2009, the year that rocked.

I thought about doing one of my annual wrap up posts this year, I started writing it even, but then I got sidetracked reading my first post of 2009. It was such a hopeful and happy post, full of the joy at the emergence of the child we've gotten to know so well this year. In it, I said this:

I have spent years worrying over her cognitive development. When she was still silent, I wondered if she would ever speak. When she began to speak, I wondered if it would ever be natural for her, or if she would simply parrot and label forever. When her vocabulary began to grow, I worried about her comprehension and cognition. Over the course of the past year, those worries have fallen away, one by one, and what has been left in their wake is an intelligent, well-spoken, beautiful little girl.

According to the post, last New Year's Eve, my friend L looked at me and said, "She's going to be brilliant, you know." And this year, we do know. Everyone who knows her knows. This year she IS brilliant. She has blown our hearts and minds more times than we can count throughout her life and especially over the past year. It is hard to believe, looking at her now, that she was ever that closed-off, lumpy, silent 18 month old, or the 2 year old not yet walking or talking at her party, or the 3 year old who only used scripting. It doesn't seem possible that she was ever anything other than this intelligent, hilarious, joyful, bubbly, amazing kid who is filling every corner of our lives with goodness and light.

2009 was the year we stepped out of the dark cloud cover of the frightening unknown and into a well-lit world that mostly makes sense again. Her developmental gaps have closed, the episodes have tapered off, she hasn't been to the pediatrician in over a semester, most of her specialist appointments are now only an annual event. We don't have a whole lot of answers still, but the questions seem to matter much less now. 2009 gave us back a sense of normal-people normalcy, and though we might never have a life without specialists and tube feeds and a laundry list of medications, this new stage of life with KayTar was well worth the wait. I can hardly wait to see what 2010 holds for us all.

2006, the year this blog began.
2009, the year that rocked.