JACK

Wow, it's been forever since I last posted anything.  I was out of town for, essentially, two weeks with just a little break to come home and do laundry before leaving again.  It was a fantastic two weeks, though!  And well worth the time away from my computer.  I probably needed a little disconnect from my little electronic universe anyway. :)

On top of being gone, my entire family, except for myself, got double pink eye.  DOUBLE.  In both eyes.  Not sure how it skipped over me. Grace of God, I guess!  So, the combination of the two has kept me well away from all of my friends.  I'm pretty sure it had been three weeks since I'd seen anybody until church this past Sunday when I finally saw EVERYBODY and got a dinner invite!  To say the least, I was ecstatic!  Things had been crazy enough that I didn't have the energy to cook a meal for my own family, much less somebody else so free, pre-cooked food and fellowship with good friends sounded like the perfect plan!

So after a chill kind of afternoon at home on Sunday afternoon, we headed over to see our friends, eat some chilli for dinner and watch "Bill Cosby Himself".  It's a classic.  I hadn't seen it since becoming a parent and it was that much more hilarious because of it.  If you haven't seen it, you need to, especially if you're a parent.  That's all I have to say about that.

I discovered something, though, while we were there, mostly watching the video while chasing our toddlers around.  Jack - a beautiful, curly, red haired boy, a ginger in the truest sense of the word - is not quite fourteen months old.  He's your average thirteen month old, in terms of development.  In terms of size, he's ginormous!  He's always been huge and is starting to grow into himself, but he's still huge all the same.  Let's just say this, Levi is eight months older than him and they've worn the same size of clothes since Jack was nine months and Levi seventeen months.  But, in terms of development, he's your average thirteen month-er.

And, this is what struck me.  As I watched Jack play, I realized that some of the things he was doing are things that Levi (twenty-one months) is just now learning to do.  It stung a bit to think that Levi is that far behind in some areas.  I don't think I really realized he was that delayed until that night.  Fortunately, this is not in all areas of development, but it is in some.  The good news is that even if Levi stays six to eight months behind for the rest of his life, eventually it won't be a distinguishable difference.  I mean, it's not like when he's thirty or forty people are going to be thinking, "Wow, he's a little slow for his age.  He's got to be at least, what, six, eight months behind?"  Ha!

But, the hard part is more the realization that I've got two years of raising a one year old mind.  We're having to teach him things we've already taught him.  We're having to rediscover how to discipline him since we're not even sure he knows what's going on at some points.  His weakest area of development (per early childhood screening) is communication, which can be very frustrating.  When you have a kid the size of a two year old who communicates like a one year old, it's frustrating.

So, that's going to be the hard part.  It's going to be uphill for awhile, and I think I'm just now realizing how steep the hill is and that it's a little higher than I thought.  But, it's still nowhere as steep as so many others' hills.  And this up hill battle will not get me down.  How can it?  It's going up!  Besides, the good news is that he WILL catch up sooner than later.  Thank you Jesus for that!

And thank You Jesus for good friends who make food and invite me over to eat it, hassle free!  What a blessing!