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.Friday, March 7, 2014
20 Pounds!!!!!!!!!
Doctors threatened a feeding tube, but she said, "No way, Jose!!!" In fact, if you remember correctly, she actually got pneumonia when we were supposed to go to Little Rock last March to discuss surgery. It might have only taken prescription formula, eating a diet of solely oil/fat, and choking down medicine with every meal, but she is there! This dang bottle of champagne has been sitting on the counter taunting us for the last 6 months, but we FINALLY get to enjoy our "20 pound champagne".
When we aren't busy making Claire fat, we stay busy with all of our visitors! First, the Mott crew came for a quick weekend visit from Shreveport. The weather was PERFECT, so we had a BBQ and enjoyed visiting while Luke had so much fun playing with the big kids. Then, a few weeks later the Scott crew came! All the kiddos played nicely together, and we had so much fun at Sea World, Rodeo, BBQ at Kelli's, and the Riverwalk. By the end of the weekend, we were EXHAUSTED, but we can't wait for the next visit.
Our next visitors were Larry and Mary. They were down in South Padre visiting friends, so they swung on by to hang out for the weekend. We finally had the chance to try out Tejas Rodeo, a local restaurant that literally has a rodeo out back. In other news, if you need to find Patrick and I on a random Saturday this summer, we'll be at Tejas Rodeo. Then, the weather turned awful on Sunday, so we couldn't enjoy all of the outdoor activities. Luckily, Tori suggested we try out a local museum, and it was a great find! In fact, we had so much fun that I forgot to take any pictures :( Booooooo.....I hate when I do that!!!
If you want to make a reservation at Casa de Godinez you need to hurry!!! We are booking up fast!




