31 for 21 Day 9: Amazing Gracie

I've been searching my blog for a post about Gracie and I can't find one.  How sad!  I mention her often on Facebook, but I haven't been a consistent blogger this year and this proves it.

Gracie wasn't expected to make it to birth.  Then she wasn't expected to make it through heart surgery.  Then her parents were told that her heart repairs were as much as they could do (and it wasn't going to be enough).  And then her mom found a stellar surgeon in Boston who said he could fix her heart and he did.  I'm leaving out a lot of details here, but suffice it to say that Amazing Gracie is the appropriate nickname for this kid.

Isn't she just yummy?!!!  (Micah says, "hubba hubba!")

This kid had 80+ people walking on her team at her first Step Up for Down Syndrome (SUDS) walk... before she was BORN last year.  And I got to hold her there this year.  Amazing.  She's one blessed little girl.  Her mommy, Carrie, is a special education teacher and advocates for this girl like crazy.  And her daddy is crazy head-over-heels for both of his little girls (Gracie has a big sister, Lylli).  Rich actually blogged about Micah and me the other day.  I love reading Rich's blog.  Most of the blogs about kids with Down syndrome are authored by the moms.  It's refreshing to hear a dad's perspective.

I'm honored to be mentioned on Rich's blog.  It means so much to me that Micah can give others hope about the future for their kids.  I worry that because he's been so plagued with health issues and that he's been so delayed in his physical development, that people will view life with a kid with Down syndrome as too hard.  I hope that people see the benefits of life with Micah far outweigh the challenges.


On a separate note, my long-time readers might remember me mentioning a little girl named Carly who died while Micah was struggling with toxic shock syndrome in April 2010.  Understandably, this has been an incredibly awful 18 months of grief for Joany.  Last week, Joany's daughter headed off to the Navy.  Then on Saturday, tragedy struck their family again.  This time, they lost their house to a fire, along with all of their memories of Carly.  And if you can't imagine it getting worse, it can.  Their son, Brad, died in the fire.  Please pray for the George family.  I cannot imagine...