3.5 yr old Nephew:   Wow!!!  Continued to run around the bathroom and touch everything and peer into cabinets.

5 yr old Niece:  Oh my!!  huge eyes, open mouthed gawking This is so nice!!

3 yr old Niece:  HEY!  You got a new towel!

Me: Was he awake, awake, or was he just making noises in his sleep and you went into check and picked him up?
Jason: He was awake, awake. He was just sitting up in his crib kind of crying waiting for someone to come in.
Me: He was sitting up? Why didn’t you come get me?
Jason: Why would I come get you?
Me:  Um… maybe becaue it was the first time he sat up from lying down and I’d want to see it!
Jason: No it’s not, he’s been sitting up on his own for a couple of weeks now.
Me: No he hasn’t!!
Jason: Sure he has, he’s done it a bunch of times when he and I are playing on the floor.
Me: ?????

Dr:  So, is he sitting on his own yet?
Me:  Kind of, not really, he doesn’t have really good balance yet.
Dr:  Well, let’s see.
Sits Joey on the table.  Joey sits.  And sits.  And sits.
Dr:  Um… he’s sitting REALLY good.
Me:  Oh!  I just thought he was supposed to sit BETTER at this age?
Dr:  Is he trying to crawl?
Me:  Well, he can kind of move around, but by rolling mostly, I don’t think he’ll crawl for a while.
Lies Joey on his tummy and Joey lifts himself up with his arms and starts crawling backwards into the corner.
Me:  Um…  nevermind…

That question is one that my siblings and I regularily discuss (sad, yes) as we try to figure out where they are.  You can google Where Are Max and Ruby’s parents and you’ll find a ton of pages dedicated to the topic.  People have plenty of theories, some are quite far fetched.  We’ve come up with some of our own.  Max and Ruby are latch key kids.  Alchoholics passed out on the couch.  The list goes on.  I decided to get to the bottom of it and asked the kids.  My Niece responded just with, there ARE no parents and became quite upset when I pushed the topic.  Like, she didn’t really want to think too hard about it – they just aren’t there, okay?

Then, I asked my 7 year old Nephew wondering what his thoughts were.  He thought about it, seemed as if he’d never noticed it before and finally, after a few moments said “I think that they’re dead”.

…..

Well then.  There you have it.

I did it because I had to.

But, we received subpoenas and it is our civic duty after all to go to court.  Okay, I’m not all that righteous – but, I did think about the 34 people who gave their information to be witness at OUR accident and figured this Woman needed all the help she could get.

So, we loaded up the stroller (yes, we took the baby – tacky, but I’m not ready to leave him alone) and headed to the courthouse.  We were fortunate that we didn’t have to wait in the busy, crazy hallway with the rest of the people.  I think the Crown took pity on us having the baby there and he sent us down to a private, cozy, waiting room to wait for our turn. 

In the end, we didn’t have to testify.  The Defendant pleaded guilty – which is good, because I don’t see how any teenage drunk driver who fled the scene after knocking a Woman clear into the air could ever think he could get off on that charge.  The investigating officer came in to tell us we could leave and to update us with the Woman that was hit.

Turns out, not only was she a crack addict, she was also pregnant.  That shocked us.  There were no signs of pregnancy, although being addicted to crack I’m sure would have affected her fetuses size and made her seem much smaller.  I kind of sucked in my breath and held Joey a little tighter.  He then went on to say that she did deliver and at full term too.  Because of her disability as a result of the accident, she had to give her little one up.

I thought about that… a lot.  Thought about how things happen and why.  I started thinking of her little helpless baby inside of her – what it must have been going through each time she did drugs.  What it’s poor little undeveloped brain must have had to deal with. 

The officer told us that she was clean since the accident.   Which makes sense, because spending months in a Hospital makes it kind of hard to get your hands on some crack.  But, I’m sure her cleaning up is what helped this little baby grow to full term.   If you really think about it, would she have stopped using if she hadn’t have been hit?  Would the little one had of made it?  Would he have been born prematurely with a slew of health problems that she wouldn’t have been able to take care of regardless?

It’s amazing how things happen – how the world works.  This baby survived his early years against all possible odds.  He must have been made for greatness.

