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, March 27, 2011

Pirate's Life for Me!

Yar!  This weekend we got on our boat for the first time of the season!  We just had to.  We have been working on yard work, homework, and Melissa's work work all week and needed to get out.  It actually hit 90 degrees on Saturday afternoon, so we gathered out stuff and hit the road to the lake.  It was a great choice as we met up with some friends who also have a boat.

Luke got tuckered out!


Shhhhhhhh!
In funnier news, we happened to have Luke in his exersaucer next to an inflatable penguin that makes noise when you hit it.  Well, it happened to be close to Luke and he decided to hit it...and when the thing tipped over it said "WOOOOHOOO!" and then came back up.  Luke LOVED IT!  He kept hitting it and hitting it for almost an hour!  Melissa hates it, but I think it's great.  

Not much else is going on here.  We are getting the gazebo done.  Should have it done by the end of the week!  That with our new landscaping, our backyard is going to look like a different yard!  The next project is going to be a shed so we can clean out our garage...which is covered with brown spray paint powder.  I can't wait to get started!


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