Splendid Mayhem: Shoes

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.

Tuesday, April 8, 2008

Shoes

More funny stuff from our day:

* Silly Mom put Parker's shoes on the wrong feet. I stood him up and told him it was time to go. He stood there and cried. He wouldn't walk. I then noticed what I had done. Problem was solved once Mom fixed it. I didn't think it would be that big of a deal. He still wears pedi-pod soft sole type shoes. I can't bring myself to buy 'real' shoes for my baby.

* Logen threw a FIT and a half when we left therapy today b/c another kid had crocs like his. He thought they were his. He took off his tennis shoes and wanted to put those on. Seriously, had to drag the kid to the van. So, when we got home, I told him to go to his closet to find his crocs. He did and we put them on. He was happy as pie!

* Parker falls alseep on my chest this afternoon. 1 of Logen's shoes falls off. He gets ticked. He is chasing the shoe around trying to put it on. Instead of bending over and using his hands to help him, he wanted to put crocs on w/o the use of hands. While it did make me sad, it was too funny to watch his chase the shoe around yelling at it! Lazy lil' stink!!!!