Splendid Mayhem: He's In UNDIES!!!

Welcome To Holland

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.

Thursday, March 13, 2008

He's In UNDIES!!!

Check it out! Logen is wearing 'big boy' undies today! I bought them this afternoon hoping that maybe if he has 'real' undies he'd care if he went to the bathroom in them. I took him to the potty when he got home from therapy (and he went peepee!) and then he picked out the ones he wanted to wear. He was trying to look at his bootay in the mirror, but ended up just turning circles. It looked like a dog chasing tail. his t He doesn't have the neck muscle stregth to beable to turn his head like that. Keep your fingers crossed that he 1) likes this idea and wants to potty in the potty more often 2) doesn't pee on the furniture :P (He INSISTS on wearing that oo-g-l-y shirt whenever it's clean!!! Even if it's freezing out and the shirt is under layers)

2 comments:

Popcorn HouseMarch 13, 2008 at 7:38 PM
YEAH LOGEN!!! Good Luck! I hate potty training. It was hard enough training my girls. I don't want to think about training boys and then training a boy with CP! YIKES. Good luck! KEEP US POSTED!
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TaraMarch 14, 2008 at 2:31 AM
He looks so cute and proud of his big boy undies!! Good Luck with the potty training. I love his shirt : )
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