Our Babies

Our Babies
Luke and Claire

"Welcome to Holland"

By Emily Perl Kingsley, 1987. All rights reserved.


I am often asked to describe the experience of raising a child with a disability - to try to help people who have not shared that unique experience to understand it, to imagine how it would feel. It's like this......

When you're going to have a baby, it's like planning a fabulous vacation trip - to Italy. You buy a bunch of guide books and make your wonderful plans. The Coliseum. The Michelangelo David. The gondolas in Venice. You may learn some handy phrases in Italian. It's all very exciting.

After months of eager anticipation, the day finally arrives. You pack your bags and off you go. Several hours later, the plane lands. The stewardess comes in and says, "Welcome to Holland."

"Holland?!?" you say. "What do you mean Holland?? I signed up for Italy! I'm supposed to be in Italy. All my life I've dreamed of going to Italy."

But there's been a change in the flight plan. They've landed in Holland and there you must stay.

The important thing is that they haven't taken you to a horrible, disgusting, filthy place, full of pestilence, famine and disease. It's just a different place.

So you must go out and buy new guide books. And you must learn a whole new language. And you will meet a whole new group of people you would never have met.

It's just a different place. It's slower-paced than Italy, less flashy than Italy. But after you've been there for a while and you catch your breath, you look around.... and you begin to notice that Holland has windmills....and Holland has tulips. Holland even has Rembrandts.

But everyone you know is busy coming and going from Italy... and they're all bragging about what a wonderful time they had there. And for the rest of your life, you will say "Yes, that's where I was supposed to go. That's what I had planned."

And the pain of that will never, ever, ever, ever go away...because the loss of that dream is a very very significant loss. But...if you spend your life mourning the fact that you didn't get to Italy, you may never be free to enjoy the very special, the very lovely things ... about Holland.

Thursday, June 10, 2010

New Things...

Melissa has been a sad panda recently. 


(This is where you ask why she is sad.....)


Oh, glad you asked!  Well, you see Luke outgrew his first outfit today!  He is in his "big boy" clothes now!  Which just means that we have to put away a few of his onesies, so no big deal.  But this means that our little boy is going to be a man soon and momma is having trouble coping. 

How has she been dealing with this?  Well, she has been snuggling with Luke and it has become serious since she is going back to work in a few weeks.  On one hand, she can't wait to get out of the house more and help rebuild the economy.  However, if she stays home, she says she feels the urge to spend a lot of money.  So by all accounts, she needs to get back to work.



Besides, if she stays in bed like this too much longer, she won't be able to do any of her homework!  But as you can see in the two pictures, the dogs are still being very dutiful in their baby helping chores!


But that's alright, today when I came home from work I found that the house was still standing, my wife and child are still there and the dogs have destroyed only minimal property.  Oh, and Melissa had just made three casseroles for the rest of the month and a metric crap ton of cookies.  Chocolate chip for her and oatmeal raisin for me!  All in all, a good day.

2 comments:

  1. Ronnie and SuziJune 10, 2010 at 10:28 PM

    And he looked so handsome in his 'big boy clothes' today!! :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Stacy RomanJune 11, 2010 at 10:45 AM

    I would definitely call that a good day. :)

    ReplyDelete

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)