit with billy's family this weekend...we are so thankful that they live close enough to be able to make quick trips like we do. having camden has really brought the importance of family to the forefront for me, and i am thankful for that. we may be making a few trips up to idaho over the next little while...to visit with some family, because you never know when something might happen, and the family dynamic will change...so we are taking advantage of the family that we have right now.

billy and i loved this restaurant when we were dating...it was called sato's...he took me here the night he proposed. the restaurant closed for a while shortly after that, but has reopened under new management and a new name...and yet is still very similar.

look who was a big boy...and thought he was too big to sit in a highchair.

don't you love his tight lipped smile in this one?