When Cody Cawood was 3 years old, he knew all his colors and proudly boasted that he could count to 20. His grandmother, Mary Beth Staab—“Beth” to her friends—a bright woman with more energy than a Kansas tornado, would hop the few short blocks to her grandson’s house to help him practice his numbers and his letters every single day. Cody delighted in a mischievous game of reciting all the way up to 19 only to announce 20 as “20-teen,” whereupon he would burst into uproarious laughter, even after the joke had been repeated for weeks. Beth would then pretend to protest, Cody would laugh some more, and they would ritualistically start all over from the very beginning.
Born two and a half months premature, and with cerebral palsy, Cody overcame his challenges, according to Beth, “with a little bit of his mom and dad’s stubbornness.” At Kids’ Cove, a ...
