What happens when there are no more rocks?

As I was picking up around the house yesterday before Mackinley's birthday party I found a few of his prized rocks. In the last few weeks Mac has decided that rocks are the best thing in the world to collect. We find rocks everywhere and he carries them everywhere with him. I picked up a rock from the middle of the living room floor and it hit me, what happens when there are no more rocks around our house? What would life be like if something happened to Mackinley and over time we found all of these hidden rocks around the house?

It got me thinking that if Mac were to leave us we would find several reminders of him around every corner...these rocks being one of them. Would we close up his room and fight off tears or would we sit in his room and let those tears fall over all of his treasures? The thought of losing him was too much and as I cleaned, I cried. There is no reason to believe we will lose Mackinley anytime soon, but we also thought there was no reason we would be visiting the hospital so often over the past 2 years.

Mackinley has overcome so much. He fought for 7 days in the hospital just to come home after he was born, he fought to gain and maintain a healthy weight, he worked through months of physical therapy to crawl and walk and now he is in speech therapy so that one day we can hear "mama" and "mommy" come from his sweet lips. Nothing has been easy and you can bet we would never let him leave us so easily.

As parents Tami and I have fought the urge to snatch him up and take away all of his pain and at the same time we fight every day to accept what care we must take to keep him alive. We have challenged medical staff and put our foot down at one more IV attempt, we have cried by his hospital bedside wondering if he would wake up to be the same baby he was 3 hours before and we have questioned every doctor until we are blue in the face about what to do next. We don't want to be those parents that call for splinter removal and runny noses and at the same time we HAVE to be those parents, if we don't Mackinley's life could be in danger.

Acceptance has not been easy. Everyone wants their child to be happy and healthy and of course we want that...but right now I think we just want Mackinley to be average. A normal kid. A 2 year old who says "red truck" and "dog woof" and maybe "mama up!". And every day it gets harder to accept he isn't that kid. My baby says very minimal words and maybe 1 phrase, "right there". He can't have a conversation, he can barely communicate his needs. This is not where I thought we would be. I thought we would be talking with Mackinley about what he wanted for dinner and would he rather go to the park or for a walk? Instead we do our best to guess what he wants by asking the simplest of questions and hoping for a reaction we can understand.

So as I sit 2 days from Mackinley's 2nd birthday I'm remembering all that we have gone through and hoping we are dealt better cards from here on out...and trying to accept we might not always get a better hand.