The Moment

I have this moment that I remember very clearly from when Ayden was an infant...  We were helping my younger sister move from her apartment, and I had offered to take my niece (my older sister's daughter) overnight.  Her and Ayden are about five weeks apart.  So I'm sitting there in this apartment filled with boxes while the guys are packing up and playing with my niece and Ayden when I clapped and said "yay!" for something she did and she looked at me and clapped right back.  It wasn't something new for her, but it was the first time I had seen it.  It was in that moment that I remember clearly knowing that all those little things I had worried about the past few months with Ayden were a problem.  The moment I was sure something was wrong despite the fact I kept being told his development was normal by doctors, friends, and family.  I waited another year and a half from that point until Ayden clapped the first time.  So, I'm a little...sensitive....to the whole clapping issue.

I started trying to get Issac to clap when he was just three months old.  He finally did it around six or seven months and I breathed a huge sigh of relief.   I still remember the exact moment he did it.  I started crying and he just looked at me, then he started to cry too - which of course made me laugh.  I'm sure he'll love this story when he's older.

Then there is Miss Emma... as with Issac, I started working on clapping with Emma very early knowing with Fragile X we were looking at the possibility of some large hurdles in the fine motor skills area.  When she was around six months old, I received a video of one of my good friend's daughter (who is just a week or so older than Emma) clapping away.  I think my heart broke into about a million pieces when I watched it.  It was that surreal feeling of being so incredibly happy for your friend and so devastated for yourself at the same time.  I just struggle with this diagnosis so much still, and the fact that Emma is developing normally thus far is amazing but I am still waiting for delays with each milestone.  I'm so afraid to be excited and enjoy this time because if we do start seeing delays it will be like she is being diagnosed all over again.  There are parts of this life with Fragile X that are not easy and can easily consume - and this is one of them for me.

But despite my ramblings of my crazy issues with clapping, this story is not one with a sad ending.  On Christmas Eve Emma decided that she would clap for us.  She was just sitting there and got excited and clapped like she had been doing it forever.  Two tiny hands, helping to heal a wound on my heart from long ago and one Christmas made just a little bit brighter.

Edited:  Added a short video, it's about all I can get her to do when I'm recording!