I can’t believe it.
All of the hospital stays. All of the therapy. All of the syringes and feeding tubes and connecting tubes and ferrel bags. All of the doctor’s appointments. All of the nights I never thought we’d sleep again. All of the IV sticks and finger pricks and glucometers and beeping pumps. All of the labels.
He has overcome.
He’s a little fighter, this kid. And he keeps surprising us. Surprising his doctors. Surprising his therapists. He’s come so far. And we can’t be more proud of him.
I mean, do you see what’s in his hand? A donut! He’s eating donuts!
He loves airplanes. We live close to the airport and every time we hear one fly by, everyone has to stop and listen. He points and screams at the sky as if they can hear him. It’s the cutest thing. So when I was thinking about his second birthday, I knew we had to have it at “plane park.” We go there often and have even had therapy there several times.
The forecast at the beginning of the week was rain, but we woke up Saturday morning to a perfect day to celebrate our sweet boy!
Y’all know nothing ever goes as planned on days like these. You should have seen me trying to tape the tablecloths with the wind fighting against me. It was laughable. Like it could have been on Ridiculousness or something. So we improvised and everything was fine. I used to get all bent out of shape about stuff like that. But Micah has taught me perspective. I asked Brandon before we left, if it was red-neck to use red solo cups as centerpieces. BAHAHAHA! Listen, we use what we have these days!
I was so thankful I cut these cloud placemats out last minute. They looked super cute especially since we didn’t have tablecloths.
So Brandon and I were getting all the food out, and we saw it but were too far away. A big thud. Yep. He fell off backwards from the seat and hit his head on the concrete. AT HIS OWN BIRTHDAY PARTY.
My sister-in-law texted me after the party asking how his head was and I said, “It’s hard. So he’s fine.” Apparently a requirement to be in our family is that you must have a hard head. Hence, our time-out mat is always warm.
Speaking of my sister-in-law, she is our family baker. And made his AMAZING cake. All I did was send her a few pictures of cakes I liked, and she did this! It was perfect. And so yummy.
Don’t worry! Selah was there too. It was just hard to take pictures of her because she was running around playing with all the cousins and her “fwiends.”
It happens every time. There’s a moment in a party or a gathering with our people and I just tear up, overwhelmed that they choose to do life with us. They walk through the hard right by our sides, and they cheer, big time, on days like these. Never been more thankful for our tribe.
He sings “Happy Birthday” to everyone in our family almost on the daily. So when everyone sang it to him, it made his little life.
He wasn’t a fan of the cake this year, there was so much going on. But he did eat half a donut before, so we counted that as a victory.
But he opened presents like a champ!
Homeboy racked up with presents. Like he never needs anymore toys, ever.
This is “Miss Nanda,” one of Micah’s therapist. Not only did she share her printables with me for this party, but she loves my boy. And he loves her. She has been with us since Micah was six months old and has brought him so far. We are forever thankful for all she’s done for him. I’m telling you, when you have therapy as much as we do, therapists just become family. And she’s a keeper for sure!
Father told me before he was even born, Micah would be brave. I just didn’t know how brave he would be. He’s two and has been through more in his short life than most of us will a lifetime. And it’s made him stronger. One of his therapist looked me in the eye the other day and said through tears, “One day you’ll look back at these days and they’ll only be memories. You’ll forget how hard they were, how tired you are, how many nights you’ve spent in the hospital and how many hours of therapy that happened.”
But I don’t want to forget the hard from these past two years. Because it makes the days, like this perfect park day, that much more a miracle. What we’ve seen the Father do in Micah is a miracle.
And next year we’re believing he might just eat some cake.
