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.

Saturday, January 29, 2011

Sleepy Saturday

It is nice to know we have our child on a happy schedule; however, that schedule stops being so happy when he continues our weekday schedule on Saturday morning. Usually, Luke wakes up around 6:30-7:00, but the past few days it has been a bit earlier because he is usually STARVING. Think the little dude is going through a growth spurt. Well, apparently waking up before 6:00 was too much effort. After some playtime with mommy and a bottle, the couch called Luke's name.
Sound asleep...

 Hey! I am sleeping. What was that noise?

....And he fell over and went back to sleep......

3 comments:

  1. KarenJanuary 29, 2011 at 10:20 PM

    Looks like Baby Luke loves the new couch! I wonder where Daddy was...probably sleeping right next to him! Can you say "life of Riley?"

    ReplyDelete
  2. Stacy RomanJanuary 30, 2011 at 8:13 AM

    He is so dang cute and he's getting so big! :) Can't wait to see you guys next week!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Ronnie and SuziJanuary 30, 2011 at 9:27 PM

    Cracking me up!! Glad he went back to sleep...that is WAY too early in this house, weekday or weekend ;) PS I see he is also on the new couch! YAY!!

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