This post was inspired by Netflix. Come see what we’re watching.

My kids, both born premature, started their life journeys by consistently missing milestones. Crawling, walking, talking (though, I can attest they have both caught up markedly in that regard), running, jumping – pretty much every chart in their baby books was left untouched until months after a child would typically have it filled.

Needless to say, these breakthroughs have been a huge deal around here. A daughter who didn’t crawl until her first birthday or a son who didn’t speak until he was nearly four years old was cause for long-awaited celebration. They weren’t (and in some cases, still aren’t) just milestones; they are rather enormous landmarks. I’ve been tempted to erect monuments.

Now that they’re 12 and 15, the milestones are less about their existence and more about fun. For instance, my son was recently able to join us on the 93 mph Millennium Force roller coaster at Cedar Point. His next goal is to be tall enough to ride Top Thrill Dragster which goes 120 mph and launches you 420 feet in the air. Don’t judge me because I verified with his cardiologist, TWICE, that it was okay for him to ride them. They are  intense, but we love them and when he was finally 48″ at age 12, he loved some of the big coasters too.

With Halloween on the horizon, we’ve started enjoying the experience of watching scary movies with our daughter. Poltergeist didn’t faze her. Probably because she only knows Craig T. Nelson from “Parenthood” and she doesn’t have any concept of The National Anthem playing on the television at 1:30am, then going static for the  night. *shudder* The TV always had to be turned off before the static started! Always!

Of course, the milestone I’m most looking forward to is when my daughter will do the dishes without being told, or when my son learns to keep the shower curtain liner inside the bathtub. Those moments will be GREAT! Some I’m less than thrilled about, like my daughter going off to college. Gulp. That one is going to be rough. Like sandpaper on a rug-burn rough.

One thing is for certain, these are the things that make memories. You don’t remember the fifth time your kid rode a bike, but you’ll never forget the first.

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Today was our annual reality check.

Before autism, eye surgeries, infections and hospitalizations; before kidney problems, hearing aids, choking and vomiting; before speech, occupational, physical and behavioral therapy. Before it all, there was his heart.

I was six months pregnant when he got his first echocardiogram. I waddled down the halls of Nationwide Children’s Hospital, then laid upon a table while a doctor looked at the right ventricle of his heart. It couldn’t have been much bigger than a peanut. I was decidedly bigger than one.

When his rare heart condition worsened two months later, they took him from my belly and whisked him away to Nationwide Children’s in an ambulance while I, again, laid upon a table. This time I was miles away and I didn’t get to see him until two days later when they let me leave the hospital for a few hours. It was Mother’s Day. It was fitting, but gut-wrenching.

They told us he would be sedated until he reached five pounds and then he would need open heart surgery. They were, thankfully, wrong. He came home three weeks later without that surgery. Almost 12 years later, though, it’s still looming over our heads.

So each year we trek back to those same halls and now it’s my boy who climbs onto the table. We are all stronger than we once were. He is 52 pounds of unstoppable energy. I am not. But, when I spy parents wearing “CARDIOLOGY” badges we smile, nod, and give each other mental fist bumps.

He still needs open heart surgery at some point, but we’re waiting. Stalling, if you will. Hoping, praying, and prodding the doctors to improve their technology so they won’t have to cut his chest open, spread his ribs apart and cut into his heart with a knife.

He had a heart catheterization when he was 13 months old and it was one of the easier surgeries he’s had. This is what we hope for. This is why we’re glad he’s small and grows slowly, so that his heart can keep up and each year that passes we know the doctors get closer to fixing this in a less invasive way. Today I chanted, “We want a heart cath! We want a heart cath!” If only my cheerleading could be enough to make it happen.

For today, though, he is stable and that’s really all we can ask for. That, and one more year until we have to walk those halls again.

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I don’t care who you are, or if your kid is just having minor surgery, this moment right here? Never gets any easier.

Tube surgery 7/17. He’s fine. We were at the hospital because of his congenital heart disease and oxygen saturations which hover around the “I don’t know if he’s turning blue or if he just ate a snow-cone” level.

This shout out goes to all of the kids who had surgery yesterday and didn’t get to come home and sleep in their own bed.

Do me a favor, hug your kids.

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