Today we celebrated an emotional fourth birthday for our youngest son. Emotional because his time on earth has been many highs and many more lows. Some people are not given an easy path and it is amazing to see how they can thrive given their less-then-ideal circumstances. Watching Landon develop his personality cornerstones of thoughtfulness and love for people has taught me so much about my own coping skills.
Landon was our first home birth and it was such an amazing experience for Chelsea and I. Shortly after, things got harder. This isn’t a post for war stories though – there are plenty of those already written – this is a post of celebration and hope because we have found a solution to make his days much easier and have allowed him to flourish even more as a beautiful young child.
However, I will leave one quick antidote that is representative of our current status. A couple years ago, shortly after we moved here, I took Landon and his siblings out for a bike ride on the Swamp Rabbit. We were 4 or 5 miles from where we parked when Landon lost his mind. This is the non-scientific explanation that we used to describe one of his fits. He would scream and scratch uncontrollably until his arms and legs looked like raw hamburger. When this would happen, we would find a way to restrict access to his hands by covering them in special sleeves and try to distract him by wearing him or snuggling with him. I was without any of these tools or opportunities. Not only that, I was facing a 20 minute bike ride back to the van and a 20 minute drive home. I did the best I could and he calmed down eventually, but I’ve been caring around range anxiety since that experience and found myself uncomfortable roaming too far from home. However, today was a healing experience. We went for a long bike ride today, over 20 miles, and found ourselves passing the exact same spot where Landon lost his mind two years ago. It was very therapeutic to realized that I no longer needed to carry this anxiety with me as those days, for now, are behind us.
Anyways, happy birthday little buddy! You are a rock star!!
