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.

Sunday, January 2, 2011

Top 10 of 2010

It has been a big year for the Godinez family. Here are our Top Ten Memorable Moments of 2010:

1. Luke joins the family! - Nothing changes life like having a baby for the first time. After years of dreaming about having our first baby, Luke was finally here. Despite the rough start with his health, the 20 days we spent in the NICU reminded us to never lose faith in God, strengthened our relationship as a family, and showed us of the support and love of our family and friends.





2. Luke comes home from the hospital. - No more plugged in baby! After countless hours in the yellow room, staring at the monitors, and praying for a quick recovery, Luke was finally home for good. That's where we started the real test of parenthood :)





3. Graduation! - After 6 months of intense studying, ridiculously long hours, and lots of trips away from home, Patrick graduated from Weapons School. He and I got a little vacation in Vegas thanks to Grandma and Grandpa Godinez coming to spend the weekend with Luke.
 

4. Baptism Fiesta - We don't do things on a small scale in the Godinez family. Why just have close family at a baptism when you can invite all of your family and friends. Since everyone had put in so many hours talking to the Big Man to help Luke get better, we thought that it was only fitting that we celebrated his baptism in true fiesta style.


5. 1st Christmas - Even though he is too little to have any idea what the excitement is all about, there is nothing better than having a little kid around at Christmas. Luke may have been more interested in eating the wrapping paper this year, but everyone enjoyed spoiling the heck out of him.

6. Thanksgiving - We defied all social odds in the entire world, invited both families to Thanksgiving, forced two grandmas to share a baby, and WE ALL SURVIVED!

7. 4th Anniversary/Michael Buble concert - Ironic that Melissa got to see her Canadian boyfriend for her wedding anniversary. Despite Patrick's doubts about spending an evening with Michael Buble, even he agreed that it was a sensational concert. Luke enjoyed a quiet evening at home with Grandpa and Grandma Godinez.

8. Frequent Visitors - Living in Minot for three years makes us value the time we now get to spend with family and friends.  Whereas we used to be separated by 16 hours or boring highway and usually ridiculous amounts of snow, our family is just a short car ride away.


10. Quiet evenings at home - Nothing is better than quiet evenings at home with just us and the dogs.



Happy New Year

2 comments:

  1. The ScottsJanuary 5, 2011 at 8:25 PM

    Love the Top 10! My favorite is Luke being born-of course!

    ReplyDelete
  2. UnknownJanuary 8, 2011 at 5:05 PM

    Happy New Year, Melissa! I read your entire blog on a road trip back from Chicago over break. Luke is just a few months older than Natalie, so I love seeing where she will be soon! My sister Beth and Andrew Miranda say hi to you and Patrick. I took your idea of Top 10 for my blog, I hope you don't mind. Great things!

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