A little piece of heaven

Sometimes it’s easy to forget why we live in LA. Today we remembered.

We spent the day at the Santa Monica beach with one of my best friends who flew from New York to meet Belle. We had a GREAT time! Nathan is 95% healed – other than a wet cough he is doing very well. And Belle…she got to hear the roar of the waves and smell the salty air and feel the scratchy softness of the sand on her hands and feet.

We threw Nathan’s diet to the winds and gave him whatever he wanted to eat – and eat and eat and eat he did. He’s making up for lost time and eating everything in sight. I hope it’s only a matter of time until there’s some meat on that cute skinny sack of bones. He went on a few rides at the santa monica pier, played in the arcade with his daddy, and squeaked and squealed at the chaos around him.

On the ride home I looked back and saw Nathan with his hand resting on Allyson’s thigh. He had his mischievious glimmer in his eye….I could almost hear him smugly thinking, look at me I’ve got my hand on the pretty girl (Allyson is a hottie!!). What a boy he is!

As we were riding home Allyson was asking me about Nathan’s development and asked me how much he understood. I told her I feel he understands a lot but it’s hard to know because he has so many physical limitations that limit his ability to show us what he does or doesn’t understand. Stepping into her teacher mode, Allyson started playing with him and asked him to help her count the trucks that went by. Nathan looked right out the window. He understood exactly what we said and decided to follow a command!

All this time he had his hand on her thigh…so she asked him to touch his own knee. He immediately moved his hand and touched his thigh (he couldn’t quite reach his knee). Then she asked him to touch her thigh again. Boy did he smile when she asked him to do that! And he touched her thigh again. They went back and forth several times until I pulled out the camera and he decided it was time to stop.

We made it home and finished the day by jumping in the spa. Nathan couldn’t stay awake any longer so he went to sleep. But Belle thinks she’s 2 months going on 20 years old and decided to stay awake and go into the spa with us. She kicked and played in the water for a good 30 minutes before she finally gave in to sleep.

Life is so good.

It’s too late and I’m too tired to be cohesive so here is my late night rant:

* Nathan is much better. He is eating well. Our entire household is engaged in “Operation Fatten Nathan Up”. We make him pancakes almost every day. He’s been eating brownies. We give him food every couple of hours. He was getting WAY too thin. He’s been eating well and hasn’t puked in a few days. Thank God! He is still very congested and having respiratory problems but he’s definitely on the mend.

* Someone gave us a Baby Ktan for Belle and I’ve been using it – and LOVE it! It works better than the ergo as she is so little. The Ktan holds her better and is a nice place for her to nap while I do stuff. She’s developing so well – she is awake most of the time, she’s already doing baby push-ups, cooing a LOT, plays in her gym, crawls on her belly, has nearly perfect head control, smiles and laughs, and rolls from her tummy to her back. This is one delightful little girl! Oh and she’s outgrown all of her newborn clothes and is now wearing 3-6 month clothes!

* I’m getting really excited about our appointment with Anat Baniel coming up in 1 week!

* While in Montreal, Owen, Mary and Nathan went to the ABR center and received training on the new exercises developed by Leonid. Since Nathan was sick all week we didn’t do CME with him, so we used the extra time to do ABR. We’re on a roll! He’s now receiving 2 hours of ABR therapy / day. I can’t wait to see how this affects his structure!

* I had a rolfing massage – it was AMAZING! The theme for this month from my woman’s class was “Body Care”. So I decided to treat myself to a massage with Nathan’s rolfing therapist. The man is truly a gifted healer. He fixed a pain that I’d had in my sacrum since I got pregnant with Belle. It’s gone, completely gone. Absolutely incredible. I will write more about rolfing soon, but I will say – what an INCREDIBLE therapy!