I've been anxious to get this year over with. So anxious I'm writing about it a day-and-a-half early. This has been a good year, don't get me wrong. I've just wanted to get one positive year between myself and the year before.

Throughout this year we've had fewer MD visits, spanning further apart. Monthly check ups became quarterly, 3-month check ups became annual. Both A and I are healing. Life has slowly gotten back on track. Gavin's check-ups are a game of "how off the charts is he?" for weight/height.

Rehab exercises are more for recovery than harder than any lactate tolerance or VO2max test I've ever done. The other night I was flipping channels and caught a re-run that flashed me back to when I first saw the episode. It was after 2 a.m. the hospital bed was in the living room. Good and numb on vicodin, I pinned my arm in the frame of the bed-rails and lowered the bed flat to force my arm as straight as I could tolerate. Being the middle of the night, I muffled my screaming by biting the blankets under the glow of the TV light. I did that night after night as Dave-the-PT said I had to push through to get range of motion back if I ever wanted to throw a ball with my kid. He knew how to motivate me. That, I can now say, was more than a year ago.

We have summer of 2009, riding along the Spring Water with G asleep in the boat-bike to think back on, not counting Gavin's age by the same number of weeks his mom was still in the hospital. Tonight I was looking at pictures of G from last Christmas. How little he was, how much he's grown. How he still uses the same expressions, but now has a reason or an agenda with them. I can't believe he's a little dude now, not just a bottle sucking-pooping machine. He's a full head of steam going every which way. It's a job in and of itself just keeping him on the rails. We're gaining momentum and slowly turning a chug...chug...chug into a sustainable pace. Next stop...potty training town!