On Your Eleventh Birthday

Dear Joshua:

You’re eleven years old! That’s wild to me. I don’t know why eleven feels so much older than ten. Maybe it’s because you’re going to middle school (WHYYYYYYY) this year, or maybe it’s because you’ve grown up so much lately. Whatever it is, it’s been really fun to watch you at this stage.

i’ve been thinking about what to write for you for a while. Sometimes your birthday brings a lot of emotions for me. I’m always thrilled that you’re here, but sometimes it’s a lot to remember. That isn’t your fault, of course, but sometimes I have difficulty figuring out what I want to say. So this will be a little departure from the norm. and if you decide you don’t like it… well, get your own blog.

”Looking Back”

A boy, a girl,
They fell in love,
Grew together
Exchanged some vows.

Days went by,
Then months,
Then years,
And they knew the time was now.

They had prayed
And wondered aloud
Seeking guidance
On bended knee.

And one day,
the answer came.
God reached down
And gave them peace.

The boy, the girl
They felt such joy
To have their cries
Be seen and known.

But the joy they knew,
The plans they’d made,
Crumbled and faded
Just as they’d grown.

Their precious boy,
Already so loved,
Fought to breathe
And fought to live.

The boy, the girl
They stood by his side
Unsure, now, how to pray
Unsure of God’s motives.

Days went by,
Then weeks,
Then months,
So many days the same.

Their son, so loved
Would rise, would fall
Until one day,
God whispered his name.

The boy, the girl,
They had thought hard,
And had known their son’s name
For many days.

And now, while waiting,
While fearful, while watching,
Heard God remind them:
“It means ‘I will save.'”

Their precious son,
Already so bold,
Already so brave,
Began to fight anew.

The boy, the girl,
Witnessed God’s love
As He whispered,
“See what I can do.”

For that same God
Who gave them peace,
Was with them,
And stayed there each day.

His hands reached down
To their precious son
And continued
To model the clay.

The boy, the girl,
Now they knew
That when God
Seemed far and cold,

That He was the same
God who had given
The peace they had
Longed to hold.

In times of sorrow,
In times of joy,
In times of peace,
fear, depression, pain.

The God they knew.
Who sent His Son,
Was — and would always be —
the same.

The boy, the girl,
Their precious son,
They had been given
A most precious gift.

For though their son
Would struggle still,
Develop slowly, differently…
There was a shift.

Not a curse;
No, not at all.
Their precious son
Was free!

Not from hardship,
Woes, or pain.
But to seek God
And know eternity.

Their precious son,
Now growing up,
Has declared it
For his own.

He seeks the Lord,
God’s will be done!
He prays and sings,
Never truly alone.

The boy, the girl,
They thought before
God was good
When he brought joy.

But now they saw
God’s goodness
Displayed in the hardship
Known by their boy.

The boy, the girl,
They realized, then,
That we don’t love God
For good times He brings.

They loved their Lord,
And sought Him now,
Because He had given them
A precious son who sings.

God showed them hardship;
That part is true.
But there is more to
The story to tell.

God said He’d save,
And then He did,
And now, through hardship,
It is well.

The boy, the girl,
Their precious son,
Would take sadness
And despair again,

As now they know
God is always God
He will be, He is,
And He’s always been.

Happy, happy, happy eleventh birthday to my Joshy, my Josher Washer, my Jo-Jo, my t-rex loving, Titanic facts learning, Lego building, always singing, pillow stealing boy. I hope you know that we love you always. We love you when you fail a test and we love you when you accomplish a goal and we love you when you drive us crazy and we love you when you make us laugh and when you cry and when you sing and when you wake up and when you go to bed. We love you and we would never change a thing.

Love,
Mom

On your eighth birthday

Dear Josh,

Happy birthday to you! Normally, I write this post the day before your birthday, and I stay up until midnight so I can post it. But this year, I didn’t. Mostly because we were all up too late, eating ice cream and rebuilding the fort you and Jenna wanted to sleep in and just enjoying time with each other. Leaving to write a blog post would mean missing out some time with you, and time is already flying fast enough!

