On this last day of thankfulness

On this last day of November, I am thankful that age 3 won't last forever. Nuff said

November Thankfulness Day 26-Early bird Santa

Today I am thankful for the early bird Santa visit. As we have found out in years passed, Meredith doesn't do Santa. Poor kid. At least she had cute boots on, right?

This year was no different. The only difference this year is that she actually came close. She stood just out of the way of the camera, next to the Christmas tree, holding Rob's hand and avoiding any & all contact with Santa. She was all of 3 months old when she first visited him & she let loose that year too. We thought she'd be to young to make heads or tails of him. Boy did she prove us wrong.

See the look? The one that says "Really mom? Who is this guy holding onto me and why are you acting like that? I'm really not smiling."

We love this Santa. He's at the Staten Island Mall every year. He looks just like Santa and he has the patience of a saint. HA! I guess that's why he's St. Nick. 

We try to get there early every year. Ya know before he's had to deal with a lot of screaming kids or ungrateful, demanding kids. Before he has a chance to get really annoyed by the whole thing. Some years it works out. Some..... not so much. 

This year we got there on his first day on the job! There was no line and everyone, except Meredith, was in a good mood. 

He asked Meredith what she wanted & ran down the list. Poor guy was met with a nodding head of "no" with each suggestion of something he could bring her. But we're making progress!!! She didn't cry. She didn't scream and she didn't run away! 

November Thankfulness Day 25-Black Friday

Today I am grateful for my Black Friday sanity.

We went shopping after the die hard Black Friday shoppers have all gone to bed for the night. I am grateful to have waited & carried on like today was any other friday. I was able to score some good deals, return some items I've been holding onto that needed to go back & did it all while retaining my sanity.

November Thankfulness Day 24- Turkey Day

Do you see that? Sean is essentially walking holding on with 1 hand!! 

Today I am thankful for my happy little family, family who stretches near & far, friends who are like family, a cozy intimate dinner, children who are in bed before 7:30pm and a 4 day weekend. 

I hope all of your Thanksgivings were filled with joy, laughter and all things that make you happy. 

November Thankfulness Day 20- Good Sports

Today I am thankful for good sports. The kind of good sports who come over to a 3 year old's tea party, drink tea, eat frost your own cupcakes and live it up! 

Meredith invited her cousins and aunt & uncle over for a tea party. Uncle Freddy, Hailey & Hannah came over & gave Aunt Kelley a break. 

Meredith wore her Sunday best and then promptly fell asleep for a nap before everyone got here. 

It was Uncle Freddy's first tea party and the first in a very long time for Hailey and Hannah. Uncle Freddy was happy just to be invited to the table for tea! 

 

November Thankfulness Day 19- Time Off

Today I'm thankful for time off. Time off from being someone's mom, someone's wife, someone's something. 

As much as I love these kids. And really..... what's not to love? 

And as much as I missed my husband this week. I just really needed a few hours off. A few hours to myself. 

Thank you honey for hanging out with the kids. I really needed it!!! 

November Thankfulness Day 18- Dinner Guests

Today I am thankful for unexpected dinner guests. We usually have 4 people at our dinner table. This week we've only had 3 because Rob was out of town working. Jennifer the zebra (I can't tell you how many animals are named after me in this house) must've felt our loneliness and decided to join us. 

She couldn't have been a more lovely guest at our table. We may need an extra chair for her. 

And of course, no meal would be complete without my faithful canine companions vacuums. :) Isn't it amazing how they know just where to be? 

November Thankfulness Day 17- Animal Names

Ok so I missed a day. Sue me. No. No. Don't sue me. I have no money to give you anyway.

Today I'm thankful for the seemingly never ending list of animals Sean looks like in his quest of motion. He went from a gimpy cat to an ape and now he is a seal.

FOr his next trick, I hope to catch a video of him screaming "Aaaaaaddddrrrrriiiiiaaaaannnnn" Rocky style. It might just be the funniest thing I have ever heard. 

November Thankfulness Day 15- Non-toxic crayons

Today I am thankful for Crayola & their non-toxic products. I don't know where we'd be without them. 

When I was pregnant with Sean I begged for a child that ate & slept well because Meredith didn't do either of those things well. Apparently I wasn't specific enough with my request. Meredith never stuck her fingers in anything, never put anything in her mouth & hardly got into much trouble when she was an infant. 

