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.

Saturday, August 4, 2012

Four Months

As promised, here is the 4 month update on Claire! Where does time go?!?! Our sweet little baby girl is really starting to show her personality now that she is getting older. She loves to sit up in her bumbo and watch the doggies and her brother play.
 Look how long she is! She just had her 4 month appointment, and she is 24.3" long and weighs 11 pounds 12 ounces. The doctor was really happy with how much progress she has made in the past month. She has neck control, rolls over, watches everything around her, and plays nicely with her toys - everything a 4 month old little girl should be doing!
 She loves to laugh and make funny noises. Her favorite noise is a sigh, which is pretty genetic if you know her mom, uncle Mike, Grandma Anne, or Great-Aunt Marybeth!
 However, she looks like a true Malone with those big blue eyes and rosy cheeks!
 Just like Luke, she even lets us make funny faces on her. Apparently, she doesn't think it is quite as funny as Luke used to since she immediately started crying afterwards. Maybe it was just her cue for another snuggle, because if you need to know one thing about Claire, it is that she loves NOTHING in this world more than a good snuggle!!



No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)