Birthdays are hard, its strange to say that because I LOVE birthdays {those who know me know how true this is}. I love my birthday, Eliza’s birthday, my family and friends birthdays, basically I love celebrating birthdays. When I was pregnant with Eliza, like every mama, I had 1000 plans for her and I often thought about what her birthday parties would be like. In my mind her birthday (April 12th) would be a major holiday in our house. I imagined asking her about what theme she wanted, what she wanted to wear, what gifts she wanted. I even imagined her being invited to birthday parties and taking her to pick out gifts for her friends. I did a whole lot of planning… but as we all know plans can change.

When we first met with neurologists when Eliza was 18 months old they told us that Eliza might never talk, they said she would always be in special education classes and that she would always need us. Now I know that doctors can be wrong but they told us because we needed to hear that these things were a possibility. I left that first appointment feeling defeated…because this was not my plan. During these next few months people shared there stories with me, sent articles and blogs and essays. One of the essays that I received was “Welcome to Holland.”  Welcome to Holland was written by a mom to describe her experience raising a child with special needs. It goes like this…

You decide to take a trip to Italy and you start planning. You get guidebooks, look up restaurants maybe learn the language, you are SO excited for Italy. Finally the day comes for your trip, you board the plane and you can hardly contain your excitement. Italy here I come.. and then you land and the flight attendant says “welcome to Holland.” Holland? I didn’t plan for Holland, I planned for Italy… {you get where I’m going with this}. By the end of the essay you realize that Holland is different than Italy but it can still be amazing. I still read it and  I still cry every time.

Every parent has dreams for their child but when you have a child with special needs their comes a point when you are faced with the realization that things might never be the way you imagined. That the dreams you had will be different and there is a little part of your heart that breaks. It breaks for the birthday parties that they won’t care about, the Christmas presents that they wont rush to unwrap, and the ballet classes that they probably won’t take…and you feel a little selfish for even feeling that way.

So I try my best not to stay there long and I try to remember to celebrate all the amazing things that Eliza does each day.

Like how she gets SO excited when we play the song Happy even though she has heard it a million times. How she always blows kisses when we ask her to say “bye bye.” How she giggles every time someone sneezes {so we sneeze a lot in our house}. How popcorn is the equivalent to a trip to Target for a toy and how she will hug you so tight and not let go until you do.

So we will always have birthday parties for Eliza they will just be a little different. I will pick the theme and I will pick her outfit and they will be really big parties and we will invite all of our friends and family and we will celebrate Eliza…and we will celebrate being in Holland…

and we will have lots of popcorn…

| 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 |~ Welcome to Holland by Emily Perl Kingsley