For everything Meredith didn't do, Sean is doing ten fold. Including, but not limited to, eating crayons. 

And just so you can fully understand what it means when a kid eats a dry erase crayon, it didn't matter how much I wiped his face off. Every time he drooled, he turned green again. 

November Thankfulness Day 14- Evolution

Today I am thankful for evolution.

Merriam Webster defines evolution as a process of change in a direction; a process of change from a lower, simpler or worse to a higher, more complex or better state.

After a particularly rough night here that ended in my questioning my ability or want to parent any child, much less a child with Down syndrome, I decided I really needed to put my pity party on hold & re-examine my perception of my life. I have to put aside the "why me?", "Why him?", "Why us?", Why can't he just be normal?", "Why can't he just get it together? It's not rocket science." thoughts and move on.

Why does my son have Down syndrome? And really...... why does it have to be a syndrome? It sounds like an illness when in reality, it's not. It's not a disorder. Um..... it is a disorder of normal genetics, I guess. But.... it's not a disorganization of the genes. It's added genes.

What got me thinking about all of this was this new blood test that is being offered to parents that will tell them whether their baby has Down syndrome. Those parents with a positive diagnosis of it will have the ability to either continue with the pregnancy or terminate the pregnancy. Those parents getting the test also won't run the risk of miscarrying the pregnancy after a CVS or amnio regardless of what the answer would be.

But why do people terminate pregnancies if their children are diagnosed with Down syndrome? I can only tell you why I might have if Sean had been diagnosed earlier. I questioned my ability to raise a retarded (yes that was my perception of DS) child. I questioned my want to raise a child who had more potential to have major medical, as well as functional issues then a child with 46 chromosomes. I questioned how down syndrome would affect Meredith & her future. Would I have terminated my pregnancy with Sean if I had gotten the diagnosis earlier? Probably not.

I started to think about history to see whether it could shed some light on the psychology of making a group of people extinct. As I recall, there were quite a few folks that felt that certain sects of human beings were not fit to mingle with the rest of the population. I recall learning that those dictators felt certain individuals tainted the gene pool & should be extinguished. And I'm sure that if a test for Judaism had been developed, Hitler would've used it on ALL pregnant women he could find & administered it.

Are parents who terminate their pregnancies like Hitler? Of course not. They are making the best decision for their family, but you see the similarities. Terminating a pregnancy simply because a child has Down syndrome & you wish to eradicate Down syndrome, is similar to trying to eradicate a whole group of people who practice a certain religion or look a certain way, have a certain color skin, etc. It doesn't pass muster in any other instance except for things people have defined as disorders or syndromes.

Where am I going with this? When Meredith was an infant, I prayed, begged & anything else I could think of to slow time down so I could savior every moment of her evolution from baby to toddler to preschooler, etc. No one seemed to hear me. Meredith is still speeding through her development at light speed barely pausing to take a breath.

Then Sean came along. Guess what? He's slower to evolve. He allows me to savior every single moment of his development. He's not rushing through at light speed. He takes his time to get each step right. He makes sure that when he does do something, it's perfect.

What if what we know as Down syndrome is really evolution at work? What if what we know of as Down syndrome is the wave of the future? What if Sean and everyone like him is Homosapien v2.0?

Looking at it like that feels better than focusing on the "why can't he be normal?" He is normal. He's just taking his time & giving me what I asked for. I asked for evolution to step in and make him perfect. Do I think Meredith is perfect? I certainly do, but maybe mother nature feels that propelling humans forward at light speed means that a few important things get lost in translation. A few things that may very well be needed as the earth evolves & changes.

Quite possibly, in adding things like half of a 21st chromosome, humans are getting those much needed things to be able to survive long after Homosapien v1.0 is gone.

You may not agree with my views. That's ok, but I hope they give you food for thought.

Hopefully seeing that people with what is known as Down syndrome are way more complex & in a lot of ways better than you & me.

Darwin would be proud to study people like Sean to see how they fit into what's coming.

November Thankfulness Day 13- Sweet Treasures

Today I am thankful for Devil Dogs. They cure the cranky & make everyone feel better.

Seany was holding his until.... well.... he squished it & fed the dogs. And that was that.

