I love watching Emma sleep. It gives me time to look at every little feature and think about how beautiful she is. She has been doing a lot of sleeping this week because of her cold. Watching her sleep, is when I do most of my thinking and worrying. Lately I have had those terrible "why me moments". It is almost as if I knew the reason this happened to us then I could fix it and it would go away. So many people have told me, "God gives special children to special people." I just don't agree.... I am not special. I don't think I have any quality that can make me handle this situation any better than anyone else. I am not fearless, I am not selfless, patience... well I am working on it. Maybe Emma is here to teach me these things. Maybe Emma is here to teach the world some things. Her smile alone can teach the world love.
I have been hearing this song lately and the tears start everytime.....

"I believe there are angels among us. Sent down to us from somewhere up above. They come to you and me in our darkest hour, to teach us how to live, teach us how to give, to guide us with the light of love".

I am learning to not have pity for myself. This is not happening to me, it is happening to Emma. Emma is happy! We won't see her throwing herself a pity party. She has so much to learn but even more than this, we have so much to learn from her!

Great OT Appointment Today!

Just wanted to let everyone know that Emma had a great OT appointment today. This was the first appointment with Miss Sally since November. We are very excited that she will be working with Emma every other week. Miss Emma sure was a show off today. She was up on all fours with minimal support!!! We don't know if she will be much of a crawler but this is still great! She is doing so well at standing that we all think she is going to jump right to walking. She played with some new toys.... and played with them the right way! We were impressed at how she was opening and closing the buttons on one of the toys. She worked with markers and paper for the first time! Of course Emma wanted the marker in her mouth but it is something we will be working on. She also got to play with a Magna Doodle... I am going out to get her one of her own this week! Emma is doing so great and we know that she will surprise us all.

Read this poem today.....

Hi! This poem was on a friend's blog and thought that I would share....

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 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 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 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 will learn a whole new language. And you will meet a whole new group of people you never would have met.

It's just a different place. It's slower paced than Italy, less flashy than Italy. But after you have been there for a while and you catch your breath, you look around, and you begin to notice that 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 loss of that will never, ever go away, because the loss of that dream is a 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."



……Emily Pearl Kingsley (founder of the USA Down Syndrome Association)

(Reproduced from AFASIC News No. 78 May 1995)


I know this is how we feel and will always feel about our Emma. What a sweet girl! There is not a day that goes by that I don't think about how much joy she has brought us, how much joy she will continue to bring us, and how lucky we are to have her!