Tuesday, January 20, 2009

Random stuff

We were at Wal-mart tonight (yes, the whole family, is that weird?) and as we stood in line at the checkout the couple behind us were admiring Ava, and they mentioned that they too have a boy with Down Syndrome. We talked for a few minutes and lo and behold, a woman pushed her cart up to our line behind them, and guess who was riding in the cart? A little girl with Down Syndrome. What are the chances of 3 random families standing in a row at the checkout, all blessed with a child with Down Syndrome? Weird.
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My poor kids have to sit patiently for 3 hours every Tuesday afternoon while Ava has speech, occupational, and physical therapy back-to-back. I'll be honest, Tuesdays are the hardest days of the week for me. Having so many children, sometimes I am afraid outsiders are looking for reasons to criticize. This makes me a little uneasy when there are so many mothers sitting in the waiting room every week with nothing better to do than watch how well or how poorly I manage my children. Well today one of the mothers walked in with 5 colorful gift bags and made a beeline towards me. She said she has noticed how well behaved my children are every week, having to sit for so long, and she has been blessed to see how they care for their little sister, and she handed me 5 gifts bags, one for each kid, containing Dominoes, Checkers, Travel Hungry Hippo, Floam, little craft sets, sticker sheets, little animals, etc. etc....things they could do while they waited, oh, and candy. She even gave Ava a little baby doll that says "mama", "dada", "I love you." (which she loved!). Needless to say, I was blown away. So much for my theory about large families in waiting rooms.
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I am on a decorating kick, and I decided to bring the little white toddler bed out of the attic so it would match Hope's white bed (Ava's crib is brown). Besides, I thought it would be good for Ava to learn how to crawl up on and get down from the little toddler bed. How precious she looked laying in her sweet little white toddler bed two nights in a row. Unfortunately, both nights she fell out of bed and was found in the middle of the night crawling around the house in pitch black. I heard the plastic water bottles banging on the floor and I knew right away Ava had managed to crawl through the darkness to find her favorite spot, the little open shelf in the kitchen that holds all the kids' water bottles. When I walked in the kitchen, half asleep, and turned on the light, she looked up, stopped banging the bottle, smiled real big, and said, "MAMA!" Can I just tell you how that melted my heart? So I brought her to bed with me for some snuggle time and she fell back to sleep in my arms for another few hours.
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John and I had a big chuckle last night when I told him to be sure to take the turkey and corn chowder leftovers for lunch the next day. He said, "Do you mind not calling it chowder, call it something else please." I quickly realized that he was referring to the story that I have told over an over again about a home video I once watched with my close friend Jennifer. Jennifer's brother and his two buddies had this crazy idea. One drove the van, one operated the video camera, and the third (Jennifer's brother) walked around a quaint little shopping center with corn chowder in his mouth, pretending to vomit on the windows of stores and cafes. The camera would zoom in through the glass and you could see the horrified and disgusted expressions on people's faces. A couple of people even got up and ran to the bathroom, gagging, not realizing that it was only corn chowder dripping down the windows.

 So, you see, I will never again be able to make "chowder" for my family. As long as I call it "soup", as I did in last night's case (turkey corn "soup"), everyone is fine. I hope I have not ruined corn chowder for your family too.
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10 comments:

Mamapierce said...

I know what you mean - we took Keith & Kristina to therapy yesterday and there was a girl there who was adopted from Russia 5 years ago. It was nice to talk with her (she was adopted at age 7) and get a feel for how well she has adapted.

What a nice lady to bring you those bags - how kind.

When we brought Keith home we put him in a twin bed. I was worried about how well he would adjust since he's always been in a crib - the first few weeks he got out of bed, but now he doesn't.

I'd be up for getting that recipe for turkey corn "soup". :o) It sounds tasty!

Tim Rovenstine said...

Well, bless my purple buttons. You hit a triple there posting 3 insightful stories, all good enough to be printed in READERS DIDGEST.

Stephanie said...

we had to spend 3 hours a week at therapy too... 2 hours for chase's OT and PT and 1 hour for kylies OT.... of course none over lapped :) and I only have the two but it feels like the longer hours ever! We ended up becoming good friends with the other familes that came during the same times and we actually started alternating weeks to bring group snacks LOL usually just a box of individually wrapped oreos or what ever. :) And seeing the waiting room toys were quite babyish we brought board games for all the waiting siblings to play with together... my kids never wanted to leave LOL and chase would complain that he only got to play with the kids for an hour and kylie got 2 hours.

Bethany said...

Aww I love all of these stories! And so funny she was crawling around in the middle of the night! Smart girl!

jennifer... said...

John has no idea how we have carried the torch of his youthful pranks all these years.  He may have outgrown them but thankfully we haven't!  Oh no, we haven't!

Carson's Mom said...

What a wonderful lady to bring your children presents. They really must have been good. That was very thoughtful! We have Carson in a baby bed still and he is a big 3 year old, but I don't think he would ever stay in a toddler bed without falling out.

Kayla

Anonymous said...

Such wonderful stories. What a blessing for your family to receive such fun gifts from that lady. And now I will definitely look at chowder differently. Thanks for sharing.

kirsten said...

Actually, thanks to you, Jennifer and that story from long ago, I can't eat corn chowder either! But, laughing @ that story has brought me more joy than any corn chowder ever could:)

Dalene said...

Thanks for the idea. I've been trying to figure out what to do with all of that corn chowder.

Anonymous said...

Thanks for your wonderful stories! I had to tell you that we went camping one weekend in Pensacola in our pop up camper. I woke up the first morning and looked out the window and saw our "neighbors" had a grown daughter with DS. (We have a 3 year old son). I couldn't get dressed fast enough to get outside to meet them. By the time I did, there was a different young woman walking around, who also had DS. We spent the evening playing Uno with this wonderful family whose first bio daughter was born with DS and then they adopted 3 other children domestically with DS. We had a great time. Then the next morning I went to the beach (a VERY short walk from the small campgroup), and my eagle eye spotted another young man with DS playing out in the water. I had to watch him and his mom for a while before I convinced myself that it was NOT the same family who was camping next to us. They were also camping in the same small camp ground. So, SIX people in that small camp ground had DS!! How cool!
Wendy