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, August 21, 2011

Busy Busy!

As you can imagine, things have been so busy around here!  But Melissa and I have been on the road opposite of each other for the last month or so.  In the mean time we have gotten DirecTV (love it! Melissa can even watch DVR in the bedroom!) kept our grass alive, kept all of our bills paid, and found out that Melissa is pregnant.

WAIT, WHAT?!?!?!?!

That's right!  Melissa is pregnant!  Yay!  The two kiddos will be just a few weeks shy of two years apart.  It seemed like a good round number.  We find out what the sex of CJ is in October.  CJ stands for Claire or Josh, so until we know, CJ it is.

Being a good big brother in training is hard and it has taken it's toll on Luke.  You can see him resting here:

The future gymnast!
And here you see his favorite place to put his foot when he is dreaming of Ralphie!


But with all of the extra attention from people finding out he is becoming a big brother, Luke has become a little camera shy!


But his biggest thing is that he needs to keep up his strength!  In order to do that, he eats so much now!  He is even trying out this whole "spoon" thing.  We will see how it goes.  Plus we are trying on looking like Harry Potter!  Bring on Voldemort!

2 comments:

  1. The Carter'sAugust 23, 2011 at 9:01 AM

    What a great surprise to read as I catch up on the Godinez family!! CONGRATS!!!!!

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  2. JennaAugust 27, 2011 at 9:39 PM

    CONGRATS!!! I can't wait to hear what you are having. Claire (or Clare the way my middle name is spelled) is a GREAT NAME! But as a mom of 2 boys- Josh would be a great name too! ;)

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