Wait, what? It's been a year?

                          How can it possibly have been a year already since Young Master Norris went under the knife and came out, eight hours later, a Super Hero?

            July 10th, 2013- I spent the entire day desperately trying to think of anything but Rowan. Paul, Joan (Paul's Mom) and I sat silently in our private waiting room surrounded by books, magazines, computers, and phones, seeking distraction from every possible source. We received hourly calls from one of the nurses to let us know how the procedure was going, and each check in was positive, but every time that wretched phone rang my stomach plummeted. After an 8 hour wait the surgery was done and Row was transferred to the PICU for a two night stay before being sent upstairs to the 12th floor Neurology floor to recover.

                   Since coming home from that immeasurable 15 days, Rowan has flourished. He has been working incredibly hard to catch up on all of the developmental milestones that he had gotten behind on (thanks a lot, Seizures!). With Physical Therapy and Occupational Therapy, regular eye checks, and lots and lots of love and playing, this boy has grown and grown, getting cooler, cleverer, and more skilled every day.

                  Nowadays he can sit up by himself, and spin and roll, and stretch, and reach, and wriggle all over the floor to get nearly anywhere he likes. He's working hard on bearing weight through his legs with the help of his ankle braces (which are covered with dinosaurs) and his resident grown-ups, so that one day he'll be ready to stand on his own and then, naturally, walk! And Cha-Cha!

       He can feed himself any food you like, and he likes most of them. He likes a selection of beverages to choose from, so you can usually find him in the company of not one but two sippy cups, taking alternating sips. With only one strong arm to use, he most often decides to go "hands-free" and just hold his sippy with his teeth. No big deal.

Although he has yet to use any genuine words, he definitely communicates, and comprehends and great deal. He knows what it means when we either say or sign "All Done", and for a while it made him cry, since it was typically in reference to food. He can sign for "More" by patting the floor or table (of late this sign has seemed to also mean "Help" or "Gimme-Dat!"). He tries really hard to say "Da-Da" and "Ma-Ma" which are both "AH-AH"...although, we've lately praised him so much for this that he uses it all the time for fun. So I guess it's a bit like "Smurf". He raises his left arm to be picked up and gives me his dirty hand when he sees the post meal clean up cloth.

          He has a passionate concern for the retention of ears. If you hold him on your lap he will promptly push your face into profile and confirm that your ear is intact, either with visual confirmation, or even a manual check, or sometimes, even a digital probe...just to be sure. He also has many ocular worries...so he'll steal your glasses, right quick.

      Speaking of eyes, he's got a lazy one. Since the surgery he has developed a droop on the right eye, and the doctors say that's completely normal and to be expected. If it needs permanent correction there is a common surgery that they can do after he's two, but for now we're working on it by wearing a little eye patch for two hours every day for the time being. I try to decorate it each day, for a bit of whimsy.

   He loves to play peek-a-boo by grabbing our hands and putting them over our eyes, then pulling them down, and putting them up, and pulling them down, and on and on. He'll also peek-a-boo himself by emptying a small toy basket and covering his face with it, then pulling it down as we shout "There he is!". He's learned how to beep his nose to our noses (SQUEE!!!) and has now incorporated it into Peek-a-boo, forming a hybrid game called Beep-a-boo.
   If you try to ignore his nagging request for a game of "Row, Row, Row Your Boat", well, fat chance, he will Row you whether though Wilt or no. He has trouble with boundaries.

He can stack blocks on top of each other both when prompted and on his own.

He is jealous of the kiddos I babysit, and is beginning to learn how valuable Mommy is to him. He's also begun to have very strong opinions about people. He has the occasional stranger anxiety, and when either of his therapists walks in he dissolves into tears at the very thought of having to workout (like mother, like son). Sorry, Kristie and Kim, you really aren't monsters.

Row is mesmerized by music (particularly theme songs, most especially the Portlandia theme:) and will stop what he's doing to stare at the source of a good song (even if it's just his loud mom). He picks and pokes at all of his toys to find the buttons that make songs. Other sounds can just go to Hell as far as he's concerned.

He's already a seasoned traveller: he made the long (22 hr) road trip to Florida last winter with nary a peep and made the same trip but by plane alone with Mommy in March and was stupendously well behaved. He's been to the beach, Walt Disney World, The Wizarding World, St. Augustine, The Temple of Doom,  the St. Louis Zoo, to see the manatees, to see a dancing shark (R.I.P. little Kneivel shark), and to the coolest places in the world (his grandmas and grandpas houses).

Row has done so many AMAZING things that we never felt certain he'd EVER do, and there are more new tricks every day. He's so determined to do things his way and make it work. The silver lining of this happening while he was a baby is that A) he'll never remember, B) his development will suffer less than an older child, and C) he'll never know what he "should have" and what he's "missing". He will do things Row's Way from, virtually, the beginning, and that will rock. 

After our checkup with the Neurologist we have a big Thumbs up on his progress. His EEG came back clean again (on the healthy side, which is the only one that matters now) and after one more year we can start weaning off of his final anti-seizure medication.

He's a superstar, and we are more proud of him than we ever thought we could be. A parent is proud of their child's tiniest achievement, however insignificant, but Row's achievements are ALL significant and impressive. This boy is outstanding, and I'm so lucky that I'm allowed to spend the rest of my life watching him grow, and hopefully, (at least for a while), beeping his nose (SQUEEEE!!!)

One Happy, Happy Family!