Raising Finn has easily been the most challenging and rewarding thing I have ever done in my life, but its an uneven experience. Some days are too easy and I feel guilty on those days I am not doing more or engaging more, other days are overwhelming and we am making choices to determine where we can have the most impact. One consistent is if a medical professional tells us a certain thing is needed that got done without question, which is why he wore a helmet for more than a year or why he was doing two types of (expensive) therapy at once. I did everything I could to be apart of those experiences: I still remember the route to the helmet place well, and I made sure my professional life gave me the time to take him to the physical therapy every week.
His struggles to get to the point he was walking was intense. He was months behind most kids doing it, and when we visited Jeremy and saw his youngest (who was just a few months older than Finn) gliding around the house it was obvious that Finn needed all the help he could or he was going to get behind in life. When the therapist recommended high tops for support I used my Google-Fu to track down orthopedic sandals from a European company on Amazon I thought could help even more. I bought him a pair of these "magic shoes" and soon between the work at home, the therapy trips weekly, and work at Barbara's house he got to the point a few steps were possible when the sandals were on. The therapist then recommended we work as hard as possible to expand those steps, and there began a multi-week mission to get Finn fully walking.
My initial plan was simple: I was going to take Finn to a soccer field at a local park, plunk him in the middle and see how far he could go. This particular park had a bunch of these fields so it wasn't hard to find one without anyone else on it. This was during early COVID so people stayed away anyway. So we went and I plunked and after a little crying he began to traverse the field. That first day he didn't get far, maybe 30 yards total. Eventually he found a mud pile and played with real mud for the first time in his life. Then he got into the soccer net and started tripping on it so we had to stop. But I was motivated to see progress day one.
So we went back the next day. And the next and so on for weeks with the magic shoes or after rainy days his rain boots. Eventually he could get across the soccer field, then two soccer fields and within a month my little guy who could barely walk was getting across a decent part of the park with uneven surfaces the whole way. Some of these days instead of going to the park we went to the nearby high school that was empty due to COVID. He marched up and down their inclined parking lot, or went up and beat on their doors to get in (something I hope the high school version of Finn finds funny). One day we went and played on their practice field, another we walked all of the sidewalks there. Each day he got better and better and the pace of progress was one of the most remarkable things I have ever seen in my life.
Eventually he got so good it became hard to contain him and how far he could get. Everyone had celebrated his walking progress weeks ago and therapy moved on to focus on stairs and jumping. We stopped going every day when the progress stopped seeming obvious, though we still went on average once a week then-after. But these trips weren't for him to practice walking as much as they were to get him outside and play at the park (and maybe give mom some alone time). In fact he got so good at walking there I would often bring Luna to help me contain him, as her large body would act like a fence once positioned that kept him out of the rough patches or away from other people who were doing their own thing. The three of us would keep going in circles until we were tired, and I was stacking up memories the whole time.
Now the sandals have long since been retired, all the helmets are a year in the past, and his progress is measured in small increments rather than large leaps. But I will always have those memories to look back on, a very vivid version of my young son who wanted more than anything in the world to be able to traverse what was in front of him. He was the one who learned to walk but I got time with him that will stick with me until my final days.
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