Blessed

Recently, my best friend Rebecca and I went to one of those shopping events with all of the booths and vendors selling everything from baby clothes to jewelry. After the event, I was telling Mike and several others how frustrating it was that the entire time everyone kept stopping me to talk about Clay. It sounds silly but it made it so hard to shop. Clay does NOT like his stroller and wants to be held pretty much the whole time whenever I try to do any shopping. So basically, anytime he was actually calm in the stroller, or not screaming, people would stop and say one of six things (or all of them): 1) How old is he? 2) What's his name? 3) He's too cute! 4) Where did you get that hat? 5) He's so big! 6) Can I hold him? The same six things OVER AND OVER. Even Rebecca, the most patient person in the world, was tired of answering. I told Mike that I just wanted to hang a sign over his stroller with all of the answers. 1)He's almost six months old. 2)His name is Clay, Clay Morgan. 3)Thank you. We think he's cute, too. 4)We got his hat at Janie and Jack. 5) He is big, we're going for a linebacker. 6) Not right now. We're just trying to shop as quickly as possible while he's calm.

Change of subject: Anyhow, the past couple of days when I have been blog surfing, I have come across several blogs about Trisomy-18. From the little I have read, I know Trisomy-18 is something you typically find out about during your pregnancy and the babies who have it tend to die shortly after birth (if not in utero). Their stories all so sad, but yet inspiring. I admire the parents of these children so much.

Yesterday, I was reading about Eliot Mooney. What an inspiration their story is and the movie about little Eliot's 99 days of life. I copied this part from their blog- "For those of you who want to see the movie, it is available for viewing and purchase at ignitermedia. It is a movie, so you will want to watch it somewhere that has a faster internet connection. Once you go to the site, click on "igniter videos".Look for Eliot's feet- the video is entitled "99 balloons"."

Watching the movie about Eliot's life made such an impact on me. I went into Clay's room, picked up my boy who I had worked so hard to put to sleep and rocked him and kissed him. I thought about how it was so selfish of me to complain about not being able to shop because too many people were talking to me about my perfectly healthy baby. I am very sorry for ever even thinking it after reading about these Trisomy-18 stories. I made Mike watch the video and we talked and prayed about how grateful we are for a healthy baby boy. If you need a reason to be grateful this season, I would definitely recommend reading the blogs of these parents or watching this video. These parents truly cherish every single moment with their children. It changed my thinking as a mother and made me realize what I take for granted.

I leave you with a picture of my almost six month old, cute, Janie and Jack hat wearing, linebacker size, no, you can't hold him because he's finally calm Clay Morgan from the "shopping event":