This past year has been.... amazing, surreal, busy, high paced, blessed, trying, tiring, and, well, fast.
My daughter is nearing her first birthday and I couldn't be more proud.
At her 2 week check up, One Philly Daughter was diagnosed with torticollis. Barely in this world, she was confronted with a word One Philly Mommy couldn't spell and could barely pronounce. In one year I got laid off, got pregnant, found my dream home and listed, but failed to sell out first home. After all this, and moving into a new home when 8 months pregnant and becoming a reluctant landlord, I was hardly eager to take on another challenge. I think I wanted to hide under the covers. With Ben and Jerry. And Chardonnay. For a long, long time.
I agonized over my poor, sweet little girl and all she'd have to endure.
But it is a majorly MINOR issue with her neck muscles that has resulted in physical therapy, chiropractor visits, and even a few months in a helmet (to address asymmetric facial features as a result of her neck problems).
What started as scary and uncertain has become...normal. A no-big-deal-way of life. Sure, she gets physical therapy twice a week, and had to wear a helmet for 23 hours a day for her first summer on this Earth.
And that smile has been there through most of what I agonized over, worrying she would be in pain, unhappy, or at the very least uncomfortable. But she handled it better than I ever anticipated, and certainly better than I did. And no. She does not love her Physical Therapists. But we know when her cries are real and when she's being a "faker, faker, belly-acher." And we know she's working hard, a fighter, and progressing all the time.
It doesn't matter that she had this issue. It doesn't matter that this issue is supremely insignificant compared to those facing much harsher realities. Horrific diagnosis. Terminal diagnosis. Chronic diagnosis. Chronic poverty. Unforeseen catastrophes like Newtown and Colorado. Yet another deployment for a young family to defend what the rest of us take for granted :Freedoms. Opportunities. Safety. Security.
What matters is that we're together, no matter how bumped and bruised or shiny and new we may be feeling, we're together. If something bigger, scarier, "worse" had been presented to us, I have no doubt we'd still find a way to be us. To face it together, make it our own, put our spin on it, add our smiles and go on with our lives.
In many, many, many (did I say many?) ways, this life is so much more than I ever dared hope for, and in some ways it asks so much more of me than I ever expected to give. But, either way, it is mine, and I am blessed to the very last fiber of my very last cell and eternally grateful.
One Philly Daughter is nearly a year old, which means she's nearing the end of physical therapy. That we've survived a year of this new life in this new house. That nothing awful has happened, that we've been blessed with another year of relative health, happiness, love, laughter, joy and prosperity.
I wish for you, and all our sons and daughters, a year of exceeded expectations, granted wishes, dreams come true and rapturous joy.
And maybe it won't be a year 'til I write again.
All the best,
One Philly Mommy
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