Yeah..... they make me feel like that too, Sean.


We have two friends that should be on the lookout for their own sweet treasures this week :) 

November Thankfulness Day 12- Little moments

Today I'm thankful for little moments of happiness.

When I can look over at my princess and she's twirling around watching her hair sway around her, I can relish a little moment of happy. When my little prince grabs my cheeks or hair & snuggles in for the biggest eskimo kiss EVAH! I can enjoy a sweet moment of happy. When my husband puts his hand over mine just to hold it, I can get lost in a joyous moment of happy.

November Thankfulness Day 11- Our Veterans

Today I'm thankful for our veterans. I'm grateful to all of our service members who have fought & continue to fight for OUR freedoms.

I'm thankful to them for putting the needs of others before their own & for continuing to show integrity & honor.

Thank you. Thank you for fighting my ability to always have a choice.

November Thankfulness Day 10- The "Look"

Today I am thankful for "the look." You know the one. The one when you see someone acting strangely and you look at them like "What the heck is wrong with you?"

You know why I'm grateful for that look today?

Because my son, the one I thought everyone would give "the look" to, just looked at Meredith like that. She was screaming & carrying on & he stopped what he was doing and looked at her like "What crawled up your butt?"

So yes. Today I'm thankful for "the look" because it made a bad situation pretty funny.

November Thankfulness Day 9 - Little Milestones

There are 2 kinds of milestones. Ones that are on a chart that tell you where you are compared to the rest of the population and ones that just happen because you're getting older.

Today I'm thankful for the milestones that aren't on some stinkin' chart.

Like when your youngest has a chocolate chip cookie for the 1st time.

And when he realizes that after he has devoured his, his sister still has some. 

When he decides that the prize at the end is worth the whack on his head he got from his sister when he stole the cookies from her hand. 

Yes. It's those milestones that I am thankful for today. After a long, long couple of weeks I needed a big smile. 

November Thankfulness Day 8 - Early bedtimes

Every night I give thanks that my kids goto bed relatively early. Sean is always in bed by 7ish and M is always in bed by 8ish. There are some days when they go down later, but by & large, they go down pretty early. It affords me some time alone with Rob and also by myself to unwind from my day.

Of course the flip side of that is that they are early risers. Not as early as some, but definitely earlier than I'd like.

None of it matters. Not even the fact that Sean has coffeedar. He senses when I'm about to make coffee. All I have to do is think about it & he wakes up. :\

I am still grateful for early bedtimes.

November Thankfulness Day 7- Friendships

Today I am thankful for the amazing friends we have, new(ish) and old. I'm grateful that our friends accept our family exactly as we are and keep us grounded. We may not see them as often as we'd like, but we're always together in spirit. Our friends always know how to make us feel better when we're down & know just how to help us celebrate when we're excited.

November Thankfulness Day 6-Modern Medicine

Today I am grateful for modern medicine. I am grateful that if we have to be sick or have anything majorly wrong with us, that we're around now and not 100 or even 20 years ago.

Sean has the croup right now and it is modern medicine that kept us from going to the emergency room for treatment. Modern medicine allowed a surgeon to repair sean's heart to keep him alive.

Vaccinations keep my kids from getting diseases that used to kill people. Yes. I know those diseases still kill people & they're still nuisances to people who contract them, but so far my kids have been able to stay clear of RSV, Rotavirus,, polio, chicken pox, measles, mumps, rubella, flu, etc.

Thank you to all the medical professionals who continue to make advancements in the medical field to keep my babies & us relatively healthy

November Thankfulness Day 5- Sibling Bond

Today I am thankful for the bond shared between a sister & her brother. It's an amazing bond that is reserved only for them. 

November Thankfulness Day 4- Peace & Quiet

Today I am thankful for peace & quiet. It's not that I don't love the constant chatter of my loving children, but there comes a time each time when I relish in the joy that is quiet. When I can enjoy a glass of water or something to eat that doesn't involve sharing with anyone. A time when I can goto the bathroom and not have anyone trying to get in or talking to me through the door.

A time when I can peruse the internet with no regard about what's on my screen. I can watch TV and not have to worry about the lesson my kids are learning.

But most of all..... my time of peace & quiet is a time when no one is pulling on my shirt or climbing on me.

Yes..... today I am thankful for peace & quiet.