An Eli Update

Our little guy is now a few days shy of being 16 months, and I thank the Lord about 20 times a day for choosing me to be his mama.  There were so many days when I felt like God had surely forgotten me. So many days full of tears.  Many, many days when I questioned "why" us.  Days when I wondered why God had not answered my many prayers for a "healthy" baby. 

Yet, deep in my heart I knew one day we would get here.  I knew we would get to the place where life once again feels good.  I knew I would be so crazy in love with my little boy that nothing about his disability would matter...it is him that I would love.  I knew life would settle into a routine and all the busy appointments and therapies would begin to feel like normal life.  I knew that God didn't make mistakes and I knew He would direct our path.

I feel like we are there.

Eli is the sweetest little boy with such a fun little personality.  He is super friendly and blows kisses and waves to everyone.  He lights up the room wherever we go.  He has learned to give fist pumps with his daddy and gives two thumbs up and has even started yelling "Kev" from across the house.  (I have no clue where he might have learned this.)  He can hear an airplane from miles away and points to the sky and says, "air-plane."  He also has a great uh-oh and thank you. He can say Mama, Dada, Ella, Li-za, Papa, All done, stinky, I do, baby, and tries to mimic "I love you." He is trying to repeat a lot of what we say.  I love hearing his sweet little voice.

Eli loves to color and to make messes with the toilet paper.  He will climb on the dishwasher if we leave it down and loves to hide out under our foyer table.   Yesterday I asked him if he wanted a blue or green Popsicle and as clear as day he told me, "green."  He enjoyed every bit of his green Popsicle!

He loves his sisters and they love him.  Every morning they pretend that they hear him awake, so that they can run and climb in his crib with him.  He loves it.  Some mornings we are all so ready to see him that we wake him up!  He always wakes up with a smile.  He is such a blessing to our family.

At 16 months he is still crawling everywhere and is pulling to stand.  It isn't always pretty as he his feet tend to turn in too much when he pulls up, but he is learning how to take a step and fix them himself.  He is learning how to walk with his little walker.  We are trying to incorporate it into our daily life.  We walk to the table for breakfast.  We walk to the stairs when going back upstairs.  He has almost mastered climbing the stairs (with supervision) and he is learning how to walk by holding onto our hands.  This of course is an easy way to get some practice in each day.  He loves being able to stand up and play at our kiddie table and also play at our play kitchen.     It wasn't very long ago that I really didn't know if he'd ever be able to independently pull to stand and now he is like crazy!! His future as far as long term walking is still unknown, but for now he is trying so hard and making progress, and for that we are so thankful.

Eli is still shunt free at 16 months and yet we are still not out of the woods.  We will go back to the neurosurgeon at the end of November and we are praying that we will be cleared for another three months.  It will be very close and we will pray that his head growth will slow as it should. This waiting to see if he will need surgery for his head has been such a walk of faith.  The longest we have gone without seeing the neuro has been this last time which was 3 months, and during the waiting I pray and measure his head and pray and pray. 

God has been so good to us on this journey.  I am thankful that even though he knew there would be suffering for our family, he knew that we would get here.  I am so thankful for my Eli!