9 Months

Sisters

Sweet Potato!

Lily is 9 months old! It has flown by. She has now existed in this world on her own as long as she existed inside me. It has been a wonderful, tough journey with her and transition for her family.

Lily is now rolling over (though not consistently), grabbing at toys, cooing and screeching and imitating sounds, trying to kick her feet more, and generally more interested than ever before. She even scooted backwards the other day!

We have been preparing for tomorrow. We'll get to the hospital at 8:30am, for the prep, and her surgery will begin at 10am. The surgery shouldn't take to long. When she's done she'll be in a spica cast, from right below her nipples to her toes, and the real care begins at that point.

In happier news, I've contacted a couple local support groups. One has playdates twice a month which I am super excited to attend. I just haven't been able to handle playgroups for "normal" kids. It requires too much explaining, too much awkwardness from other people about how they should react, too much awkwardness from me about how much I should say. Innocuous questions become minefields, i.e. "Is she crawling yet?". A simple "no" tends not to suffice at this point. Anyway, it would just be nice to meet other parents who are going through/have been through similar situations. They also have a library of books about special needs children, which is just what I've been looking for.

The other support group I found has matched me up with a mentor family. I'm really excited to meet them! They have a 9 year old boy with agenesis of the corpus callosum and the mother has a masters in early childhood education. We haven't had a chance to chat yet but she says she has lots of support info for me. We'll be getting in touch in the next few weeks.