This past week we have been on vacation with my family at the beach. It is something that we have done every year for my entire life minus a couple instances where people made some haphazard decision to go somewhere else. (Catastrophe struck, we go to the beach, we are beach people.) My cousins their spouses, their kids, my sister, my brother-in-law, nephew, mom, dad, aunt, uncle and grandmother all go. We have grown and shrunk, but mostly grown. We have to rent two houses now. It’s a lot of people. It’s a great time, and tiring and I’m home now writing this. The bags are unpacked, house cleaned and kids are in bed. Whew… now, there is another week off after this one right?

For the last two years, Monkey has scarcely known that he is at the beach. He has had seizures all day everyday and slept them off while the rest of us beached it up. Which is a shame beacuse when he was two, shortly after he started having his first seizures, he loved it!

The great news is this year, until early this morning and into the day, he went the whole week without a seizure!!!!! It was incredible! He played in the sand, he got in the surf, we went for walks and he watched every thing! I think he probably just got exhausted, but wow! He played! He picked up sand and put it in his mouth, knew who people were and played with them and his toys. It is difficult to completely tell you how wonderful it really was. He has not reach out, picked something up, and put it to his mouth in months, let alone feed himself. I did not witness this event first hand, but my wife an aunt tell me that he put food in his mouth!

It has been joy. He hates getting sunscreen put on, he actually crawled away from us while trying to put in on him. It has been a week of the smallest, huge accomplishments that Monkey has had in while. He has played with Princess and reached out for her attention like she has not experienced from him in a long time. He is thrilled to be home and left to his own devices. He has been in motion since he hit the living room floor. Despite a rough start to the day, it has ended wonderfully.

It has been a gift of a week for us to get to see our beautiful son come to life and enjoy what we know he does.