Monday, January 23, 2012

Happy 4th Birthday!

T is 4 today.   It's kind of bittersweet for me.  It feels like I was pregnant with him just yesterday, and now he's not a baby anymore.

I mentioned it in my last post too, but I can't remember T being a newborn.  I vividly remember my awful labor and epidural experience, and I remember them whisking him away a few minutes after he was born to lay under the lights (he was a little bit jaundiced). 

I remember how it was impossible to get him to go to sleep at night.  By this time, I was very pregnant with Princess, and the boyfriend and I would have to rub and tap on his back for hours until he finally fell asleep.  If we stopped, even for a minute, he would start bawling and we would be back at square one.

Once he was comfortable crawling around and standing up on his own, he wasted no time figuring out how to knock the baby gate down so he could get out of the bedroom in the mornings.  We coslept with him, and every morning, I was awakened by the gate crashing to the floor.  The boy's never met a baby gate he couldn't open.

His first birthday was awful.  He felt a little bit warm and was cranky, but we chalked it up to teething and gave him some Tylenol.  He went down for a nap and woke up crying a half hour later.  When I went to get him, he was burning up and had  a seizure.  I have never been so terrified in my life.  By the time we got to the emergency room, he had 3 seizures and his temperature was above 104.   Spending the whole day in the emergency room was terrible for everyone, but thankfully his fever came down and he was okay.

Then there was the time he and the boyfriend were playing and they banged heads.  After I realized T was okay, I noticed that the boyfriend wasn't.  He was sprawled on the floor, completely out of it.  By the time the paramedics came, he was out cold, and stayed that way for the better part of an hour.  T was about 14 months old at this time, and he and the boyfriend both ended up getting CT scans.  T was fine, the boyfriend had a nasty concussion.  He'd kill me if he knew I told the bloggy universe that his son knocked him out.

T also knocked Princess out when he was 2 and she was 1.  He has a hard head and likes to give head injuries.  My daughter turned into Linda Blair in the Exorcist, and I swear, there was puke on my ceiling.  After more CT scans after a trip to the ER in a blizzard, she had a concussion and he was fine.

He was diagnosed with apraxia when he turned 3 and started with a new speech teacher through the school district.  She was the one who made a breakthrough and got him to say his first word, "ball."  I was so proud of him I almost cried.  After 3 long years, my son finally talked.  Now he chatters constantly and part of me misses the days when he was quieter.

I look back on all the strides he's made and I can only imagine what he will be able to do this year.  He's brought so much light to my life and I can't imagine what I ever did without him.  Happy birthday to my baby, T, who isn't a baby anymore. 

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