The Blog I Shouldn't Write

This isn't the blog I should be writing today.  I have been absent from the blog because life has been crazy (and we have a ton going on for Gominic), and I have intended to update those of you who are still standing by me patiently.  But I don't feel like writing that blog today.  Today I want to brag.  So if we are frien-emies, you may want to quit reading right here.  This blog is going to be all about how I have won.

I don't write about Vincent much.  In life he gets every bit as much attention as Dominic does, but in the virtual world, he is very little known.  I am just going to put this out there. Vincent is a genius.  Not in a way that all parents think their kids are geniuses; I truly expect for him to cure cancer. Or find a way to use his looks to get him everything he wants and not work a day in his life.  The kid has it all.  I used to be vain about my looks, but since having that kid I am reminded on a daily basis that a boy can actually be prettier than me.  It's a tough pill to swallow, but I've adjusted.  I digress.  Vincent is trilingual.  He is of course fluent in English, can count to ten in Spanish and sing Move It Move It in a language I cannot recognize.  I'm just going to assume its Mandarin.  From the best I can tell, he is functioning at a four year old level at least.  I don't want to bog you down with the stats of all that he can do, but each day I find out more and more of what he knows.  His Montessori teachers have confirmed that he is frighteningly intelligent.  So I know what you are all thinking, supermom, right?  I must be working with him constantly to teach him everything.

That's the thing.  I am a surprisingly a care-free mom when it comes to Vincent.  Sure we read, but I didn't ever show him how to count.  I had to remind myself how to count in Spanish.  I can't alphabetize without repeating all the letters from the start in my head.  Also, this is embarrassing to admit as an engineer, but I still count on my fingers.  I have done nothing to teach him these things.  I do have a secret weapon with Carolyn who until recently had kept him every day since he was 4 months old; I know she taught him an incredible amount of things.  For all I know, she probably spent hours teaching him Move It Move It in Mandarin.  With Vincent I have been more like the fun Aunt; we trash the house with our art projects and pretty much just have a good time.  He potty trained himself for goodness sakes.  All I did was buy him a potty.  No I take that back, Nonnie bought him the potty.  I did nothing.  It never occurred to me that I should teach him things.  Maybe because I never needed to.

I can't say that I have been all that surprised with Vincent's level of intelligence.  I'm pretty smart and so is his father, but even more so he is part of legacy.  His great-grandfather is P.C. Vaidya.  Now unless you are a super nerd, you won't recognize that name, but he was a great man who did incredible things.  He did many great things for the academic and physics community, but his greatest accomplishment was writing the solution for Einstein's Theory of Relativity.  Yeah, I just said that.  I'm not sure what that actually means, but I said it.  He had arguably one of the most incredible brains of all times.  I think of him often when I think of my boys.

Dominic was not the first son I was told had brain damage.  You see, Vincent for unknown reasons also has some brain damage, although slight.  When I first heard that about Vincent I thought a lot about his great-grandfather, and I prayed that my son had gotten just a portion of those brain genes.  When we first found out about Vincent's brain damage, he was 9 months.  He was a little behind with his talking and not very interested in toys.  At the time, it was devastating and I didn't know what I could expect.

Now with Dominic's diagnosis I pray for the same thing.  When neurologists tell me he won't do much, I think to myself, that they have no clue what kind of brain my son started with.  I don't think Gommy needs the other half of his brain.  I think he started out with a brain more amazing than any of us could ever fathom.  I think had we never gotten CMV, he probably could have cured cancer or at least confirmed that Pluto is indeed a planet.  I think now, he can use that incredible brain to learn to walk and learn to talk and learn to eat.

I still hold out hope for Dominic to live a normal life despite every expert telling me different.  Maybe I am naive and have no clue.  Or maybe I am just following Dominic's cues.  We recently got an IPad for him (I am not above spoiling children).  On his favorite game, they tell you which animal to find and you chose from 3.  We soon realized that HE GETS EVERY ONE RIGHT.  His speech and occupational therapists confirmed it.  He knows his animals.  Again, I didn't teach him this, and he is only 1.  I can only assume he learned from Vincent.  So I can't just listen to what experts say, I have to listen to what Dominic says.  Either way, I know he has an incredible brain.  I expect incredible things from that kid.    

Life Affirming Decisions

Over the past year or so the wife and I have had a goal of moving out of our current location to Austin for a number of reasons...we have loving, and supportive family members there (all of whom would would love nothing more than to have us move back) and for the most part all of Gommy's doctors are in Austin as well. Those are the concrete reasons. The vague, emotional reasons are that...well...to an extent Twisty and I need a bit of a fresh start with everything going, and we thought Austin would provide that.

Recently we closed that door for a variety of reasons. Circumstances came up that forced us to take a look at our current situation, and we realized that hey, we have it pretty good here, and there's no guarantee that our life in Austin would be better than what it is now...and Austin actually might end up being not quite as good as our current location. So we made the decision to stay.

This decision was one of the hardest that we've ever had to make.It was incredibly incredibly stressful. On the day we made it for certain, both of us couldn't help but wonder whether we'd made the right one.

The title of this post is life affirming decisions...meaning on one hand decisions that affirm the life you want. But also that sometimes, life has a tricky way of affirming your decisions too.

The day we decided to stay put, Twisty got a phone call from a number she didnt recognize. She clicked ignore. Then I got a phone call from the same number. I picked it up. It was our pediatrician's nurse (who we adore). Our pediatrician is moving to a new facility, and they are looking to decorate the new office with pictures of families that mean a lot to them. She told us that we were the first ones that they thought of--that Gommy (and tooties) are near and dear to their hearts. She got choked up as she shared this with us, and naturally we did too.

Life affirming decisions.

Yesterday we were in Austin for a variety of appointments...basically going from about 9:30 until 3. As we drove around Dell Children's between gas stations and lunch spots we kind of realized that we are not really cut out to live in Austin...that we'd romanticized the idea, but we didn't really like it in practice. All the regret and doubt went away in that moment.

I grew up as an only child, and I've struggled with the concept of setting roots down somewhere because of the lack of a real extended family. I'm lucky that I marred into the family that I did because not only do I have another set of parents, and siblings, I also have new best friends. Moving to Austin would have reconnected us with our roots, but the process of making that decision made us realize that we have a different set of roots here in this town. We have nurses, day care providers, trainers, doctors, therapists all of whom care about us in their own way...and all of whom we care about deeply. Maybe roots are defined simply as folks who you have deep connections with. Maybe we have set roots here without even knowing it.

At any rate, with that decision behind us, it's now part of our job to cultivate these roots and make this a permanent home for us. And quite frankly, I'm kind of excited about that.