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.

Monday, April 2, 2012

Grandma, baths, KU, and Easter Eggs!

Poor Luke. It was back to reality today after having Grandma here to spoil him for the past three weeks.  Every single day Grandma gave Luke a bath, and he didn't know what to do without dirt stuck between his toes. Mommy and Daddy follow the philosophy of "bathe when he starts sticking to furniture" or "bathe when there is an abundance of some unknown substance" on the kid. Grandma doesn't approve of that, so she made up for Luke's lack of baths while here, and you can tell Luke was eternally grateful not to be the stinky kid.



When they weren't busy taking a bath, Luke loved to snuggle up on the couch to watch his favorite movie, "The Muppets". Yes, if you walk into our house either Patrick or I will randomly be singing one of the songs. We can't help it, and it is better than singing the obnoxious BabyFirst theme songs.

Did you really think Claire was going to miss out on the bath action? We tried every possible excuse to stall on the first bath, but Grandma wasn't about to miss it! Patrick and I dreaded a 6 lb. screaming, slippery baby girl....but she LOVED her bath! In fact, she didn't even cry until it was time to get out. (Grandpa Malone, notice that she is decent in all of these pictures! - haha)


After her bath, Daddy and Claire spent a little tummy time on the floor. No, not for Patrick....Baby Claire is working on her head control! It is amazing how strong the little girl already is!

After her workout, Luke wanted to love on his sister a little bit. Poor Ralphie was feeling neglected that Luke was petting someone other than him. Yes, you read that right. Luke likes to pet Claire's head like a dog. We think it is pretty funny, and it beats him trying to sit on her face. We're sure that isn't too far down the road.

ROCK CHALK!!!! When I was pregnant with Claire, I said the only thing I wanted to do was have my baby and lay on the couch watching KU basketball while I recovered. Well, our little visit to the NICU messed up the first part of that, but our team didn't want to crush my dreams and made it to the Championship game against Kentucky!!! We all enjoyed lounging around watching KU beat up on Purdue and UNC to make it to the championship. Who would have thought in a million years that would happen?!?!?!


When we weren't busy watching basketball, Luke participated in his first Easter Egg Hunt after church on Palm Sunday. The little guy did great making it around the playground in his walker! At first, he wasn't quite sure what to do with the eggs, but Daddy showed him that the eggs weren't soccer balls and he quickly got the hang of it. The only thing that would have made him cuter is if we would have thought to hang an Easter basket off his walker.




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