Baby Alex takes his first steps!
Lyla tapped her pencil on the table and bit her lip in an act of concentration. Laying on the coffee table in front of her was a sheet of paper full of math problems that she was supposed to be working on, but her mind was too full to concentrate on the task at hand. She was more focused on the sheet of paper that she had slipped into her school folder after her teacher passed it out this afternoon. It was all she thought about, all she could concentrate on and essentially, something that frustrated her. She sighed and put her head down on the table, her cheek resting against the marble and her eyes looking to her left.
She looked at the bright green and blue mat that her brother was sitting in the middle of and watched him grab at the animal figurines that were hanging from the arch above it. Alex grabbed ahold of the lion that dangled from the arch and pulled it, lifting his head up and preparing to shove it directly into his mouth. When the arch refused to budge and allow him to get the lion close enough to his mouth, he let it go and sighed in defeat. He stared at it and poked his lip out, ready to cry solely out of frustration. As she watched her brother grow angry with the fact that he was unable to taste his toy, an idea hatched in the back of Lyla's mind. She thought she might've found a solution to her problem. Though she already knew the answer to her question, she figured it wouldn't hurt to ask anyway.
"Mommy," she picked her head up looked up from the paper full of addition and subtraction problems that she was working on. She put her pink pencil down on the coffee table as well and sat up. Jo sat on the couch with her feet propped up on the coffee table, her attention solely on the shiny sheet of x-ray paper that she held in her hands. "Mama."
"Huh?" Jo put the x-ray down on the couch beside her and gave Lyla her full, undivided attention. "What do you need, baby? You need help with your homework? You stuck on something?"
"No," Lyla shook her head and opened up her yellow school folder. "Mama, look." She got up from her spot on the floor and walked her folder over to Jo. "We're havin' show and tell. Kay? We're havin' show and tell and I don't know what to bring." She climbed up on the couch next to Jo and shoved the folder into her lap, pointing at the paper that was causing her so much distress. "So Mommy, maybe you think I could bring Ally? For show and tell? Please?"
Jo looked at the paper and thoroughly read through it in her mind. Show and Tell Tuesday! Bring something from home to show to your classmates! Please have ideas submitted to Mrs. Welch no later than this Friday. Parents: ideas must be approved. Animals are encouraged but must be kept on leashes, in cages, etc. She looked away from the paper and at Lyla, whose eyes were filled with so much hope that it almost pained Jo to say no.
"Lyla," she closed the folder and handed it back. "Ally's not a toy. He's a baby, and I don't know if it's a good idea to bring him into your school around all those germs and stuff." Lyla sighed and put her head down. She knew that her mother would say no. She always said no when it came to things that involved the baby. "Bubbles, I'll help you find something else to bring in. Okay? Mommy will help you find something to bring in…Okay?" Lyla nodded her head but Jo could tell that she was still disappointed. "Why don't you bring in Daddy? Like you did for Career Day? Or you can bring in your cast…you can tell them how Mommy helped put it on for you and how I sawed it off. Why don't you bring in your cast?"
"They already saw Daddy. They already know Daddy a doctor and stuff. And a cast is not fun. I wanna bring something fun," Lyla's voice cracked. She was close to tears but she didn't want them to fall. "I just wanna bring Ally for a little while. They never saw a baby brother before. I just wanna show them how he laughs a lot when I make a fishy face."
"Lyla…," Jo sucked her teeth. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes. Jo prided herself on being the tough disciplinarian between her and Alex. She was the one that never gave in, the one that stuck to her word. But she was a sucker for tears and she couldn't deny that. "…Don't get your hopes up. I'm not making any promises, okay?" Lyla perked up and raised her eyebrows. Was she going to say yes? "But we'll see. If Daddy can take an early lunch or if I can go into work late, we'll see. We'll see. I'll ask Daddy what his schedule's like for next week when he gets out the shower."
"Really?!" Lyla gasped and Jo just nodded her head. "Ally, guess what!" She sprung up off the couch and barreled to the floor, crawling over to her brother on her hands and knees. "Ally, guess what!? You're comin' to school with me! Uh-huh! You get to see my desk and my friends and my teacher and my pencils and my cubby and my hook and where I eat lunch at! You wanna come to school with me, Ally?!"
