Way to go Isaiah!!!!

Wa-Hooo Isaiah!!!!

Way to go!

Look at that face! He's so proud of himself!!!!

Isaiah loves to be held. He was the baby for 18 months (that's a long time in our family!!) and really enjoyed it. He was held, cuddled and toted around for much of that time. The hard part is, he loves to be cuddled. You know how some kids just want down? They will let you hold and cuddle for a brief second and then they are squirming to get out of your arms but not Isaiah. He will just melt into your arms and stay there.

I know many of you know his story. He's a miracle to us. He was born 8 weeks early to a homeless family. He stayed in NICU for 30 days. The next 30 days he went with his birth family and they did their best to care for him in their very humble circumstances. But with no money for the special formula that he required, let alone any formula, they resorted to feeding him watered down baby cereal. They finally decided that they could no longer care for him and found an adoption agency. The agency got him into one of their special foster homes and got him into a doctor. He was borderline "failure to thrive" due to his lack of food. When we got him at 2 1/2 months old, he was barely 5 lbs. His belly was still swollen from lack of nutrition and would stay that way for several months.

Now he is 20 months old. He has not decided to start walking yet. But really due to his premature birth and rough two month start, he's about right on schedule. We get people asking us all the time if we are concerned that he isn't running around. We're not. He has the physical ability, just not the desire to go full steam ahead yet. It will come. We don't regret holding and cuddling him as long as we have. He needed it. And we will continue to hold him as long as he will let us. But as you can see in the pictures, he is standing on his own. He stands up and stays that way for a few minutes while we clap and praise him. He loves it. He gets the biggest grin on his face, loving all the attention. Then he drops to his knees and crawls as fast as lightning.