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 28, 2011

Sometines, Luke just likes to kick back...

And have a little fun.  Case in point: we got this really cool rocker from some friends of ours!  It's a big plush bi-plane that has little buttons on it that sings songs.  I put the little Duder on it to see if he appreciated rocking, and you can guess what the result was!



Well, that's not all!  After a long day of playing with his rocker and a few of his trucks, Luke decided that he was going to try his hand at playing fetch with Ralphie!  Now, he didn't take into account that he can't actually stand yet or really throw any sort of a distance, but there is something he can do...HOLD ON FOR DEAR LIFE!



So all in all, we had a pretty good weekend.  Melissa is ready for her first trimester done with.  She is super tired, but I leave her be and take a bigger share of work.  Although, I have to admit, she is way better with Luke than I am, so the Duder and I are in survival mode until she gets her energy back.  Ok, well that's all for tonight.  Hope everyone is doing good!


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