Awww Monday: Beautiful Feet

Awww Monday is hosted by Sandee, of Comedy Plus.

Join us every Monday for Awww...Mondays.  Post a picture that makes you say Awww... and that it.

Make sure you get the code from Sandee's site, linked above, and leave a link to your post so we can visit you.  What better way to start the week than with a smile!

C in the Busy Bees room wearing socks and his leg braces.

Okay, i can hear it now.  What's so "awww!" inspiring about a child's feet, clad in leg braces?  Of course, i'm going to tell you.

About 6 years ago, a lovely young couple married here at our church, and then moved to Houston for his job.  (Just a note:  Houston eats people from our area that way, it's very frustrating.)

About 4 years ago, they had their first child, a boy.

The trauma started almost immediately, baby C was rushed back to the hospital at 3 days old.  Our church prayed and prayed for that child.  The doctors were very certain when they said he could not survive, said if he did he would never walk or talk, painted horrible pictures of his future.

Two years ago, when his family was here visiting, i watched him in the Butterfly nursery room as he, barefoot, taught himself to climb the two steps to the little slide in the corner, sliding down with a huge grin each time he was successful, practicing over and over until he could do it easily.

Yesterday, i watched him in the Busy Bees room in the nursery hall.  He played with the train table, took himself to go potty, sat for the Sunday school lesson, ate his snack, and shared the trains at the train table better than the kids who are in there every week.

He talks with a bit of a lisp, and he wears the leg braces most of the time, but they don't slow him down.

Those brace-clad feet are an Awww! to me because they represent survival and hope and the power of prayer.

Today is:

Amelia Earhart Day

Children's Day -- Vanuatu

Cousins Day -- because cousins are wonderful people to have around! sponsored by Claudia Evart of New York City, who must have had great cousins

Experimental Aircraft Association Airventure -- Wittman Regional Airport, Oshkosh, WI, US (world's largest sport aviation event, through Sunday)

Festival of St. Eloi -- French Basque

Hurricane Supplication Day -- US Virgin Islands (churches hold special services to pray against hurricanes hitting the islands this season)

Jakaba Diena -- Ancient Latvian Calendar (beginning of St. James' [Jacob] Festival, whose day is tomorrow; the beginning of hay harvest)

Jilwalla Jinks' Jamboree -- Fairy Calendar

National Drive Through Day -- but only if you won't pass out from the heat when you roll down the window! on the founding date of Jack-in-the-Box, the first drive through burger chain

National Tequila Day -- celebrate North America's first native-born distilled spirit

Pioneer Day -- Mormon Christian

Pop a Wheelie Day -- before, not after, the tequila, please; a hospital visit is no fun

Public Opinion Day -- the first public opinion poll was published this date in 1824!

Ramazan Bayrami Eve -- Turkey

Simon Bolivar Day -- Ecuador; Venezuela

Sts. Boris and Gleb's Day (Patrons of princes; Moscow, Russia)

St. Christina the Astonishing's Day (Patron of all with mental handicaps, disorders, or illnesses, and mental health care workers, psychiatrists and therapists; against insanity and mental disorders)

St. Christina of Bolsena's Day (Patron of archers, mariners, millers)

Tell an Old Joke Day

Tenjin Matsuri -- Tenmangu Jinja, Osaka, Japan (one of Japan's 3 major festivals, through tomorrow)

Anniversary Today:

Richard Moll marries Susan Brown, 1993

Birthdays Today

Bindi Irwin, 1998

Dhani Lennevald, 1984

Anna Paquin, 1982

Summer Glau, 1981

Rose Byrne, 1979

Eric Szmanda, 1975

Jennifer Lopez, 1969

Kristin Chenoweth, 1968

Kadeem Hardison, 1965

Barry Bonds, 1964

Julie A. Krone, 1963

Lynda Carter, 1951

Michael Richards, 1949

Peter Serkin, 1947

Robert Hays, 1947

Chris Sarandon, 1942

Ruth Buzzi, 1936

Pat Oliphant, 1935

Billy Taylor, 1921

Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald, 1900

Chief Dan George, 1899

Amelia Earhart, 1897

Oswald Chambers, 1874

Alexandre Dumas, pere, 1802

Simon Bolivar, 1783

John Newton, 1725 (wrote Amazing Grace)

Debuting/Premiering Today:

The Fellowship of the Ring(Publication date), 1954

Today in History:

Death in Kyoto, Japan, of Kamo no Chomei (b. 1155), Japanese author, poet (waka) and essayist, critic of Japanese vernacular poetry and major figure of Japanese poetics, 1216

Citizens of Leeuwarden, Netherlands strike against a ban on foreign beer, 1487

Jacques Cartier plants a cross on the Gaspé Peninsula and takes possession of the territory in the name of Francis I of France, 1534

Mary, Queen of Scots, is forced to abdicate and replaced by her 1-year-old son James VI, 1567

Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac founds the trading post at Fort Pontchartrain, which later becomes the city of Detroit, Michigan, 1701

A Spanish treasure fleet of 10 ships under Admiral Ubilla leaves Havana, Cuba for Spain; on the 31st, all ships will be lost and come to be known as the !715 Treasure Fleet, 1715

Slavery is abolished in Chile, 1823

The first opinion poll was carried out in Delaware, USA, 1824

Benjamin Bonneville leads the first wagon train across the Rocky Mountains by using Wyoming's South Pass, 1832

After 17 months of travel, Brigham Young leads 148 Mormon pioneers into Salt Lake Valley, resulting in the establishment of Salt Lake City, 1847

The first tramway opened in England, 1861

Tennessee becomes the first U.S. State to be readmitted to the Union following the American Civil War, 1866

Captain Matthew Webb, who was the first person to swim the English Channel, drowned while trying to swim the rapids above Niagara Falls, 1883

O. Henry is released from prison in Austin, Texas after serving three years for embezzlement from a bank, 1901

Hiram Bingham III re-discovers Machu Picchu, "the Lost City of the Incas", 1911

The passenger ship S.S. Eastland capsizes while tied to a dock in the Chicago River. A total of 844 passengers and crew are killed in the largest loss of life disaster from a single shipwreck on the Great Lakes, 1915

The first insulin treatment is carried out, on a six-year-old girl, at St Guy's Hospital, London, 1925

The Kellogg-Briand Pact, renouncing war as an instrument of foreign policy, goes into effect, 1929*

The dust bowl heat wave reaches its peak, sending temperatures to 109°F (44°C) in Chicago and 104°F (40°C) in Milwaukee, 1935

During an official state visit to Canada, French President Charles de Gaulle declares to a crowd of over 100,000 in Montreal: Vive le Québec libre! ("Long live free Quebec!"), 1967

The Quietly Confident Quartet of Australia wins the Men's 4 x 100 metre medley relay at the Moscow Olympics, the only time the United States has not won the event at Olympic level, 1980

Simeon Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, the last Tsar of Bulgaria when he was a child, is sworn in as Prime Minister of Bulgaria, becoming the first monarch in history to regain political power through democratic election to a different office, 2001

Lance Armstrong wins his 7th consecutive Tour de France, 2005

Over half of the country of Peru enters a state of emergency as a result of unusually cold weather, 2011

The scientific theory of supersymmetry is challenged after experiments with the Large Hadron Collider yield an incredibly rare particle decay event, 2013