
Wow, sorry so much time has gone by without an update. We've been quite busy and have a lot of great news to share!
After months of waiting, we finally received the name of Timmy's donor. His name is Martin Richter. Martin Richter! He is now 24 years old and from what we know, he still lives in Germany. We have reached out via email, and have yet to hear back. Of course, we are so curious to learn more about him and understand why he donated, but we were told that some donors don't respond. More than anything, we just wanted him to know that he will forever be a hero to us for the amazing, selfless act he did so that Timmy could lead a happy and healthy life.
We received fabulous news that Timmy is being granted a wish from the Make-A-Wish Foundation! This is the wonderful organization that also granted wishes for our nephews, Brendan and Kevin. We had been told by our social worker in Cincinnati that Timothy wasn't eligible for a wish from this particular group due to his age at the time of the actual transplant (MAW looks to grant wishes for children 2.5 years and up). But given that he was still dealing with and recovering from complications from the transplant at that age, we just weren't understanding the reasoning.
Witnessing all that Timmy has been through, my Dad decided to take matters into his own hands. He reached out to his colleague who serves on the board of a local chapter of MAW and shared Timmy's story. That set things in motion and after reviewing his case, MAW deemed that he is in fact eligible for a wish!! We are beyond thrilled with this news as our little man so deserves this. We are planning to visit Disney World but need to decide when the timing is right for Timmy.
We've been blessed with gorgeous weather over the past few weeks whch has allowed our little man to do so many new things. We've spent a lot of time at home in Indiana, and took him to the beach for the first time - he loved it! We thought he might freak about the sand but he's been playing a lot at the sandbox at a local park and just thought the beach was his giant sandbox! He dipped his toes into the (frigid) waters of Lake Michigan for the first time, skipped rocks with Daddy and played in the sand and rocks with his cousin Edward.
We were given the okay by our team to let Tim go swimming in pools (lake swimming is still TBD), and he is a little fish! We weren't sure how he'd take to the idea, but he's been swimming a number of times now, and he just loves it! We also hit up the library for the first time. Timmy loves books and just kept running around, grabbing books and plopping down in the fun chairs to read. I think the librarians thought we were crazy but I just beamed with happiness at his pure joy. Ah, the simple things!
Also a first for all of us - we left Timothy with his cousins, the Bardol's, for TWO whole nights while Charlie and I took some time for ourselves to celebrate our anniversary. Paranoid as we are, we were only 30 minutes away but it was great for all of us. Timmy had an amazing time with the Bardol's and did just fine without us. He was probably pretty sick of us and needed some time away!
LIke I said, there's a lot of great news to share. Next time I won't wait so long to update! We head to Cincinnati on Wednesday for a check-in with the team so more to come on Timmy's progress!