Now we have to pick up the dog bowls!

Thankful for whoever gave me size 24m clothes
that can fit Olivia's cast and keep her warm at night

I have read my fair share of blogs, articles and posts about "what they don't tell you about being a parent".  Many of the concepts are the same, like how you never knew you could function on so little sleep, SO. LITTLE. SLEEP.  Or how in the world it is possible to love someone so much and only have known them for just a few days, hours, minutes.  No one tells you about how you will start to have a small (or large) addiction to coffee and that you will gladly hold someone at gunpoint if coffee were to run out in your household.  And definitely, hands down, no one sits around and talks about how unbelievably hard it is to be a parent.  (Personally, the first five weeks were pure torture for me and I don't know how I made it out alive!)

These are all fairly normal parts of becoming a parent and while they are probably pretty obvious things that happen after your baby greets the world, they are all things no one thinks about during the idealistic pregnancy phase.  But what I realized recently, is that the real item that no one tells you about is that your baby may face challenges that you will not expect them to have to tackle.  Sure, there is a section in the books about the risks, the disabilities, the chances, but I can't be the only one that skipped over that section, right?  Literally, I skipped over that section in the pregnancy book.  This will not happen to me, not to my baby.  How could it?

But then it does happen, and you find out that your gorgeous little baby has cerebral palsy.  That there is damage to her brain.  That she may not walk or run like everyone else.  That she may be different.  They don't prepare you for that because no one wants to talk about the what IF.  That "if" is different for everyone.  Maybe a child is colicky, autistic, has downs, CP, has a learning disorder, or just flat out will not eat, ever.  Whatever the case may be, no one tells you that it could happen, that you will face challenges that you will not know how to handle.  So as parents, we have to find our own way, and make our "different" the new perfect, because no one in their right mind could ever consider that this beautiful girl is not perfect:

Because she is perfect, and she has made her own way through her milestones.  This past Friday, Olivia was sitting on the floor in the bathroom while I was getting ready for work.  And the next thing I know she is grabbing at my ankles and laughing that she had reached my legs.  I had not thought too much of it at the time, as I had thought that she had made it over to me by chance.  And then over the weekend, Olivia proved that she was MOVING on her own and with PURPOSE!  It is an amazing milestone, and one she accomplished just 3 days before she turned 15 months old.  

In sharing this amazing and exciting news with my friends and family, I have found myself starting out the story by saying "Olivia is moving and we have to pick up the dog bowls!"  As if moving the dog bowls is the measure of accomplishment or a marker of her mobility.  But it turns out, for our family, it is.  

After around 6 months most babies are starting to move around, by roughly 9 months they are crawling and around 12 months and beyond, babies are typically walking.  And for most parents, this means there needs to be a constant vigilance of what your child is getting into and making sure that your baby is not about to injure themselves.  But for me and my husband, at 15 months, we just started to have to pick up the dog bowls, and be truly aware of where Olivia is in the room.  Our entire experience with Olivia's development has been different than most every other baby and parent, and this journey has been ours and ours alone.  And while I am still able to utilize the changing table without fear of Olivia wiggling off, I would give anything to have her be able to free herself from her own personal restraints that occupy the right side of her body.

Olivia found her way into our messy closet!

So when I tell you that we have to move the dog bowls, know that this means the world to me, to us, to our family.  I have been waiting for this "opportunity" for a long time.  The opportunity to chase after my daughter and find her getting into things that she really shouldn't have gotten into at all has eluded us for so long.  Some how we made it to this point, and yet no one ever told me that being a parent would mean wishing for my daughter to accidentally eat dog food (she hasn't yet, but she probably will one day). I am so proud of what she has done to get to this exact spot in her journey and I cannot wait to see where I find her next (I will be locking the gates from now on though!)  So while it took us a little bit longer than most to get here, for now I am going to gladly welcome this new experience of chasing my little girl all over our house.

15 Month Check-Up:

November 18, 2013

Weight:  21 Pounds, 6.5 Ounces

Height:  29 3/8 Inches

Born:

August 18, 2012

Weight:  6 Pounds, 4 Ounces

Height:  21.5 Inches