I have been meaning to blog about this for quite some time but I wanted to get some good pictures of my sweet girl before I did...
.
Last year I blogged about the crazy little signs I experienced when I was pregnant with Gabby. Well, last week I was spring cleaning and going through Gabby's clothes, preparing to store her winter duds and make way for summer attire. As I was folding and sorting I came upon the cutest little dress I purchased when I was pregnant, a week after I found out Gabby was a girl. I was SO excited to finally be able to buy girly stuff and I specifically remember sitting in front of the gymboree website one evening, scouring over all of the possibilities. Among several items in my cart was a precious blue dress with Tulips dancing along the bottom of the skirt. It was so different from what I would normally buy, in fact, even today Gabby has very little clothing that is not pink! But something about this dress appealed to me and I envisioned my little hapa-girl dancing around in it so I clicked "purchase" and it arrived 5-10 business days later. ;)
.
Finally, at two years old, Gabby is able to wear this dress (size 6-12 months) but seriously, how sweet is she in it? I just love it.
.

.
There is a point to this story, I promise, but just a little background info first...
.
Most of my "mommy" friends know that I am a junkie when it comes to gabby-clothes. I'll be honest and call it a sickness. I can be out and about in public and recognize immediately if a child is wearing Janie and Jack, Boden, Gymboree, etc. What's worse is that a lot of the time, I can even recall the name of the specific line (I know, I know...I told you I was sick!) So anyhow, as I pulled out this precious dress last week, I immediately remembered the name of the line it came from.
.

"Welcome to Holland"

By Emily Perl Kingsley, 1987. All rights reserved.

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.

This poem is well-known amongst the Ds community. I doubt there is a mother out there with a child with Ds who doesn't know of it. It's so beautiful and so true...