My Birthday

My birthday was Wednesday. I turned thirty-something. And enjoyed lunch with some friends from work and an evening with family. We celebrated my birthday, my brother-in-law's girlfriend's birthday and my mother-in-law's birthday while grilling out on the deck. May is a busy month for us. It starts with my oldest son's birthday and 8 additional birthdays, Mother's Day and our anniversary. Let's just say it's the second most expensive gift month of the year. Second only to Christmas.

And with my brother-in-law and his girlfriend comes our darling niece who is 6 months old now. She is doing the rocking that precedes crawling. And she's kind of starting to crawl but she crawls backwards. It made us chuckle as we watched her wiggle around in the living room on the floor. She was hamming it up and posing for the camera. Such a model she is.

After everyone left, and Mark and I were talking as we cleaned up. The boys had collapsed into bed after an evening of lots of play and activity. And I was feeling alive and good. A bit tired but kind of energized. I really enjoy when we entertain. At least, most of the time I do. So with the boys in bed I wanted to share an observation with Mark.

I have been noticing other babies that are around Andrew's age when he died. And it's hard not to do a comparison. I was always so proud of Andrew and considered him to be doing so good developmentally. I knew he was a little behind other babies his age. That is typical for preemies to be a bit behind and as they mature they begin to catch up. How quickly they catch up just depends on their environment and genetics, etc.

But I had always thought he wasn't a full 2 months behind. That is typically how the doctors consider them to be in development. I thought he was catching up really quickly. But in watching a few different babies since his death pass the 5 - 6 month marker and where they were at, I was beginning to see that he wasn't as far along as I had thought. So I shared this with Mark. How I was so blind to his development. Andrew was no where near that level of skill and motor coordination that his cousin displayed that night.

Now I don't think it was necessarily bad I was blind or didn't see where his true level was at. Since he died it's not a factor now and it wasn't at the time really. It probably would have at some point if I didn't change it. But I don't think it necessarily delayed him further when he was with us. And I didn't share this out of a feeling of guilt or feeling like a bad mother. More of just how silly I was. How blind my love was for him in this area. He was my little special and he was doing so well. And anything he did I thought he had conquered the world. I was his mother and I was proud of him for just being him.

An hour later, I collapsed into bed in my usual ungraceful manner that I now roll into it at night trying to get situated for the night and thought about what my birthday was like the year before. That also was a good birthday. We had our family party with the little special getting to taste ice cream. (Imagine that, he liked it. But he didn't like the tiny bit of cake he got to try.) I had lunch with some friends from work, got to catch up on the phone with another that couldn't make it to lunch and went to supper with some dear friends of mine with my husband. A date night with friends. It was good. And I ended that night putting the little guy to bed with a kiss on the forehead after sharing with him about my birthday as he just smiled all big and cooed at me.

And oddly at that time, we weren't aware that we were heading into our last weeks with him. Something I am counting the days to and am dreading.