An Unexpected Journey: Then and now

Whenever I have the chance to boast about how far Luke has come, I have to jump on it. The other week I was going through our "clutter cabinet," sorting through a random assortment of stuff, and came across the disposable camera that we had in Luke's crib when he was in the NICU just after birth. One of the nurses had suggested we leave one there so that they could take pictures of him for us when we couldn't be there with him. I've noticed the camera, now almost two years old, up in the cabinet before and didn't feel compelled to take it in for processing for some reason. Maybe it's because I didn't feel like looking at pictures from that tough time, the worst part being that we couldn't be with Luke 24/7 while he was there. For anyone who has had to leave a precious newborn at the hospital, you know how heartbreaking it is and how guilty you feel that you can't be there with them the entire time. At any rate, I finally decided to take the camera in for processing, feeling now that it would be nothing more than a great reminder of just how far he's come...

Luke is doing many great things these days. He's vocalizing more and making his best effort to produce articulate sounds. We're getting a lot of ma-ma-ma, ba-ba-ba, da-da-da from him lately, and then some, which is a huge improvement. He's also working on communicating via sign language, a skill that shows his fine motor skills are improving as well. The other day I caught him "singing" into Jackson's microphone...music to my ears!

Luke is also on-the-move faster and stronger than ever before. Though he's not technically crawling yet, he gets around in his own way. We like to call it the "roll and sit"...roll, roll, roll, sit and repeat. He does this over and over until he reaches his destination. He's gotten so good at it that it's almost as difficult to catch him as it is to catch Olivia when she's running away from us!

Luke had several procedures done at Children's last Thursday and handled it like a champ. It was by far the best he's handled the anesthesia, etc. of any of his other surgeries. The best part was that we actually got to bring him home that same night. All of the doctors were very pleased with how things went, and he's been doing great since then, aside from a rough bout of stomach flu that's making its way around our house for the second time in two weeks (third time for me, which is why I haven't posted much lately)!