I can’t believe you’re eight years old. It doesn’t seem possible. This year – the Year of the Rona – has passed both incredibly quickly and incredibly slowly, and your birthday seemed to sneak up on me a little. Eight just seems so old. And big. And, like… old.

This year, Josh (you do not go by “Joshua” right now, because you want to use your “casual” name), I want to remember all of the amazing qualities that make you who you are.

You love jokes. Most of them make no sense to me, but you laugh and I love to hear you laugh.

You’re smart, like really clever in a way I could have never predicted for anyone. You approach every situation with an intelligence that is unique to you in so many ways, except for how much it reminds me of your dad.

You are adorable. I know that word is for little kids, but you just are. Your ears are fantastically proportioned to your head and you have the sweetest little nose. You have a silly grin when you think something is funny and you make one of the best mad faces I’ve ever seen. Your eyebrows are not to be underestimated.

You are always our little Ferdinand the Bull – you are strong and smart and amazing, and you are content to sit under a tree, smelling the flowers around you. I love that story because it reminds me so much of you. You don’t want to wrestle. You don’t have to win. You are just content to do your own thing.

You are still our best bet for knowing where the Scotch tape and remote control are.

You have become so snuggly, cuddling up with me in bed every morning after Daddy leaves for work. Sometimes we go back to sleep; other times, you share a lot of Minecraft trivia with me or wonder how Spiderman and Batman got to be such good friends. I love those early mornings when it’s just me and you.

You still believe in some little kid things. We don’t have a fireplace, so Santa uses a magic key to visit our house. Spiderman is getting steady work in New York City. The Tooth Fairy helped you become a richer man over the last couple of years. Werewolves live in our woods but they won’t get you (unless you are teasing Jenna, and then you describe exactly how easy it is for a werewolf to unlock our windows and sneak inside the house). I know these last few little kid qualities won’t stay forever, and it’s actually really fun to see you begin to figure some stuff out on your own. But I also hope you stick with Spiderman for a while :)

The only thing I don’t like about these blog posts is that I always think of a million things I wish I had added after it’s published. I could write for days and never finish telling you how much I love you and how amazing you are to me. You are honest, and you work hard, and you love LEGOs and dinosaurs and Harry Potter and all the superheroes. You always let Jenna go first when you both want to play Minecraft because you said it seemed to matter more to her. You love to play with her, even if you do bring Batman to her Barbie pool parties when he was expressly forbidden to attend.

You always want to know why, and how, and when – Why does the oven get hot? Why is the Statue of Liberty holding a book? How did the statue get built? How could you make a sword at the house (please don’t research this anymore)? When, exactly, did Jesus walk on water (day, time, approximate weather conditions, etc)? Why didn’t the dinosaurs just hide underground to avoid whatever happened to make them go away? You are full of questions and new ideas, and sometimes it’s a lot to manage at 6:00am, but I love that you want to know.

Happy birthday to you, my sweet, smart, silly, serious little boy who is not so little anymore. I hope the next year sees you grow even more in your understanding of Jesus and the Bible, and that you continue to show others what makes you so delightfully unique in so many ways. I will be ready and waiting tomorrow morning if you would like to continue our snuggles :)

Love you always,

Mom

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On Your Sixth Birthday

Dear Joshua:

Happy birthday! You are SIX years old, which you have been waiting for since the day after you turned five, just about a year ago. Congrats, dude; you made it.

This year has been crazy. So good, and so challenging, and everything in between. You finished preschool! You were named the Class Investigator, because of your never-ending need to ask what that is, who that is, why that looks that way, what that person said, what that person really meant, where you’re going next, and so on for about 80 more questions. It’s funny to see some of the same qualities you had as a baby still come out in you now. When you were about two or so, nearly every picture I took of you was you pointing and saying, “What’s that?”

