Wedding, Kocky Ball, and Readoption

We had a terrific time in Texas for my sister's wedding. It was a hectic few days ahead of time, as all weddings are, but fun to work alongside family and friends to pull off a great event! The wedding was beautiful and really special. My favorite part was watching the bride and groom dance together the whole time. It was hard to pull them off the dance floor!

Elias did great until about an hour before the wedding when he decided he'd had enough new people trying to touch and hold him. He just wanted mommy, who was unfortunately unavailable. Chase got him calmed down enough to be carried down the aisle by cousin Josh at the beginning of the wedding. But when I walked down the aisle and took my position up front, Elias started crying again. Loudly. So he and Chase missed the wedding, and Elias slept through the whole reception. Oh well. I think we got a least a couple pictures of Elias in his cute little outfit, but unfortunately none of the 3 of us together. (And of course we coordinated our outfits just perfectly for that beautiful family photo opp that never happened).

Elias is making some good progress with his leg! On our last night in Dallas, Nani wanted to see him stand with his leg one more time. I was behind Elias putting the belt around his waist to help secure the leg, and he suddenly started walking forward. It was awesome! We rolled a soccer ball toward him and he walked toward it and took a big kick with his prosthetic leg. He was very excited about his new "kocky ball" skills and stayed up on his leg for quite a while (with me supporting his elbows from behind). Now the kocky ball is a regular motivator to get his leg on so that he can kick it. This is the first thing he's realized he can do with his leg on, but not off.

The other night during a short period of insomnia when I was solving all the world's problems with very simple, yet unrealistic solutions (does anybody else do this?) I had an idea to just put Elias leg on when he woke up in the morning, and then leave it on all day. It didn't seem so easy that next morning, but I did try it after nap time. And he kept it on for about 3.5 hours! He used the walker to get around the house and would go from the table to his Home Depot workbench working with his tools. He can't crawl with the leg on b/c the leg doesn't bend (no knee), but he managed to get up and down okay when playing. It was great to see!

Chase wants to do one more test socket fitting, so Elias won't have his final leg for a couple more weeks. It's actually been nice to have try out different things in this long test phase so that we can get a feel for what will work best for Elias.

One more thing-- New York State requires us to go through an additional process to "re-adopt" Elias here in the U.S. (The adoption in Ethiopia was completely recognized of course, this just gives him a U.S. birth certificate and other U.S. papers). It wasn't that big of a deal to us, but we were glad to at least have this final paperwork phase behind us. The readoption took place on 1/30, and afterwards we went out to breakfast at one of our favorite diners to celebrate.

Bride and Groom

Elias and cousins

Signing readoption papers in judge's office

Playing with monster trucks in the diner

The I'm-not-so-happy-about-Mommy-and-the-PT-making-me-walk-all-over-the-house face