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Sleep.  All I want is sleep.  Twelve hour night shifts are very hard on my body.  All I want is sleep.

Eight o'clock in the morning rolls around and I hit the hay...hard.  Dead to the world. 

Muffled in the far distance...Ring...Ring...Ring...

I painfully open my eyes.  One o'clock in the afternoon.  The phone stops.  I drift back to wonderful sleep.

Ring...Ring...Ring...

I answer the phone, my voice hoarse from sleep.

It was the woman who wants to work with my son at school, "coordinate his care."  She rambled on and on and on.  Something about..."He maybe needs a para to work with him...we need to develop a concise plan to help him [physically] keep up with the other children...need to get together a team of people to help him with his  special needs..." on and on and on. 

Abram getting ready to go sledding.  It is a lot of work to carry him through the snow, but he loves it!

I complacently agree.  "What ever you think is fine...sure send the papers and I will look at them..."  All I want is sleep.

Twenty minutes later I hung up the phone.  Buried myself in the bed and tried to sleep.

But I could not.  Special Needs.  That is a label that will stick with him for the rest of his life.  Special Needs.

Why is it so hard to swallow your child being labeled?

Abram is so normal to me.  I know normal is a relative term, but he seems like every other normal 4-year- old-boy.  When he plays with other children, I can not tell that he is different.  When he wrestles with his big brother, it just seems so normal.

Opening up Christmas presents...it was a very exciting day!

So, when I get woken up from a beautiful sleep after a very stressful night of work at the hospital by a woman who continuously reminds me that my little boy, one of the loves of my life, is not normal and needs extra help, it makes me nauseated.  I don't know how else to describe it. 

I look at other moms and their children and they all look so...normal.  Ugh.  What a terrible word.

But lately I can feel that Abram is struggling---physically.  He has a hard time walking in the snow and slush.  So, I carry him.  Granted he is not heavy, but he is a lot heavier that last winter.  And then he has a million pounds of boots, snow pants, and a coat on top of his weight. He complains about his legs hurting and needing to be carried.  Then, on top of the weight of carrying my child and my own stressors, I have snickering aunts who say, "He is too old to be carried.  You need to make him walk."  Make him walk.  Haha.  If it were that easy, I would do it.  Or a comment from Abram's uncle, affirming he will not accept his nephew because he is different and I need to learn how to mother him.  Again, an example of comments that should not be said.

So, on the heels of the discussion with his new coordinator of care (whom I really hope I can get along with) and a few days prior to returning to Gillette for another visit, my heart hurts.  With all of the labels carried with my little boy, all of the stress carried on my shoulders, physically coming to the realization that I can not keep carrying him anymore, and feeling stuck about what the next steps in his life entail, I feel my face wet with tears that I have been holding in too long.  I have to keep telling myself that it is okay to cry.  It is okay to shed tears for a little boy who has to struggle.  He does not know any different.  I need to learn just to breath and let it all go.  It is not in my hands anyway.

All we can do is pray harder and longer.  There is nothing else we can do.  There is no cure for Abram.  There is no "fixing him."  We work with him and try to make him stronger.  Wrestle him into his back brace everyday.  And that's it.  That is all we have to help him.  All we have is hope.

{On a side note...For myself, this blog has helped me.  I can now type out my feelings.  I have tried to keep a diary or journal but I never stuck with it.  I do not even care if anyone ever reads this.  It is nice to get comments but I do not thrive on them.  I just want to document little glimpses and snapshots on our life.  So, I am very thankful for that.}

Life is a journey that we have to take.  We just have to keep hanging on for the ride.

"Through humor, you can soften some of the worst blows that life delivers. And once you find laughter, no matter how painful your situation might be, you can survive it." -Bill Cosby