Monday, June 9, 2008

Baby Euphoria


My son was only a few weeks old when my In-laws came to visit their first grandson. My father-in-law picked him up and began talking to him, cooing and smiling. The baby looked him in the eyes and gave him a grin like I've never seen before, as if he recognized his grandpa. We all commented on how most babies don't smile like that. Everyone always claims that if a baby smiles it is gas. This most certainly was not gas. He was smiling down to his toes.
As he grew, his body became more stout, more solid. Friends and family would bend down to pick him up and grunt in surprise at just how sturdy his frame was. The only odd thing that I noticed about my perfect child was his eating habits. He refused baby food, so I began making my own. He ate pretty much anything that I gave him, as long as it was homemade, in stark contrast to the spaghetti, pizza, or chicken he will eat now. We are currently working on broadening his horizons.
Every cute thing he did, was nothing but perfection to his father and I. We had two healthy children, and we felt like the luckiest people in the world. Looking back, I wonder now if there was something I didn't see. Something I was overlooking out of ignorance or just because I didn't want to see it. But everything seemed to be going well. He rolled over when he should have, he crawled when he should have, he walked when he should have, and he even began to speak, saying apple, Elmo, Mama, Daddy. At some point he just stopped speaking. At some point that I can't even really recall his words went away. And he slipped into what they call Regressive Autism, and he was lost for a time.

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