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, January 28, 2013

Two weeks with the fam and a good eater!

Family is great.  We honestly don't get to spend enough time with them.  To fix this, my mom and my sister Becky and her husband Mark came to visit us.  It was  a great visit, except I had to work!  And work got pretty busy, but that didn't put a damper on things though.  We got around the entire island, even a few places not in the visit guides!
Mom, Becky, and Luke at the beach.  I think they were making him a sand cake...to which he tried to eat.

Grandma and Luke doing a little swimmin'.  He doesn't ever go into the pool....unless he falls.  Which is pretty funny since we are always there.  He doesn't actually seem to mind much at all!

The best part of the trip was that I finally got to take my wife on a night out!  Grandma took the kids and we went on a date night.  How hot was it?  We even wore real shoes!

Real shoes and all!

Melissa still can't believe I work something other than flip-flops!  I can't believe I brought them!
Those drinks were awesome.  My drink was made from a concoction of booze soaked in pineapple.  Good enough to slap your momma!

But the kids are still doing great.  Claire keeps getting stronger and stronger.  She is learning how to sit up more and more.  I mean, she must love this, right?
Such a happy baby!  Almost to 16 pounds!

The doctors here have bent over BACKWARDS for us here.  Just like our doc, Fran, back home.  If your kid needs a good doc at Barksdale, go see her in Peds.  She is wonderful dealing with a system that isn't.  The docs here are going to re do most of her tests as no one here agrees with LSU-S' diagnosis, including us.  Still looking for answers...

NOM NOM NOM
That kid still loves to eat!  He will actually eat an entire burger, which is better than his usual french fry diet.  We typically have to trick him to eat something else by offering him a fry.  Smart kid though, he knows how to work his parents!

Well, dear readers, it's time to go to bed.  As a note: if you are in customer service, try not to piss off my wife if at all possible.  It usually doesn't work out.  





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