Each Morning With Julian

My world was full of chaos when it came to living with Betty Rose and social services. Nothing was going fast enough and things were being told to us that didn't seem to match up with what we were seeing for ourselves. I lived daily with the worry of losing my child. I couldn't imagine life without him at this point. From the moment I saw him on this first day I knew our souls were meant to find one another yet I was so unsure about what everyone else in our world was thinking about our destiny.

Through all the chaos the only thing I could see was Julian. He and I spent everyday together. I watched him grow into the little gem he had become. Each morning he and I would wake up together bright and early, most mornings the sun wasn't even awake yet. I would hear loud and clear from the next room that he was awake and ready to get our day started. Just as I knew his morning wake up call, he knew I had to get my glasses on and go to the bathroom before I could get him. He would stay quiet for just those few minutes I was allowed to take care of those two things. As soon as he heard the toilet flush the morning chatter began. If I took longer than he thought reasonable then the chatter got louder and louder until almost on the verge of a cry. But I loved just those few minutes of chatter from the bathroom to his room. It made every morning full of sunshine...even the dark mornings.

After a good morning smooch and diaper change for him, we headed downstairs with the pugs for breakfast. Julian loves to eat which put me on a very tight schedule because he wasn't patient when it came to eating. Our routine started with me handing him his own spoon. He would babble and play with his spoon as I fed the dogs and worked on getting him the baby food that we were slowly trying to introduce. He was a big fan of veggies and bananas. I loved feeding him bananas because with each bite he would let out an..MMMMM! It didn't matter how many times he did it, I laugh every time. He wouldn't know why I was laughing but he would smile back at me with a mouth full of bananas. His MMMMM sound...my favorite noise in the morning, well that and the coffee pot brewing to help me get going!

Once his belly was full we played. We were still working on his physical therapy and although he had rolled over in his sleep once he still was struggling with it consistently and so we practiced rolling over and sitting up on his own. Although, my ultimate goal was to get him to figure out how strong he really was physically, I couldn't help but try everything in my power to get him to giggle. There were many times I looked in Julian's face and didn't see my own and wished I did. But when it came to smiling and his laughter, I knew it was my smile and my laughter he had. I gave him those two things. Some mornings we both laughed so hard we cried....it was those times that kept me from losing myself in the chaos. It was also those times that I feared losing the most. I knew I wanted to be the one that made him laugh like that every morning of his life. I just hoped soon the judge would hear the truth and she too would see he needed us as much as we needed him.