Count Down

December 05, 2008

Count Down

The count down is on and tomorrow we will be in Florida. I have been busy packing and organizing carry-ons for most of the day. We are going to have such a wonderful time! As I have said many times before, our kids love all things Disney. Mickey Mouse Clubhouse and My Friends Tigger & Pooh are staples, as are Cinderella and Dumbo. We took Wavey to Disney World when she was 1.5, to celebrate Matt's graduation from law school. It remains one of our favorite memories with her. Last year, we took both kids to Disneyland Paris for their birthdays. We had a ball. Waverly loved the Winnie the Pooh show and shouted "Kanga" for about 30 minutes straight, to the amusement of everyone around us.

We are hoping for another wonderful week of memories to be made. I am going to try to update the blog occasionally with photos. So please check back.

Comments

Welcome to Holland

By Emily Perl Kingsley

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.