Carpe Weekend: Reaching Milestones

When we got sent home from the hospital with Noah in tow, we were given a folder containing all manner of things pertaining to Down syndrome. One piece of paper that quickly caught my eye was a chart that laid out general milestones for children with Down syndrome compared to those of typical children. I was affected by one in particular. Running-About 4 years old. Keep in mind, that was two years older than Andrew was at the time. I mistakenly thought I would be constantly overwhelmed with the list of things Noah couldn't do. That really couldn't be further from the truth. Years ago, when we were first preparing to be new parents with Andrew, we heard numerous times from veteran parents "how quickly your children grow up". Ironically, even the delay caused by an extra chromosome does little to slow the passage of time where our children progress far more quickly than we expect and we are left wondering when all of this happened. For example, when did Noah begin being able to walk across the room with the assistance of a walker.

Speaking of milestones, or 1.6 kilometerstones for the family in Europe, Brooks celebrated his 9th birthday this weekend. He had a video game party at a place in Southaven called Jump. When I walked in the room, I had a strange sensation of familiarity that I couldn't quite put my finger on. Then I realized, it's a dorm room. Minus the stale pizza and odor of seldomly laundered clothes.Since Andrew is younger, I worried he would have trouble finding something to do, but I should've known that he would be content running around a vast wasteland as long as his cousins were there.

The weather man predicted a rainy Sunday so we told Andrew we would go bowling. He has been asking for a while, so we felt this was a good opportunity. The rain never really happened, but we were on the hook for bowling and Andrew couldn't wait to roll.