At the beginning of summer, you participated in your first Try-athlon!! You swam, ran, and biked through a course while we all cheered you on from the sidelines. Your giant Batman bike helmet made it easy to spot you as you biked with your buddy, Ms. Julie, and your gigantic smile helped, too.

Over the summer, you began to learn to swim! Your hard work earned you some goggles – blue, of course; it was that day’s favorite color :) You got to go to Disney World and spend time with Nana and Papa and your aunts and uncles and cousins, and you got super tan. I was a little jealous.

The end of the summer brought the beginning of KINDERGARTEN! Man, that was weird. Kindergarten. My little mini-baby off to kindergarten. I was nervous for you, even though I had met your teacher and knew she was great. I just wanted you to love it, and to make friends, and learn a lot. And you did. You have learned a ton so far this year.

First and foremost – you learned to use the POTTY! YAY. That was a tough skill to learn, because muscle control can be so hard! But you persevered, and you did it, and all the grandparents in the world sent you underwear, and you rocked it. Plus, you look super adorable in Paw Patrol undies with your skinny little legs.

You learned to read! You are chugging right along through new books and words every day. As I sit and write this, we are fresh off a parent-teacher conference where one of your teachers described how quickly you have learned new letter sounds and words. You love to read anything and everything, including stop signs, which is super fun when I am driving. It’s also been fun to watch you sound out words from the closed-captioning on the television – talk about a win-win, am I right? And since you can say your L sounds now, it’s been even more awesome to hear you speak so clearly!

Among one of my personal favorites of the skills you acquired is the ability to dress yourself from head to toe! This one brought us tears and grumpy mornings and days where I decided you would just be naked forever and we could forget the whole thing. But, in the end, you did it. You did it – not me, or Daddy, or the OT. You did it, and you do a great job every morning. You’ve even started to pick out your own clothes – I like the combo shorts/sequin vest from dance class/mismatched socks combo the best, personally.

When I asked you and Jenna what you both wanted to do in the fall for an activity, you were adamant that you needed to play soccer. Not that you wanted to – you needed to. So we signed you up, and watched as you played your heart out every Sunday afternoon in the fall. What I loved about watching you play was that you weren’t always the fastest, or the highest scorer, but you always had the biggest smile. You loved it, and your coach worked to help you be the very best soccer player you could be for every game.

My favorite moment was during the last game, when you were practicing kicking the ball into the net. You were giving it your all, but it was taking you more timed than you wanted. You weren’t giving up, but I could tell you were frustrated. And then your team started to chant your name: Joshua! Joshua! Joshua! over and over again, and you kicked the ball into the net and they celebrated like you’d won the Super Bowl. Their joy and your joy were contagious, and everyone on the sidelines was part of the excitement in that moment. I had worried those other kids would say something mean, even by accident, about the way you moved. Instead, they showed some of the greatest kindness and compassion I’ve ever seen.

You bring that out in people.

More than anything, that’s what has stood out to me this year. Everywhere you go, people genuinely care for you. They celebrate with you, and cry with you, and cheer you on, and pray for you. That’s not because of me, or anything Daddy has done, or because of the way we raised you. It’s just you. You, and your inability to meet a stranger. You, and the smile that I can’t help but recriprocate, even if you are explaing to me why all of your dinosaurs are jammed into the vents. You have a way of making friends everywhere you go, and inspiring people to feel joyful.

It’s been cool to see you develop your relationship with Jesus. You can’t get enough of the Bible stories we read at night, and (surprise), you are full of questions about what you learned in church. It’s so crazy and amazing to watch you grow in this all on your own, eager to learn more and share it with us.

I don’t know what the next year will bring. The end of kindergarten; maybe the end of Special Education classes? Maybe you’ll learn new ways to ask questions, or maybe you’ll finally find all the answers. You’ll grow some more, just like you did this year (34.6 pounds and 3.5 feet tall as of right now!), and you’ll learn so much more, and you’ll keep turning into this big, magnificent kid who loves science and volcanoes and airplanes and fire trucks. Will you still want to be a police officer when you grow up? Will you still pronounce the word “vacation” as “bah-cation,” and still think that’s where Grammy is every time you don’t see her for more than a day? Will you still look forward to Christmas the moment the school year begins? Will you still crawl into my bed at 5:00 in the morning, whispering that you just need a snuggle before you start the day?

