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, December 17, 2012

In search of your own beach...


So, Claire has been eating us out of house and home.  No seriously.  She has gone from eating 12ish ounces of formula a day (and maybe a few bites of cereal) to eating two jars of Step 3 baby food a day with 18-24 ounces of formula a day!  Crazy!  Plus she has been getting these in:

Mom, stop!  I don't want you to pick my nose!
 But don't worry.  She is still happy with us.  Been putting on weight too!  Up to 15 pounds (by our scale)!  But daddy has tried to keep momma from weighing her EVERY day.


So happy!

 Luke and Claire got to go to the Children's Museum here in Honolulu.  They really seemed to like it.  And by that I mean, Luke had a great time while Claire nestled into Melissa's chest.  She is good at that.  That being said, she did like the colors and the shapes.  Luke did find something close to Grandpa Malone's heart...


Grandpa does this everyday?!?!?!  This is easy!  I know how to bang a hammer!  I can do this all day long!


Then Luke found out how much Law School would cost.  No matter.  Grandpa Malone still loves him since it's the closest to a lawyer of any of his offspring ever got!  (Hi Mike!)
 Since my days are filled with work (no really) and I have to go in for a few hours every Sunday, my Saturday's are filled with exploration!  We typically drive up to the North Shore and see what we can find.  We rarely ever stop at the same place twice, but we have our favorites.

So we stopped at a fruit stand where Melissa loves to get her fried banana and a bag of fruit.  I had parked across the street for the first time, and realized you could go through the fence and pack into the woods.  We followed the path knowing that the ocean was only like 100 yards away.  We got a real treat!  All of these banyan trees made this great grove.  I took a panaramic picture with my phone.  You can see Melissa and Claire on the left.  

This is what was waiting for us once we got through the trees.  Amazing what you can find even on a populated area like Oah'u! 
Midway stop at a random beach on the long trek along the North Shore.  Lots for Luke to play with!   
Having dinner after our adventure!
And finally, Luke is picking out stuff for us to do next weekend in our Military  Hawaii Guide!  I think he just likes the front picture!

We really are having a great time out here.  Hopefully, we will be getting a bigger room here in the next few days!  It would be good, we have a lot of stuff in this small room we have now.  Next week we get to go to Kuaui!  Should be a good Christmas trip!  Wish us luck!





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