Freedom and the miracle of Dawson

Had this stuff brewing in my mind for a while...

I find it nearly impossible to put into words.... to explain to you using only the 26 letters that are available to me....what we have been seeing with Dawson lately. There is just too much!! The past two weeks have brought on another speech explosion. I think I see a pattern developing with speech. He seems to go for a month or two at a time kinda stagnate and then BOOM!! literally a speech explosion. I love it!

He is putting words together very nicely now to form sentences and his communication skills are soaring right now. Here are some of the things were hearing these days:

" Why is daddy crying?" ( I was only pretending to cry) " I told daddy stop it" " I want to go to church" " Wait a second" ( as he sticks a finger way up in the air) " I want to pull the kitty off" " I eat in playroom" " I want to see Ashlyn and Katelin"
on and on and on.... What a blessing it is to see him functioning in this manner.

For those of you who have followed this story for a while, you will remember the days of seizures and violence that he displayed. We always felt a source of the violence was the inability to communicate with us. He would obviously get very frustrated as he mumbled his version of words and we played the guessing game as to what in the world he was trying to say. Guess wrong, and you were as good as dead as far as he was concerned. Today, life is so much different. After literally thousands of seizures since he was 2 months old... Our little guy is talking, and he is learning.

This past week was Vacation Bible School for the kids at our church. A huge test for Dawson. We were somewhat apprehensive as to how Dawon would do. This is really the first time he has been in an extended " social situation" and we just werent sure what to expect. Would he play?? would he have fun? would he even behave?? The answer to all of that was a resounding YES!! Not only did he play, but he played hard. He didn't just have fun.. he had a blast.. and behavior was not an issue all week. The miracle of Dawson.... a little boy ravaged by numerous seizures daily, healed by the hand of God, is doing AND saying all the things that we were told he would probably never do and say..

The 4th of July is about freedom and celebrating that freedom. There are many types of freedom that we are celebrating this year. The freedom to worship as we please and the freedom that living in this country provides us. We are certainly thankful for the men and women who provide us with that freedom. But we are also celebrating the freedom of seizures. The monster that lurked in Dawson's brain. The monster who robbed him and this family of joy and happiness. The monster who took away his ability to function normally, and replaced it with developmental delays is dead... Now that is TRUE freedom, and today we celebrate that freedom.

Today is day 282 of seizure freedom. There is a lot to be said for that... its the miracle of Dawson. A special needs child who is indeed VERY special!!!