Only time will give us the answers to all those questions and so many more. But I do know you’ll keep growing, and learning, and asking, and loving, and smiling, and trying. You will keep reaching people in the special, inimitable way that God created you to do, and still remind me that if I expect you to try, I need to try, too. That we should all strive to be the best versions of ourselves, whatever that looks like.

Happiest of birthdays to you, Joshua, who made me a mom, who gave me my own personal miracle, who tells silly jokes and loves to rake leaves and always want to bake brownies. I love you so much. Here’s to six years of you <3

Love you now and forever,

Mom (you started calling me “Mom” instead of “Mommy” a few weeks ago – why must six be so cruel??)

On Your Fifth Birthday

Happy fifth birthday, buddy! You are already five years old… it’s hard to believe. Which is funny, because when you’re a parent, you’ll see that some days drag so slowly you think they’ll never end, and some days pass so fast you can’t remember they happened. And, somehow, enough days passed for you to be five!

Every year with you is more and more fun, and this year has been no exception. You learned a lot of new words this year – you like to tell me you’re “SO disappointed,” how “delighted” you are, and when you feel “very frustrated.” You still haven’t mastered your R and L sounds, so it’s ridiculously adorable to hear you say big words in such a little voice. Sometimes you try to correct Jenna and teach her a new word – it rarely (maybe never) works, but I like to hear you try.

You’ve spent probably 75% of this year dressed as someone else – Captain America, a dinosaur, Spiderman, Marshall, and sometimes a costume of your own creation. You love to dress up and play pretend. And you do not break character for anything. You make those British guards look like party animals. Sometimes, when you’re a puppy, it’s really tricky, because you’ll only answer to your puppy name, which I don’t know, and which you won’t tell me because “puppies don’t talk.” Except to say that one sentence.

Superheroes have been one of your favorite things this year. Every morning you hopefully ask me if it’s raining so you can wear your Batman raincoat. When you wear it, you have me put the “hoodie” up so you can run around singing, “Nah, nah, nah, nahhhhh, BATMANNNNNNNN!” over and over again.

This year was a tough one for you, medically speaking. You did bites at the Marcus Center, which was hard, but you did it. You gained inches and pounds and ate your weight in pureed food. I was (and am) really proud of the way you handled yourself during those sessions. We had some rough moments, which I may or may not find funny in five more years, but you gave it your all. And you’re still giving it your all each time we do the bites.

We also discovered that you were dealing with some other issues – namely, the issue where your blood sugar would plummet when you were sick! That was a fun surprise. We are still unraveling parts of that mystery, but you held up like a champ through tests, blood draws, and – the worst part – no Paw Patrol movies. It wasn’t fun, but you rarely complained. You are tough stuff, my friend.

We won’t talk about the two broken legs. Back to back. In summer.

I love watching you make new friends. You’ve become part of a little group at school, all of you kids who love building blocks and playing pretend. You could be friends with anyone. You could be friends with a sheet of paper. But I love to see you form these special bonds as you grow.

You’re so big now. So. big. What you lack in weight you make up for in literally everything else. You feel big feelings, you imagine big ideas, and you have a big smile. You love being big, and I know you’re holding strong to your goal of growing higher than the ceiling so we have to get you a giant house.

You’re also silly in big ways. You love to “trick” people, either by sneaking up on them or telling them something outrageous in such a serious tone that they actually start to believe you. You love mischief, and while it is often your sister who gets caught doing the actual mischief, I have a feeling she is only following orders from a certain five-year-old mastermind. I’m on to you, dude.

