Old McDonald and BINGO

I finally figured out how to upload videos from our video camera to the blog.  I will apologize in advance for my annoying, twangy voice and singing.  In order to hear the videos you will need to scroll down to the bottom of the page and click the pause button on the playlist.

Tim got me a book about preemies and I am finally finding the time to read it. So far I have learned that Winston Churchill, Albert Einstein, Mark Twain, and Stevie Wonder were all preemies. Stevie Wonder is actually blind due to ROP (Retinopathy of Prematurity) which is what we had to drive to Plano to have the babies tested for when they first came home. This was the test that required the doctor to check the twins' eyes with a sterile paperclip. Thankfully they showed no signs of ROP.


There is a quote in this book that I have read at least 10 times because it really hits home for me. It is from Emily Perl Kingsley, a writer for Sesame Street and the mother of a child with special needs. She compared her parenting experience to being forced to take a trip to a place you never planned to visit. She stated - Parents who are going to have a baby feel like they are planning a fabulous vacation to a dreamland like Italy, she says. But if their child has a disability, they find out that their plane has landed, instead of in Italy, in Holland. So you must go out and buy new guidebooks. 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.

Having preemies has definitely been a trip to Holland for us, but there is no where else on this Earth we would rather be.