1 Year

Today marks our 1 year since we met Kaden. This week has been so surreal for us. Our lives have changed so much in a year that it seems like it has been longer than 1 year. Today all I could think of was what March 24, 2008 felt like. I remember being so nervous that day. We were going to meet our son! Yet we weren't sure what medical issues we would see. I remember seeing the black and white photo of Kaden, which was not a good picture of him, but he still looked so cute! We talked to the MOE about the medical information they had. We were so excited b/c he was 9 months old and we wanted a baby if possible. I remember our agency reps kept saying this is good he is very young like you wanted and I kept thinking we are finally going to meet our baby! We then headed to the baby home to meet Kaden to find out he was actually in the hospital very sick. We talked and got all the information we could on medical and birth family background. After that we headed to the hospital. I will not forget meeting Kaden. We had just gotten into the room and all of a sudden this little baby boy was rolled into the room in his crib. He looked so confused as to what was going on. He did not cry or smile. He was just taking it all in. There were 6 adults waiting to meeting him! I picked him up out of the crib and he was so strong. He immediately wanted to stand up. He also loved to pull my hair. Once Aaron and I held him for a few minutes we let the doctor we had hired exam Kaden. Kaden got a clean bill of health physically. We knew that day meeting Kaden that he was our son. He was responding very positively to Aaron and me. The rest of the week went so fast between running paperwork around and spending as much time with Kaden as we possibly could.

Now fast forward one year later and I am amazed at how much our baby has changed! He is now a little boy. Each week he changes so much right now. He is talking a lot. He says at least 1 new word a day. We can basically communicate with him thru words now. I keep thinking back to how sick Kaden was for the first 9 months of his life. Since he has came home we have not had the problems he had then. I know his swallowing issues caused a lot of his sicknesses. I'm so thankful we have been working on this since being home 1 month and was able to figure out this was the problem. We are entering the 2year old attitude,which can be challenging some days, but the good days far out weigh the frustrating days. I also remember how when we came home I was so worried about attachment and if we were doing things right. Now I can say that I feel we are fully attached as a family.

To end this post I want to share with a story that happened last week. We have been working on putting Kaden to sleep without rocking him to sleep. Yes if you are wondering I am that mom that can't let go of the rocking time and I have been doing it for 10 months now! I just love that time and I wasn't ready to give it up but Kaden seems ready to go to sleep on his own so we are now working on this. Night 2 of doing this Kaden was still talking about 15 minutes after I had left the room. Aaron went into check on Kaden and tell him it was night night time. I still had the monitor on downstairs and I could hear everything. Aaron said to Kaden, "Night Night Kaden daddy loves you." To our surprise Kaden said back to Aaron, "Love you daddy." This is the first time he said love you! Aaron came downstairs with the biggest smile on his face and of course I was in tears b/c it was such a precious moment. Now I'll leave you with pictures over the past year.

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