Bee-Lieve

Noah Releasing a Balloon for Brayden

Brayden's Bee Balloons

We released balloons today for our little friend Brayden who passed away ten days ago to participate in Brayden's memorial. I decorated with little bee's for Brayden who always helped us to remember to always Bee-Lieve. The little bee that will keep flying high in our hearts and hopefully will be one of the many angels that will help look in on Noah and guide us from time to time. Somehow I kind of think Noah new exactly that we were doing. I sensed it. He's a very loving and connected soul. One doesn't have to be verbal to understand.

Noah had a beautiful Thanksgiving. He ate lots of food and as always his favorite was the pumpkin cream cheese pie. He's certainly a pie lover. It was a quiet day which was very nice. Sometimes you just need a quiet, loving day and that is exactly what it turned out to be. Nothing was on a time-table, we let the turkey be our guide for dinner hour. It was the first time I decided to brine a turkey. I watched a late night special on PBS promising the most moist turkey one could ever eat and decided I'd take on the task. I must say, PBS was right. It was super moist - hands down the moistest turkey I've cooked. Yet was warned that when you brine a turkey it would cut down the cook time by 1/3 so I watched that bird like a hawk not completely knowing a concrete completed cooking time. So by letting the bird be our guide as when dinner would be served it created a rather relaxed atmosphere. It was kind of like how we exist with Noah. We let time be his guide. And when he's ready then we're all ready.

Noah's daddy was able to install the train around the Christmas tree on Thanksgiving which remains hands down one of Noah's most favorite holiday activities. He finds it especially fun to roll over and continually derail his train. And Luke cautiously guards it as if he knows he must not touch Noah's beloved train. Although I have detected that Luke has contemplated putting a wise man on the track and we certainly need all the wise men we can get, so I'm making sure that no nativity members are run down this year.

Chris temporarily took down a baby gate to the kitchen and dinning room entry way for Thanksgiving which made me feel like I had a little more freedom with Noah's new hi/lo base chair. We were able to go at least between two rooms without being completely stuck in the kitchen. I've quickly grown rather attached to the hi/lo base chair and any initial feelings of sadness that I associated with it have dissipated. For the first time I was able wheel Noah over to the refrigerator and freezer show him the contents inside. Show him what a bottle of milk looked like - where his yogurt was stored. I also put the chair on the highest setting and Noah watched by my side at the counter as I peeled potatoes and stuck them in a pot full of chicken stock. These are activities that he couldn't do without this chair. And for the first time I feel like he's being able to be included in daily activities more than ever. The possibilities seem endless. He can now even come to the counter and watch me make Christmas cookies and goodies. He was even able to watch me unloading the dishwasher and where the silverware goes in the drawers. Having him being able to finally be included in life's smallest moments is doing my heart a world of good.

Each day the excitement over the arrival of Noah's service dog grows. We found him the cutest little birthday bag with a Golden Retriever on it for his birthday at the dollar store. It's perfect and we're just so excited for this new chapter in Noah's life. It's going to be a very sweet 4th year birthday celebration. We've come so far in 4 years from bringing home a little boy that no one said would survive... we have so far to go, but we're doing it.

In loving memory of Brayden we will always keep Bee-Lieving.

Love,



Noah's Miracle by Stacy Warden is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.