Weekend Adventures

December 14, 2011

Weekend Adventures

This past weekend Waverly was at Jill's House. We packed her bags for her overnight adventure and dropped her off on Friday night after dinner. As always she was all giggles as we walked through the door. She happily took the hand of a volunteer and off she went to settle into her pod for the evening. She had one of her favorite staff members assigned to her for the weekend, Jenny. She loved her time in the pool, playing chase in the gym (Jenny said she was laughing so hard and would look back to be sure Jenny was still chasing her), watching a movie in the pod and playing on the playground.

Matt and I really enjoy the opportunity to do some special things with Oliver, whilst Waverly is away. We went into DC Saturday for a nice lunch at one of our favorite restaurants. We then went to the Botanical Gardens and the art museum. Oliver's favorite part of the day was riding the escalator over and over again. A close second was simply being able to run through the gardens and climb. We had such a lovely day.

We are always anxious to pick Waverly up Sunday night and we are typically counting down the hours until our reunion. We arrived to find a very happy, but very tired little girl on our hands. She did great!! I am simply so grateful to have such an incredible resource within our community.

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.