The other remarkable thing about this year is that you started to notice some of the differences between you and your friends and classmates – and you didn’t care. When you asked me why your school bus is so small, I answered you as best I could, by telling you everyone is assigned a bus that fits them perfectly, and held my breath while I waited for your answer. In your typical cheerful manner, you just said, “Oh!” and then went back to being Batman for a while. You don’t care about your differences. And they’ve made you more compassionate for others who are different, too.

Speaking of the bus… your morning bus driver recently told me that you sing songs for the entire ride. Paw Patrol, Batman, Robocar Poli, Little Einsteins – you sing it all at the top of your lungs, giving everyone a brief but exciting concert five days a week. On the way home, you chatter away, telling the driver and the aide about your day, about what you saw, who you saw, who you didn’t see, things you would like to see, something you think you saw but can’t remember, etc., etc., etc. X infinity. You love to talk, and if you don’t know the other person well, it makes no difference to you.

I could go on for pages and pages. I could talk about how funny you are. I could talk about how much I love to listen to you play. I could tell you how hard it is not to laugh when you study your reflection in the mirror until your “haircut” is perfect. I could tell you that even though I thought I was going to Italy, I wound up in Holland, and it’s a better trip than I could have ever planned.

What I will tell you is that I love you. And I’m proud of you. And you are FIVE today!

Love you always,

Mommy

The Secret Life of The Special Needs Mom

I am raising a child who is not my own.

He is my flesh and blood. I am his mother. He is my son. But for nearly all of his life, we have deferred to experts to tell us what to do with him. One of them says take him to this therapy. Obediently, we go. Another one says, no, what you really need is this program. So we turn around. A third one says, what you really need is medication. And off we go to explore that path.

Ultimately, every decision is up to us. And we don’t go blindly down any new road without consideration. But from the very first day I became a parent, my child’s life depended on the expertise of other people. I couldn’t help him. No one could show me how, not then. And so began his life, being raised by smart people with long, useful degrees.

Maybe that’s how every parent feels, even parents with typical children. I wouldn’t know. My atypical child is my firstborn, and I have only ever known this life.

My son gets a cough, and I take him to the doctor, knowing we will either go home or to the ER, depending what the doctors find. Depending on what they decide we will do. I am grateful to live in an area with so many experts available. I am grateful because my son is still not mine to raise, even at four years old. I don’t know what the right call is. Sometimes I can guess the right one. But it’s up to the professionals.

My son doesn’t eat well enough to keep him healthy, and I take him to the doctor. They tell us how to fix it. They tell us what we will do next. I nod my head and take notes and begin living this new phase of our life.

My son doesn’t walk the way he is supposed to, and I take him to the doctor. This is a problem that will have to be given to a new expert. They tell us to go to therapy. We are lucky to have these therapists in our lives. The therapists give us directions, and we follow them, finding ways to add exercises and build skills. Our days are busy, but they told us we need to do it all.

My son doesn’t go to many playdates. We should go to more, but we’re out of time. The experts told us we had to get so much done. There aren’t enough hours in the day. But we need their help for my son to thrive. We should go to more playdates. He would like more playdates. Maybe if I tried harder, he could. I should ask the doctors about that.

This is the secret life of the special needs mom. It isn’t a bad life. It isn’t a life to be pitied. It is a life filled with waiting – waiting for the next steps, the next lab results, the next expert to show us how to do better. We are glad for the help. We know we can’t do it without them. So we wait. We know we have to be patient. Waiting is the only way to learn where we will be sent next.

But it’s a strange thing, to raise a child who is not yours. Who is yours, but only between appointments. It makes us feel sad, and happy, and lonely, and loved. It’s a delicate balance. We must always be careful to schedule, but be flexible; be accommodating, but firm; juggle, but take time for ourselves. We must remember that all of this will be worth it, in the end, for our child to be the very best version of himself. We must know that perspective is key – we are not the only ones who suffer. We must learn to ask for help, and learn to do things on our own. We just have to try our best.

At least, that’s what the experts say.

I am raising a child who is not my own.