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.

Tuesday, June 5, 2012

My Big Kids

Where did my babies go?!?!? Have we ever mentioned how much Luke loves his baby sister? His new favorite activity is to hold her when she is crying. From the look on Claire's face, this doesn't exactly seem to be her favorite activity. In fact, she looks terrified. She'll learn to love it though....someday. For now, I think she prefers spending time sitting on the couch looking around where she is safe from the dogs and her brother.

In other news....Luke WENT PEEPEE AND POOP IN THE POTTY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! We are not exactly ready to potty train yet, but when my friends asked what Luke does when I sat him on the potty, I had no answer because I had never tried. So, for the past few days we have been sitting on the potty once or twice a day. On Sunday we had our first official peepee, and today we hit the poop jackpot! Maybe he will be ready before we thought?!??






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