Alex sat flat on his butt with his legs outstretched in front of him and his hands rested on his plump, round belly. He looked at his sister with an expressionless face. He just stared at her, wondering what she was talking about. She sounded happy, which probably meant that he should be happy too but instead, he was still dealing with the pent up frustration of not being able to eat his toy. He blinked his eyes and looked away from Lyla.
"Ally, you're coming to SCHOOL with me!" Lyla got off her knees and sat on her butt in front of her brother. She didn't understand why he didn't sound more excited. Clearly going to school with her was something that he should be excited about. He was merely a baby and he was going to school with a real, live first grader. Why wasn't he more excited? "You wanna come to school with me, don't ya?" Lyla put her hands on his sock-covered feet and tickled them. "You wanna see my friends?"
Lyla sighed when her brother still ignored her, and desperate to get a laugh out of him, she forced him to lie on his back. Alex looked up at her and wrinkled his eyebrows in irritation. He didn't want to be on his back! He wanted to sit up and look around like he was doing. Lyla lifted up his blue t-shirt and tickled his belly, which also didn't seem to appease him. He grunted to vocalize his irritation and rolled over onto his side. Lyla put her hands on his torso and rolled him back onto his back and when she did, Alex furrowed his brows and closed his eyes. He sucked in a deep breath and prepared to wail hard, loud and angrily. Lyla rolled her eyes at her brother's bad attitude and shook her head. She figured that going back to her homework was better than dealing with his bad attitude. She just hoped he didn't have a bad attitude when she brought him to school.
Realizing that crying was no longer necessary since Lyla finally left him alone, Alex let out his breath and stared up at the ceiling. Using the skill he mastered to perfection about a month ago, he rolled over from his back and found himself on his stomach and facing the couch. He tucked his knees up underneath his body and propped himself up on all fours. He crawled over to the couch, which was only a few paces in front of him and grabbed onto the cushions. He had only learned to pull himself up about two weeks ago but he had been practicing enough to know how to do it. He was pretty efficient for a nine month old.
Jo looked up from the x-ray scan she had turned her attention back to and smiled upon seeing her son's little face peering at her from below the couch. "Whatcha doin' Bubby?" she put the x-ray down and sat up straight. Alex smiled at her and showed off the only two bottom teeth he had in his mouth. "Whatcha doin'? You smilin' at me? Always smilin'."
As he held onto the couch, Alex bent his knees and straightened his legs back out in a rhythmic pattern so that it almost looked like he was bouncing up and down. He lifted one leg, put it down. Lifted the other, back down. Jo kept an eye on him for a few moments before returning back to looking at the scan of a broken pelvis that she couldn't figure out how to go about fixing. When Jo took her attention off of him, Alex's smile faded a bit and was replaced with the look of determination. He turned his head and looked when he heard big Alex enter the living room but quickly turned back and continued flexing his legs.
"You're gonna drive yourself nuts looking at those scans," Alex walked over to Jo and stood behind her. He adjusted the towel he had around his waist and looked at the scans with her. He pointed at the scans, "Could you go in through there…use a graft, maybe?"
"I could…but he's a runner and Torres said that quicker recovery would be if I used a cadaver. So that's my approach…but do you see all those fragments? I'd have to go in through the posterior…and open him up there. All those fragments in there aren't good, but they're viable. I wanted to see if I could rebuild using screws and his own fragments to reduce the chance of rejection, but if I do that—"
"Limited mobility...guy won't be running marathons anymore," he finished her sentence.
"Exactly," Jo sighed. "So if I use the cadaver, he'll be up and running soon but if he rejects it then…yeah. So I'm basically screwed. I can't do this."
"You'll figure it out. You don't give yourself enough credit sometimes," he leaned forward and pecked her on her cheek. "You're smarter than you think. Put the scans down and come back to them later. You rebuilt a football player's ankle out of steel plates and titanium and he went on to play in the Super Bowl. Don't doubt yourself so much."