I guess I could write about how he stopped sleeping through the night nearly a month ago.  How, before that, he slept through like a champ at the young age of just six weeks.  We have plenty of theories on why this has happened.  It’s karma for bragging so much about what an awesome sleeper he is and we just don’t understand why other babies can’t sleep as well as him.  We wonder if his constant drooling and waking up through the night means that there’s a stubborn tooth that just won’t pop through that’s keeping our little angel from a full nights sleep.  Lastly, I wonder if it’s just this  sleep regression I keep hearing about and get reassured that he will soon sleep through the night again.

Part of me gets frustrated – I know he can sleep through the night.  This waking up at night isn’t consistent, he’ll sleep through for several days and then have a few days where he’s up anywhere from once to three times a night.  Part of me wants to buy books on sleep training to learn what to do to help with his sleep, maybe some of these ‘experts’ can shed some insight on what we need to do to help this along.  It’s not like he’s waking up to play or because he’s awake.  As soon as you place your hands on him in that crib he stops, once you start picking him up his eyes shut again and he quickly curls up into your arms and goes back to fast asleep.  It’s not that easy though, after holding him and snuggling and rocking for a bit when we try to put him back in his crib, his eyes pop open and he cries and cries until you pick him up once again.

Some nights, this works.  Other nights, it doesn’t.  And, to be honest, part of me enjoys these nights.  These nights when I’m too tired to try again and I sneak him downstairs and we cuddle up in the big easy chair surrounded with pillows and blankets.  It’s these nights when we lie there, cuddling, just the two of us, before the sun is even thinking of coming up and it feels as if we are the only two people in the world where I think that all the sleepless nights are worth it for these few moments.

Part of me wonders if he’s waking up because he loves this too.

I think we need a larger litter box…

It seemed like forever, but finally the police and ambulance showed up. The woman was faiding away, it was obvious to everyone around that she probably wouldn’t make it. We were relieved to discover that the baby carriage wasn’t carrying a baby, but rather the woman’s groceries as she was heading home from the store. Nothing else for us to do, we provided our info to the police and got back into the car to continue on our way to the highway. News crews showing up, I called my Brother at our house and warned him that if he heard anything on the news about a car accident, not to worry, it wasn’t us, we’re all fine just delayed with our travel.

We were all upset, of course, it was a pretty silent car ride after that. About 10 minutes after leaving, we were on the highway and on our way to the cottage. We turned on the radio to the local news station for any update on the woman and the news report stated that she was in critical condition and not expected to survive.

At that moment, the turn signal light of a 53′ transport truck started blinking in my Husbands driver side window as the truck moved over to our lane and changed our lives forever.

Within 20 minutes, the chain of calls happened and everyone in my family was notified. My poor Brother, confused, corrected my Mother and told her no, we were fine, he had just spoken to me 30 minutes ago and I assured him that everything was okay and that we were not in an accident.

There are a lot of what if’s from that night. What if Jason had of asked Father drive the first half of the trip. What if I had of sat in the front seat, would I have pulled him out of the way like his Dad did.

But mostly, I often imagine what if we hadn’t of stopped.

The past three months have been sureal. I can’t even describe what it’s like to watch this little guy become a person. He’s only three months old, but he’s developing a personality that’s all his own. He smiles and laughs and makes jokes and play games. He coughs and then pretends to cough and then laughs just to get our reaction. He farts and poops and then laughs and acts like a little boy, already. He grabs at his toys and shakes them and pulls the cord to make them play music. He amazes us every day with every little thing he does.

Having Jason at home has made this experience a lot different then I thought it would. Our days are spent talking about the colour of poo, how funny his laugh is and calling out to the other to grab the camera or video recorder to capture something else incredible that he’s doing. We just sit there, watching him, playing with him, amazed by him.

We wake up in the morning to the sound of him talking and laughing in his basinet. He hasn’t woken up crying once yet. He’s such a happy little guy I never knew it was possible for a baby to smile as much as he does. Even when he’s sleeping, his lips curl up. I’ve had the best naps of my life over the past three months with him curled up in my arms.

Everything he does, every breath, every sound is absolutely amazing to watch and I feel blessed to be the one that created and carried this little miracle.