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 23, 2012

Second Child Syndrome

Dear Claire,

Your dad and I really do love you. When you grow up and question why there are 1,000,000,000 pictures of Luke from each day of his life and only 1 per month for you, please understand it is not because we didn't love you. I will simply blame it on the fact that you are the second child. You are very cute, and do deserve just as many pictures, so we promise to work on that....

Here you are enjoying some exercise time while Luke was at school. I may not have many pictures, but I at least look out for your well-being and only put you on the floor when your brother won't step on your face. You'll thank me someday.





After we picked up your brother from school, you were sound asleep, and I just couldn't bear to bother you.


So Luke ate some dinner....



 And practiced walking around the house....


And watched Ellen.... Yes, this a ritual each day at our house.


When Claire finally woke up from her nap, I thought it was a brilliant idea to teach Luke to help his sister. So, the three of us filled up the baby tub, and Luke helped give Claire a bath!! Luke and I managed to stay in our original outfits, Claire actually got clean, and the carpet didn't get ruined. We're not sure what Claire thought, but just like with the lack of pictures - she'll forgive us someday.


1 comment:

  1. The ScottsApril 26, 2012 at 8:48 PM

    I think we'll be writing a similar note to Baby Brother!

    ReplyDelete

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