"You're right," Jo nodded. "I'll just come back to them later. Maybe it'll come to me in the shower tonight." She sighed and put her feet flat on the ground, sitting up as Alex sauntered into the kitchen and proceeded to take a long sip of orange juice straight out the carton. Jo ran her fingers through her hair and took a deep breath to calm herself down.
"Stop it, Ally!" Lyla exclaimed. "Mommy, get him!"
Jo picked her head up to see what was the matter and laughed when she saw that Alex was reaching across the coffee table and trying to grab Lyla's pencil while she was trying to do her homework.
"Alex!" Jo clapped her hands to get his attention. The nine month old turned his head and looked at her. "Stop it, Bub. Leave Sissy alone. Stop it." He looked at her with a dumbfounded expression, which only made Jo laugh more. It was clear he had no idea what she was talking to him about. The only thing he did understand was that she wanted his attention because at this point, he knew that his name was "Alex". He knew that he was Alex, Lyla was Lyla, Mommy was Mommy and Daddy was Daddy. He gathered that much. "No!" Jo pointed her finger at him. She knew he understood what "no" meant. He heard it so often, especially when he would put things in his mouth. "NO!"
When he left Lyla's pencil alone, Jo looked at her phone and Alex looked away from her. At nine months old, he was in the stage of wanting to know about everything. He wanted to know what everything tasted like, what everything was used for and his brain was like a sponge. So since Lyla's pencil was off limits, he looked around for the next thing he could mess with. He spotted the remote laying on the floor and smiled at it. Still holding onto the table, he maneuvered his legs in an "up-down" rhythm. Still bracing himself against the table, he propelled himself to the side and carefully inched closer and closer to the remote.
It was quiet in the room, as Lyla was busily working on her homework and Alex was trying to walk towards the remote. Jo felt the silence, though. She knew silence wasn't good, not when she had two kids, so she glanced up from her phone and back down at it once she saw that he was okay. As soon as she looked away though, what she saw resonated with her and she snapped her head back up. Her jaw dropped and she gasped.
She jumped up off the couch and clasped her hand over her mouth. "ALEX! ALEX! ALEX, ALEX IS…HE'S…," she took a minute to gather her thoughts, her words being jumbled up by the repetition of the two names. "ALEX! COME HERE!" Upon hearing her scream his name, the baby stopped taking miniature steps and looked at his mom. Jo stood, trembling with her hand over her mouth. Her entire body shook and she felt tears ready to fall. "ALEX, NOW! COME HERE!" Hearing his Mommy yell caused Alex to poke his lip out and flop down on his butt. His face cracked up and tears lined the rims of his eyes. "Awww, no! No Bubby, don't cry!"
"What?! What is it?!" Alex finally stumbled into the living room with nothing more than a pair of boxers on. "What's going on?! What happened Jo?! Is he hurt?! Why's he crying?! Why are YOU crying?!"
Jo scooped the baby up and cradled him against her chest. "He just…"
"Ally walked, Daddy! He sure did! I saw it! He walked!" Lyla got up and rushed over to her parents as well, eager to join in on the celebration. "He walked Daddy!"
"He walked?" Alex raised his eyebrows and cracked a smile. He should've known that Jo would cry over Alex's first steps. She blubbered like a baby over Lyla's. "No kidding…"
"He did," Jo sniveled. "He was just cruisin' away…he was holding onto the table and he was just going! He was just going!" She wiped her face. "I think I scared him…"
"Alright, buddy!" Alex felt an overwhelming sense of pride wash over him and he couldn't help but take his son out of Jo's arms. "Alright bud! Early bloomer! Nine months? Alright!" He kissed the baby's cheek and rubbed his back. "You gotta do it again so I can see now."
"No, don't do it again..." Jo wiped her nose with the back of her hand. "I'm not ready for him to grow up…"
"Mommy, all he did was walk," Lyla mumbled.
"She acted like this during your first steps too, Ly…actually, she was a little bit worse when you walked. She cried like a baby," Alex chimed in.
"She did?!"
"She did," he nodded. "For two days."
"Shut up!" Jo whacked Alex in the shoulder. "It was not two days…" she sniffed. "It was two hours."
